Cancer and imputed infection: Images of ‘the disease’ among patients' relatives

A description of the social construction of cancer is offered from the cancer patient's relatives' point of view, focusing on the linkage made between contamination and cancer. The ethnography brings together four detailed observations of cancer patients found in a transient stage of remission, who are perceived by their relatives as paradoxically being at one and the same time very good‐looking and also very sick. A semiotic explanation to the phenomenon of imputed infection with regard to cancer patients of ‘doubtful appearance’ is discussed, arguing that such imputation can be seen as one of several mechanisms intended to force the disease ‘into the open’ and thus re‐align the lost congruence between internal and external. 1995 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review