When the politics of contextuality (can) subvert science: A case study of Australian women’s perceptions of alcohol consumption and breast cancer risk

Alcohol has a dose-response relationship with breast cancer risk, yet awareness about this link is low among Australian women. This chapter illuminates tensions women experience in evaluating information about alcohol and breast cancer, drawn from 122 interviews with 59 women aged 25-64 with variable drinking levels and social class. Three strands were derived of how women navigate risk information about alcohol and breast cancer: (1) high levels of specificity about the science linking alcohol to breast cancer are desired, which integrates information calibrated to specific lifestyle and bespoke genetic profiles; (2) uncertainties were identified in the complex processes of generating scientific evidence about the link and communicating it clearly; and (3) relative ambivalence regarding the value of (or possibility for) objectivity within experts and expertise. These three strands are theorised as a “politics of contextuality”, which weaves together uncertainties within the evidence and its communication with ignorance and nonknowledge - and effectively buffers against the usefulness of experts and expert-derived information. Rather than pejoratively using the word “ignorance” the affordances it provides in wading through the co-existing risks of contemporary life are attended to - in order to create space for imagining how “Expertise for a New World” could respond.