Cancer and Territory. A Journey through the Continuities and Spatial Discontinuities Projected by this Non-human Actor

The present article focuses on unveiling the relationship between cancer and territory. This relationship arises in the understanding of how cancer, as a non-human social actor, affects the territorial construction of spaces in daily life from its conception and connotation to its manage­ment and use of space. We worked with ten cancer patients and ten specialists from an Oncology Unit, Oncólogos de Occidente, located in the coffee axis. We used a qualitative methodological strategy based on a phenomenological study that focuses on revealing the practices and dis­courses that objectify the new territorial configurations. Among the main findings is how the relationship between cancer and territory entails a novel perspective for contemporary territorial studies, which allows understanding territory as a social and cultural construction of the social actors that is not only gestated to the measure and signification of humans. Also, the territory is tailored by the non-human actors who come into dispute and in constriction with the very dynamics that facilitate the configuration and ordination of an appropriate space.