Being-in-the-World of the Sociological Imagination: Understanding Living with and Beyond Cancer

Abstract

In this chapter we bring together both C. Wright Mills' sociological and Martin Heidegger's philosophical ways of seeing the world, with the aim of exploring the lived experience of people living with and beyond cancer (PLWBCs). It is important to note at the outset that this chapter is not about dying, or palliative care, but about the meanings created in the face of a cancer diagnosis, with its concomitant possibilities for death. People living with and beyond cancer were once referred to as survivors- and considered the lucky- ones, in that they escaped death. What often goes unrecognized are the losses, which need to be grieved, yet are often rendered invisible in everyday life and everyday discourses of remission and survival.