Dissertation Research: The Governance of 'Difference': Constructions of Race, Class, and Gender in Accounts of Cardiovascular Risk

University Of California-San Francisco, San Francisco CA

Investigators

Abstract

This dissertation improvement grant is a multi-sited ethnography of the constructions of race, social class, and gender in epidemiologic and experiential accounts of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risks and causes. Data collection methods include participant observation at scientific meetings, interviews with cardiovascular epidemiologists, and interviews with persons of color living with CVD. This project explores how ideas about racial, class, and gender differences are conceptualized and stabilized in epidemiologic knowledge production. How epidemiologists manage and navigate disputes over the inclusion, measurement, and interpretation of race, class, and gender, and sustain the validity of their work in the face of such controversies are examined. This research also analyzes how individuals living with CVD understand, take up, and/or reconstruct epidemiologic knowledge about racial, class, and gender differences in risk. The influence of people's social contexts and relationships with biomedical institutions on responses to and renegotiation of scientific claims are important here. Finally, this project examines how epidemiologic and experiential definitions of race, class, and gender shape what we know about the causes of CVD inequalities, and participate in processes of racial, class, and gender formation.