The Cancer Within: Reproduction, Cultural Transformation, and Health Care in Romania (Medical Anthropology)

__The Cancer Within__ examines cervical cancer in Romania as a point of entry into an anthropological reflection on contemporary health care. Cervical cancer prevention reveals the inner workings of emerging post-communist medicine, which aligns the state and the market, public and private health care providers, policy makers, and ordinary women. Fashioned by patriarchal relations, lived religion, and the historical trauma of pronatalism, Romanian women’s responses to reproductive medicine and cervical cancer prevention are complicated by neoliberal reforms to medical care. Cervical cancer prevention – and especially the HPV vaccination – provided Romanians a legitimate instance to express their conflicting views of post-communist medicine. What sets Romania apart is that pronatalism, patriarchy, lived religion, medical reforms, and moral contestation of preventive medicine bring into line systemic contingencies that expose the historical, social, and cultural trajectories of cervical cancer. "The Cancer Within examines cervical cancer in Romania as a point of entry into an anthropological reflection on contemporary health care. Cervical cancer prevention reveals the inner workings of emerging post-communist medicine, which aligns the state and the market, public and private health care providers, policy makers, and ordinary women. Fashioned by patriarchal relations, lived religion, and the historical trauma of pronatalism, Romanian women's responses to reproductive medicine and cervical cancer prevention are complicated by neoliberal reforms to medical care. Cervical cancer prevention - and especially the HPV vaccination - provided Romanians a legitimate instance to express their conflicting views of post-communist medicine. What sets Romania apart is that pronatalism, patriarchy, lived religion, medical reforms, and moral contestation of preventive medicine bring into line systemic contingencies that expose the historical, social, and cultural trajectories of cervical cancer"-- Provided by publisher CONTENTS FOREWORD NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY INTRODUCTION. Systemic Contingencies Part 1 WOMEN’S, MEN’S, AND GOD’S WILL 1 “WE ALL DESCEND FROM COMMUNISM” 2 REPRODUCTIVE INVISIBILITY INTERLUDE Cervical Cancer Prevention: A Romanian Odyssey (Part 1) 3 BEYOND RATIONALITIES Part 2 MEDICINE AND ITS MORALITIES 4 DISMANTLING MEDICINE INTERLUDE Cervical Cancer Prevention: A Romanian Odyssey (Part 2) 5 THE OTHER HOSPITAL 6 LOCATING CORRUPTION CONCLUSION The Space between Informed and Non-Informed Refusal ACKNOWLEDGMENTS NOTES REFERENCES INDEX ABOUT THE AUTHOR