Talk about cancer: environment and health in Oceanpoint.
Based on an ethnographic study, this paper explores one Australian community's 'popular epidemiology' of the role of the environment on health. Residents express concern about cancer risks due to contamination from a land-fill dump site and from radioactivity from previous mining activities. These concerns carry a range of meanings, not only regarding the threats to the physical place of Oceanpoint, but the social space the community occupies and the values they espouse. The perceptions of health risks in this location involve a contest over the cultural politics of place, the political economy of development and the sense of a former authentic 'community' that is being lost and disempowered from controlling its future.
Whittaker
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Gender Relations Project, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, ACT, Australia. andrea.whittaker@coombs.anu.edu.au
D001315:Australia; D004781:Environmental Exposure / Q000009:adverse effects*; D004787:Environmental Pollution / Q000009:adverse effects*; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000209:etiology*; D011639:Public Opinion; D012307:Risk Factors