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cancer, control, and causality: talking about cancer in a working‐class community
Author(s) -
BALSHEM MARTHA
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1991.18.1.02a00070
Subject(s) - legitimacy , rhetoric , causality (physics) , sociology , power (physics) , class (philosophy) , resistance (ecology) , white (mutation) , working class , control (management) , public relations , political science , politics , epistemology , law , management , ecology , philosophy , linguistics , physics , biochemistry , chemistry , quantum mechanics , gene , biology , economics
This article examines discourse between health educators and residents of a white, inner‐city, working‐class community, a high cancer risk area targeted for a cancer education project. The community's rejection of project messages advising changes in lifestyle is described as a form of resistance. Through rhetoric about fate and cancer, community residents refuse science the power to define the terms of the discourse, and articulate a critique connecting scientific authority to wider contexts of social class and access to power and legitimacy.