Introduction: Breast cancer and the perils of health literacy

Abstract

Breast cancer impacts society at different levels and in different ways. It is an illness and as such it is of interest to scientists, policy makers and women at risk or already ill. In addition, the impact of breast cancer on large numbers of women in many Western societies and on patient activism has made the disease a matter of education, public discourse and debate. In breast cancer many discourses and types of social practices converge, but there is a limited subset that gives character to breast cancer as a social phenomenon: this includes media practices and representations, health campaigns, women’s activism and policy debates regarding medical research and treatment. The present collection of essays addresses breast cancer as a social and educational phenomenon impacted by specialized debates on knowledge, science and education and the more general discourses of gender, illness and health that define it socially, politically and personally. The editors believe that the relationship between specialized debates and general discourses on breast cancer constitutes a dual pedagogy aimed at educating medical and science practitioners regarding the social and personal impact of the illness and at educating women on how to avoid the illness and, if that fails, on how to be a proper breast cancer sufferer. Such a dual pedagogy, and the sometimes contradictory discursive spaces it generates, gives meaning to the activities associated with treatment and research as well as the experiences of women at risk or ill. Regarding breast cancer, discourse and science are never far apart. Evidence of this close relationship is found in the correspondence between treatment and the metaphors used to describe the illness. For instance, in the first half of the twentieth century, and as Jennifer Petersen shows, conceptualizing the illness as infection was also understanding it as invasion: war metaphors pervaded the educational campaigns