Skip to main content
Cancer and the Kali Yuga: Gender, Inequality, and Health in South India
As news spread that more women died from breast and cervical cancer in India than anywhere else in the world in the early twenty-first century, global public health planners accelerated efforts to prevent, screen, and treat these reproductive cancers in low-income Indian communities. Cancer and the Kali Yuga reveals that women who are the targets of these interventions in Tamil Nadu, South India, hold views about cancer causality, late diagnosis, and challenges to accessing treatment that differ from the public health discourse. Cecilia Coale Van Hollen's critical feminist ethnography centers and amplifies the voices of Dalit Tamil women who situate cancer within the nexus of their class, caste, and gender positions. Dalit women's narratives about their experiences with cancer present a powerful and poignant critique of the sociocultural and political-economic conditions that marginalize them and jeopardize their health and well-being in twenty-first-century India.
Author/Editor
Cecilia Coale Van Hollen
Publisher
University of California Press
ISBN
9780520386532
Publication date
1 Jan 2022 – 30 Nov 2022
Specialisation
Social Sciences
Theme
Urban / Rural
Society
Health and Medicine
Gender and Identity
Region
India