Camilo Sanz

I am an ethnographer of science and medicine. My work explores the relations between disease, capitalism, and socio-economic disparities, specifically in the contexts of Colombia and the United States.

My book Cancer Intersections (forthcoming, UC Press) is an ethnography about inequality in the access to standard oncology treatments under neoliberal conditions. Drawing on fieldwork in the city of Cali (2011-2013), this book discusses the deep entanglements between practices (medical, health insurance, judicial, public health policy), which have a common interest like curing or treating cancer, but which must prioritize financial interests. My book shows how social class dictates the rhythm at which patients access standard oncology treatments (chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery), and that even in resource-rich settings, patients suffer because of market imperatives that shape how cancer treatments ordinarily unfold.

Recently I began developing a collaborative project with scientists at the OU Stephenson Cancer Center. This project will be a bioethnography of chronic psycho-social stress, inflammation, and epigenetic changes in low-income populations in Oklahoma City. A bioethnography is an analytical method that goes beyond merely integrating culture into biology for a more detailed exploration of human health and the body. It aims to merge two distinct methodological approaches - ethnographic observation and biological sampling - into a unified, balanced analysis. This approach perceives the interactions between the environment and the body as consistently relational, dependent on specific circumstances, and as constructed events (Roberts and Sanz 2018).