Trajectories of cancer patients in therapeutic and political contexts: A multi-sited study (360G-Wellcome-212736_Z_18_Z)

This project asks how therapeutic innovations and changes in healthcare policy have transformed the trajectories of patients with lung and breast cancer since 1988. It explores this question by combining an anthropological perspective with a historical one within a single theoretical framework. The key goals of this project are to critically rethink 1) the history of therapeutic innovations in breast and lung cancer and 2) of healthcare policies in the UK and in France since 1988, and 3) to explore, by employing the concept of patients’ trajectories, the embodied experience and the encounters with medical institutions and treatments of breast and lung cancer patients. The construction of this theoretical framework will allow me to study illness both as an individual and embodied experience and in its economic and political dimensions. Following the extended case method approach, I will conduct a multi-sited ethnography in Greater Manchester and in Île-de-France with in-depth interviews with breast and lung cancer patients, their relatives, and medical and administrative staff of healthcare institutions. The ethnography will be combined with documentary research on the history of medical innovations in the treatment of the two cancers and of healthcare policies in the two countries.