Who is not afraid of diseases? Fear of diseases seems to be something quite natural, not subject to historical change. But the way in which fear of diseases has or could have been told, has been judged, managed or used has changed dramatically over time. Focusing on cancer and aging, the research project investigates the relationship between feelings and notions of fear, bodily practices, health politics, health insurance and medical as well as pharmaceutical research from roughly the 1920s to the late 1980s. The focus is on Germany, taking transnational discussions and cooperations into account.
The project explores three main aspects:
How and when would people talk of cancer and aging? What notions of fear, if at all, were related and could be discerned?
How could one explain these changing patterns of “fear talk”? What part has to be assigned to altered notions of the self and the body, to the ever-increasing significance of the idea of prevention, to shifting medical, psychological and social assessments of anxiety?
How did these shifting notions of fear affect decision making in politics, medicine and economy?
