Malignant yet Benign
The Political Economy of a Skin Cancer Diagnosis in Colombia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5337247 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Camilo Sanz (0000-0003-0251-3822, Anthropology Department, The University of Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN, USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 112-137 |
| Publication date | 2020-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0162243919830195 |
| OpenAlex | W2915254805 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 33 |
This paper is about the ontology of a cancer diagnosis at high-end hospitals in Colombia. Drawing on a seventeen-month ethnographic fieldwork study in this country, it pays attention to how dermatologists, pathologists, and oncologists looked at my partner's skin during a routine medical checkup and enacted two seemingly contradictory diagnoses: a lethal melanoma and a benign dysplastic nevus-commonly known as mole. Because their differences under the microscope or through dermatology goggles may be subtle, physicians often disagree on what they see. When medical services are not unrelated to the economic possibilities of patients to pay for them, what emerges through a microscope might be different. With neoliberal medical reforms in Colombia as background, this paper focuses on the ontological indeterminacy of cancer and its relationship to high-end hospitals and a patient who could, albeit not without effort, pay for the treatment. Thus, I argue that how physicians saw was not unrelated to what they saw and therefore to their practices of medicine in neoliberal Colombia. How do medical practices and ways of seeing in Colombia enter into composition with the bodies they study? Could the same skin tissue simultaneously be cancerous and noncancerous
Cancer · Ethnography · Ontology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Anthropology · Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies · Law · Medicine · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Race, Genetics, and Society · Internal Medicine
Science in action
Biocapital
Pharmocracy
Beautiful Data
Improvising Medicine
Beamtimes and Lifetimes
Rendering Life Molecular
Drugs for Life
‘And a Time to Die
Representing and Intervening
Bodies in Formation
Sorting Things Out
The Order of Things
Earth Beings
Earth Beings
Responding to Pfiesteria piscicida (the Fish Killer)
Moral Laboratories
Meeting the Universe Halfway
After Method
Anthropologies of Cancer in Transnational Worlds
Gender equity and health sector reform in Colombia
Bureaucratic Itineraries in Colombia. A theoretical and methodological tool to assess managed-care health care systems
The Body Multiple
How to Talk About the Body? the Normative Dimension of Science Studies
Scars of Nation
Out-of-Sync Cancer Care
Cancer, Stress, and Ironies of Cancer Understanding in South Korea
The Transformation of the Value of Life
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |