"There is evidence that religion and spirituality affect psychosocial adjustment to cancer. However, little is known about the perceptions and meanings of religion and spirituality among Black and minority ethnic groups living with cancer in the UK. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 Black Caribbean and 19 White British patients living in South London boroughs with advanced cancer to explore how religion and spirituality influenced their self-reported cancer experience. Twenty-five Black Caribbean patients and 13/19 White British patients volunteered views on the place of religion or God in their life. Spirituality was rarely mentioned." (authors)
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
225 p., Whitmarsh describes how he followed a team of genetic researchers to Barbados, where he did fieldwork among not only the researchers but also government officials, medical professionals, and the families being tested. Whitmarsh reveals how state officials and medical professionals make the international biomedical research part of state care, bundling together categories of disease populations, biological race, and asthma. He points to state and industry perceptions of mothers as medical caretakers in genetic research that proves to be inextricable from contested practices around nation, race, and family.
The islanders express a rather clear distinction between diseases which are best handled by modern “Western” medicines, those more treatable by traditional medical practices, and cases where both approaches are applicable. Communication across the different medical spheres has been facilitated by the influence of radio and T.V. and the ‘recent proliferation of “Western” patent and prescription medications. The acculturative effects of radio and T.V. are well illustrated by La Flamme’s study of another Bahamian “out-island”. (Source: Robert A. Halberstein and John E. Davies, "Changing patterns of health and health care on a small Bahamian island," Social Science & Medicine. Part B: Medical Anthropology, April 1979 13, no. 2: 153-167)
