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How Users Configure Producer Identities
The challenges in dealing with retinoblastoma, a cancer of the eye affecting little children, are multiple and interrelated, involving medical, technological, economic and social factors. This article explores their interrelatedness, through a narrative anchored around the work and experience of two tertiary eye care hospitals in India. It seeks to illustrate that users not only influence care-providers, they can play a key role in forging producer identities. The girl child who comes to the clinic with the tumour is representative of many users. In responding to different complexities, the clinician emerges as an entity with multiple identities— as a “clinician–scientist–social activist.”
This article is a modifi ed version of the case study that appears in the author’s PhD dissertation, “Enculturing Nanotechnology: Indian Engagements with Nanotechnology,” research for which was carried out at the faculty of arts and social sciences, Maastricht University, the Netherlands.
The author would like to thank all the respondents who willingly and patiently engaged with him during the course of his research. He would also like to thank his PhD supervisors, Wiebe Bijker, Aalok Khandekar and Ranga Zeiss for their guidance and support through the research and writing of the thesis. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewer for their comments and suggestions.
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