Abstract
Scholars of social medicine have long called for a recognition of politics, history and economics in our understanding of disease occurrence among individuals and groups. And yet, larger social discussions of disease are often infused with categories such as race/ethnicity and culture that are used to explain cancer rates in lieu of the social conditions that play a greater role in unequal cancer burdens. Drawing on multidisciplinary collaborative cancer prevention and screening efforts with community groups, this paper will discuss how cultural anthropology's attention to social context and cultural meaning systems in the cancer continuum can reveal processes that lead to production of race and subsequently obscure the role of social inequalities in the production of cancer disparities.
Citation Information: Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2011;20(10 Suppl):ED04-04.
RSS Feeds