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Breast Cancer Meanings
Journeys Across Asia
Cynthia Chou and Miriam Koktvedgaard Zeitzen (eds)
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304 pp., illustrations NIAS Studies in Asian Topics # 63 Available worldwide except Asia and Australasia |
• Offers compelling narratives and analysis on the breast cancer epidemic sweeping Asia.
• Explores the spectrum of breast cancer meanings in Asia to provide a nuanced picture of the disease and its effects.
• Focuses on how cultural and social relations shape the medical response to the disease.
Breast cancer is now the most common cancer among women in most Asian countries. Many lives are at stake. Even in places where state-of-the-art medical services are available, thousands of women in Asia are dying of the disease largely due to late presentation compared to women in most Western countries. While much progress has been made in Western medical science to treat breast cancer, it appears that there are significant socio-cultural considerations and contexts in Asia that limit the efficacy of Western-based health-care methods.
This volume presents conversations across Asia with breast cancer patients, their caregivers, doctors, traditional healers as well as just ordinary men and women – all on the subject of breast cancer meanings. Through the stories as told by local peoples in Asia about how they think and talk about breast cancer, as well as how they respond to the disease, insights on breast cancer meanings emerge. These offer new under-standings into how local contexts shape those meanings and life courses – and hopefully will help medical practitioners devise new strategies to combat the disease.
Press news
- Feb. 29 2016
After a year of 48-hour days and frantic juggling, first copies of the printed volume of End of Empire: 100 Days in 1945 that Changed Asia and the World, edited by David P. Chandler, Robert Cribb and Li Narangoa, finally reached the NIAS Press office this morning.
