1st Edition

Breast Cancer Gene Research and Medical Practices Transnational Perspectives in the Time of BRCA

    248 Pages
    by Routledge

    248 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    The discovery of the two inherited susceptibility genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 in the mid-1990s created the possibility of predictive genetic testing and led to the establishment of specific medical programmes for those at high risk of developing breast cancer in the UK, US and Europe.



    The book provides a coherent structure for examining the diversity of practices and discourses that surround developments linked to BRCA genetics, and to the evolving field of genetics more broadly. It will be of interest to students and scholars of anthropology, sociology, history of science, STS, public health and bioethics.



    Chapter 8 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780415824064_oachapter8.pdf



     

    Foreword by Rayna Rapp  Introduction   Section I: Practices of Population, Politics and History in the Production of BRCA  1. The Presence of the Past: BRCA ‘Ashkenazi Mutations’ and Transnational Differences in Categories of ‘Race’ and ‘Ethnicity’: The German Case   2. Mapping Jewish Identities: Migratory Histories and the Transnational Re-Framing of the ‘Ashkenazi BRCA Mutations’ in the UK and Brazil   3. Genetics to the People: BRCA as Public Health and the Dissemination of Cancer Risk Knowledge   Middleword I: Historicizing Biomedicine – Toward a History of the Present of BRCA   Section II: Risk, Personhood and Subjectivity  4. Situating Breast Cancer Risk in Urban India: Gender, Temporality and Social Change   5. Gender Trouble? Queering the Medical Normativity of BRCA Femininities   6. It Takes a Particular World to Produce and Enact BRCA Testing: The US had It, Italy had Another   Middleword II: Pushing the Boundaries   Section III: Shifting Terrains of BRCA Knowledge and Practices  7. "Empowerment" and the Rendering of Biocapital in Direct-to-Consumer Personal Genomics   8. The BRCA Patent Controversies: An International Review of Patent Disputes   9. From BRCA to BRCAness: Tales of translational research   10. BRCA Interrupted: Reproductive Technologies and the Reiteration-Reformulation of Cancer LegaciesAfterword: Studying BRCA performativity. Re-Calibrations by and of the Social Sciences

    Biography

    Sahra Gibbon is a Lecturer in the Anthropology Department at University College London, UK.



    Galen Joseph is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.



    Jessica Mozersky is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the New School for Social Research in New York City.



    Andrea zur Nieden is a sociologist and a Research Assistant at the Institute for the History of Medicine, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany.



    Sonja Palfner is a social scientist contributing to the field of science and technology studies.