Paper short abstract:

Based on research in Jordan, this paper examines how the chronicity of cancer intersects with forms of social affliction. It thinks through the concept of prognosis to explore how the designation of cancer as an epidemic transforms the body into a tool of care provisioning.

Paper long abstract:

After documenting hundreds of new cancer cases among recently arrived refugees in Jordan in May 2014, the Deputy Director of the UNHCR, lamented that, "we can treat everyone with measles, but we can't treat everyone with cancer. We have to turn away cancer patients with poor prognoses because caring for them is too expensive." At a moment when global health experts have declared cancer to be an emerging "epidemic" in the Middle East, governments across the region are revising national cancer control plans to mitigate the anticipated impact of increasing cancer incidence rates to diverse populations with differential access to health services. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Jordan, this paper examines how the chronicity of cancer unravels the logic of crisis that underwrites global health interventions. Taking the concept of "prognosis" as an analytical provocation, it asks how the recent designation of cancer as an "epidemic" transforms the body into a tool of care provisioning?