Call for Papers
Royal Anthropological Society Health, Environment, and AnThropology (HEAT) 2025
23 and 24 April 2025
Durham University, UK

Panel: Carcinogenesis, Toxicity and the Epidemic of Cancer

Nickolas Surawy-Stepney, Jennifer Fraser, Thandeka Cochrane & Shagufta Bhangu

King’s College London

The climatic and environmental changes brought about by the forces of industrialisation, capitalism, empire, and global ‘development’ are becoming increasingly visible. But vital too are changes wrought that are less visible – the chemical alterations induced in water, soil, air, crops, animal and human bodies that are having profound effects on health and wellbeing. Responsibility and consequences are distributed in deeply unequal ways (Choy 2016). In this panel we focus specifically on the carcinogenic effects of this toxicity. 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. Drawing on examples such as peanut production in Senegal (Tousignant 2022), open-pit mining in Spain (Fernández-Navarro et al., 2012), nuclear waste disposal in the USA (Cram 2023 & Masco 2021), and agricultural pesticide use in Kenya (Prince 2021), scholars have started to probe the connections between corporate and industrial interests and the ‘epidemic’ of cancer, in an effort to think through the relationship between the living and its milieu in novel ways (Canguilhem 2001). We invite papers that advance these analyses of ‘carcinogenic accountability’, and examine how risks of carcinogenic exposure are made visible and invisible, embraced and resisted, and studied. We are particularly interested in research which undertakes semiotic and material cultural analyses of the following concepts: ‘exposed’, ‘toxic’, ‘safe’, ‘carcinogenic’, and/or interrogate the ethical, epistemic, and regulatory conjunctures within which these categories operate.

To propose a paper please use the following link (Abstract Management), the call for papers ends Monday 13th January 2025. You do not have to be an RAI or ASA member to propose a paper.

Proposals should consist of:

• The title of the panel
• The title of the paper you wish to present
• An abstract of no more than 250 words.

Paper proposals must be submitted via the submission system and will be reviewed by panel convenors.

Feature Image: “Checking groundnuts” by CGIAR Climate is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.