On 23rd April, Nick Surawy Stepney, Shagufta Bhangu, Thandeka Cochrane and Jennifer Fraser hosted a panel at the Royal Anthropological Society’s Health, Environment, and AnThropology (HEAT) conference in Durham, UK (23-24 April). The panel on ‘Carcinogenesis, Toxicity and the Epidemic of Cancer’ interrogated the carcinogenic effects of the toxicity of contemporary forces of industrialisation, capitalism, environmental and climate breakdown, empire and global ‘development’. The panel argued that while scientific investigation into links between industrial environmental contamination and carcinogenesis has been underdeveloped in favour of that which foregrounds personal agency and individual choice, a growing body of anthropological scholarship has begun to reorient this research agenda. The panel was particularly aimed at papers that advanced an analysis of ‘carcinogenic accountability’ in relation to cancer – examining how risks of carcinogenic exposure are made visible and invisible, embraced and resisted, and studied.
Papers on the panel ranged from discussion of American surveillance of radiation units in Ethiopian cancer centres, to navigating the toxic terrains of US nuclear testing in the southern US states, to the exposure of native north American communities in Canada to radium mining and transport, to the toxic exposures of chemical plants in Italy. Thandeka Cochrane, from the Cartographies of Cancer project, presented a paper on ‘Carcinogenic accountability and the quest for cancer aetiologies in east Africa’. In this paper, Cochrane outlined the stakes of the term carcinogenic accountability – in short, the politics of asking who is responsible for cancer causation. In particular, she examined the epistemic frameworks within which this term is embedded – specifically the contemporary orientation in cancer epistemic towards individual accountability and treatment pathways, which elide a closer examination of industrial, corporate or state accountability and a focus on prevention. Jennifer Fraser and David Reubi, also from the Cartographies of Cancer team, gave a paper on ‘Elusive Environments: Shifting Notions of the Environment in Cancer Research in Late Colonial and Early Postcolonial Africa’. Fraser and Reubi’s paper discussed how the concept of the ‘environment’ shifted throughout the work of John Higginson, first direction of IARC who began his career working in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Held over two sessions with a total of six papers, the panel produced a vibrant and dynamic discussion about cancer, carcinogenesis, toxicity and accountabilities.
