Between religious philanthropy and individualised medicine: situating inherited breast cancer risk in Greece

Abstract

This article explores cultural articulations of inherited breast cancer risk at the meeting-point between religious philanthropy and individualised medicine. Drawing on the particularities of the ethnographic context of Northern Greece, in a rural area among a population facing the uneven distribution of biotechnologies, this analysis intends to show how developments in the field of breast cancer prevention and genetics are interwoven with the challenges and possibilities of the modernisation and secularisation processes. Notions of 'control' or 'protection' are put to work in medical discourse and the religious domain, through a renewed repertoire of pre-existing meaning-systems that highlight often contrasting aspects of collectivity and individuality. For women with high-risk family history of breast cancer, these tensions are reflected in ways they negotiate articulations of their biology, inherited risk and female subjectivity. In effect, the issues of inequality and religious philanthropy bring forth a different terrain for thinking about the biosocial configurations and the image of individualised consumers that genetic knowledge has been said to enforce or endorse.

BRCA patients in Cuba, Greece and Germany: Comparative perspectives on public health, the state and the partial reproduction of ‘neoliberal’ subjects

“…For her and other women who voiced similar concerns in this ethnographic context, engaging with new health practices associated with breast cancer genetics does not automatically render them autonomous individualised consumers of biomedicine (Kampriani, 2009). Instead, their fluctuation between aspects of health awareness and a reluctance or inability to fully embrace risk assessment technologies or individualised interventions reflects how notions of informed patienthood and individual responsibility are negotiated or compromised through the agency of their appropriation (Butler, 1993).…”

“…Such dynamics reflect the importance, when considering patient subjectivities, of examining how state sanctioned models of public health (where they exist) intersect with health promotion discourses and individual or collective health activism around the disease in considering patient subjectivities. Studies of community interventions and BRCA genetics by two of the co-authors of this article in the Cuban (Gibbon, 2009) and the Greek contexts (Kampriani, 2009) have already begun to illuminate the different ways that risk and citizenship are linked to collective, political ideologies or religious and gendered moral values.…”

“…SeeKampriani (2009) for a discussion of the interfaces between religious philanthropy and breast cancer genetics in Greece, with reference to institutional practices and the social dynamics within which they are embedded.…”

The Emergence of Genetic Counseling in Sweden: Examples from Eugenics and Medical Genetics

“…They state that new genetic knowledge "creates an obligation to act in the present in relation to the potential futures that now come into view" (Novas and Rose 2000, 486). Several studies have also pointed out that practices of identity work in relation to genetic issues are dependent on local, historical, cultural, and political contexts as well as being embedded in existing hierarchies (Felt and Müller 2011;Kampriani 2009;zur Nieden 2007;Gibbon and Novas 2008;Raman and Tutton 2010). Several studies have also pointed out that practices of identity work in relation to genetic issues are dependent on local, historical, cultural, and political contexts as well as being embedded in existing hierarchies (Felt and Müller 2011;Kampriani 2009;zur Nieden 2007;Gibbon and Novas 2008;Raman and Tutton 2010).…”

Special section: Perspectives on globalising genomics: The case of ‘BRCA’ breast cancer research and medical practice

“…A number have also examined the way that local cultures of breast cancer activism have and are informing or being themselves influenced by the application of novel genetic knowledge (Gibbon, 2007; see also Klawiter, 2008). Other studies have focused on how long-standing medical cultures or practices, as well as nonmedical institutional interests linked to charitable or religious bodies are closely tied up with the work of translation and the establishment of breast cancer genetics (Gibbon 2009;Kampriani, 2009). Thus, social science research has begun to show the extent to which the scope and reach of genomic technologies is situated within and informs a global and transnational arena of health care and medical research (Sunder Rajan, 2006;Gibbon and Novas, 2008).…”