John Mullee

Preliminary abstract: This project investigates the administration of cancer-care in São Paulo, Brazil. It pursues the question: in a society with a robust biomedical tradition, how does the administration of biomedicine as ‘healthcare’ become itself a key object of concern? In the context of an intensifying shift from infectious to chronic disease interventions in local public health, the project explores the ways that an emerging cancer ‘epidemic’ challenges existing practices and values in healthcare administration. Key among these values are the concepts of ‘integration’ and ‘delivery’ of healthcare. To understand how these values are and are not achieved in practice, as well as how cancer in particular is perceived to undermine the public healthcare system, the project attends ethnographically to patient and clinician trajectories through the healthcare system.