From rationalities to lifeworlds: analysing the everyday handling of uncertainty and risk in terms of culture, society and identity

Brown, Patrick

doi:10.1080/13698575.2016.1271866

Cited by 12 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Our findings demonstrate that those who decided to participate in screening were often more ambivalent about risk, equally likely to see themselves simultaneously at risk and not at risk. They described the influence of observations in personal and social lifeworlds (Brown 2016) as well as culturally embedded notions of the 'good patient' are evoked in decision making processes and the decision to screen was rarely a straightforward objective assessment based on bowel cancer risk algorithms. Rather they regarded themselves as candidates for screening which was viewed as a natural extension of a 'healthy lifestyle' and provided reassurance that they did not have cancer.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceived colorectal cancer candidacy and the role of candidacy in colorectal cancer screening

Bikker

Macdonald

Robb

et al. 2019

Health, Risk & Society

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Screening is a well-established tool to advance earlier cancer diagnosis. We used Davison's concept of 'candidacy' to explore how individuals draw on collectively constructed images of 'typical' colorectal cancer (CRC) sufferers, or 'candidates', in order to evaluate their own risk and to ascertain the impact of candidacy on screening participation in CRC. We interviewed 61 individuals who were invited to participate in the Scottish Bowel Screening Programme. Of these, 37 were screeners (17 men and 20 women) and 24 non-screeners (13 men and 11 women). To analyse these data we used a coding frame that drew on: symptoms, risk factors, and retrospective and prospective candidacy. Few participants could identify a definite bowel cancer candidate and notions of candidacy were largely predicated on luck in the sense that anyone could be a candidate for CRC and there was little evidence to support a linear relationship between feelings of risk and screening decisions. Often participants described screening as part of a wider portfolio of being healthy and referred to feeling obliged to look after themselves. Our study suggests that rather than candidates for bowel cancer, screeners viewed themselves as candidates for screening by which screening decisions pointed towards the acceptance and normalisation of the rhetoric of personal responsibility for health. These findings have related theoretical and practical implications; the moral structure that underpins the new public health can be witnessed practically in the narratives by which those who see themselves as candidates for screening embrace wider positive health practices.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceived colorectal cancer candidacy and the role of candidacy in colorectal cancer screening

Bikker

Macdonald

Robb

et al. 2019

Health, Risk & Society

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“…Finally, I explore how the transfer of risk models from Senegal to Italy, through the migratory processes, can be usefully understood amid multiple challenges that are related to both social class and cultural identities. My findings show original forms of synthesis and a combining of rationalities (Brown, 2016), where the 'fascination' for the electronic devices and birth technologies Senegal migrants can access in Italy co-exist with 'magical' healing practices and the idea of extra-somatic dangers related to the invisible world.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…This opinion emerged from women who were at their first child but also from those who have already had one or more children. Such an attitude highlights a combining of rationalities (Brown, 2016) about risks, technological devices and their relationships. The women I interviewed described natural birth rooms as a 'perfect combination' between their desire to avoid medical technology and the possibility to easily access pharmacological, medical, and even surgical, interventions if needed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Birth models in and between Italy and Senegal: a cross-cultural inquiry on the risks related to childbirth and birth technologies

Quagliariello

2019

Health, Risk & Society

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In Western societies, such as Italy, a positive representation of birth technologies as the main remedy to fight against the uncertainties of physiology and biological risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth has prevailed since the eighteenth century. This process has experienced a strengthening and an acceleration in the last fifty years. Although the (bio)medical discourse has replaced previous representations of childbirth-related risks, other risk categorizations, and search for remedies, have emerged and persist. Relying on the findings of a multi-sited ethnographic work focused on Italy, Senegal and the migratory experience from Senegal to Italy, this article investigates how the representation of childbirth-related risks changes in these three contexts. Working in a risk perception framework, I argue that birth technologies and medical interventions are understood by some groups of Italian women as a risk to be avoided compared to the possibility of experiencing a natural birth. At the same time, through an anthropological perspective, the article investigates how the relatively low level of medicalization in Senegal shapes a discourse on birth based on a very different understanding of health and risk. Unlike the biomedical discourse, childbirth-related risks in Senegal are only partially explained by the physical materiality of the birth process. Finally, stressing the strong interconnection between risk logics and material culture, the article analyses the multiple challenges connected to both the 'fascination' for technological births and the transfer of non-biomedical risk models from Senegal to Italy through the migratory process.

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“…In this sense, no unconditional uptake of technology exists (Callon, 1998). Lay reflexivities visà-vis technical innovations do not only emerge in situations of controversy or in those in which one has become directly concerned by their potential harm (Epstein, 1995;Wynne, 1996), but are omnipresent in 'lifeworlds' or in everyday handling of uncertainty and risk (Brown, 2016), as well.…”

Section: Access To Technology and Ambivalences Around Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of technology on pregnancy and childbirth: creating and managing obstetrical risk in different cultural and socio-economic contexts

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Brown

2019

Health, Risk & Society

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From rationalities to lifeworlds: analysing the everyday handling of uncertainty and risk in terms of culture, society and identity

Cited by 12 publications

References 43 publications

Perceived colorectal cancer candidacy and the role of candidacy in colorectal cancer screening

Perceived colorectal cancer candidacy and the role of candidacy in colorectal cancer screening

Birth models in and between Italy and Senegal: a cross-cultural inquiry on the risks related to childbirth and birth technologies

The impact of technology on pregnancy and childbirth: creating and managing obstetrical risk in different cultural and socio-economic contexts

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