Experiencing and explaining cancer: A critical study of Turkish modernity through the cancer patients' illness narratives.
Item
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Title
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Experiencing and explaining cancer: A critical study of Turkish modernity through the cancer patients' illness narratives.
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Identifier
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AAI3314670
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identifier
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3314670
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Creator
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Terzioglu, Aysecan.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Shirley Lindenbaum
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Date
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2008
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Anthropology, Cultural | Anthropology, Medical and Forensic | History, Middle Eastern
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Abstract
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Based on 12 months of fieldwork in Istanbul and Ankara, my dissertation aims at providing a critical reading of Turkish modernity and its reflection in the health realm through an investigation of the illness narratives of cancer patients. It also explores the interactions between the medical and social conceptions of cancer in Turkey, and the ways in which the illness narratives are informed by those conceptions. Analysis of narratives suggests that the patients internalize, reshape or react against the larger, social and medical conceptions in their illness narratives, in accord with their own experiences during their cancer treatment. The patients' socio-economic background and position vis-a-vis Turkish modernity play a crucial role in shaping illness experiences and narratives. The recent social transformation in Turkey and criticisms of Turkish modernity are reflected in the health realm, particularly in terms of the health care providers' categorizations of "good" and "bad" patients, which are informed by the providers' perceptions of the patients' socio-economic status.;The fieldwork includes interviews with 20 female breast cancer patients, 20 male lung cancer patients, and five men and five women with cancer in their digestive systems. Analysis of their cancer narratives evaluates the extent to which the patients experience marginalizing and discriminatory practices by health care providers and other people who are around them. By constructing illness narratives, the patients often re-arrange their social world and reconstitute their self-image in order to cope with those practices, as well as with the physical and psychological problems that are caused by their illness. They often form a small group, which includes the people who support them during their treatment in psychological and material terms, and reinforce the boundaries between that small group and the "others" in sharing their illness experience and narrative. The health scientists and health care providers focus more on why the cancer rates have increased, rather than on how having cancer affects people and what kind of psychological, social and economic problems it brings to their lives. Therefore, the issues of how patients cope with those problems are underestimated in the debates on cancer in Turkey.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
