Navigating gender performance: Ethics and culture in researching family care for cancer patients in GHANA

In 2005, having been a post-graduate Research Assistant for three years, I conceived a research idea to do an ethnographic study on family care for patients diagnosed of cancer and other chronic non-communicable diseases. This became my doctoral research, entitled Care for the chronically sick within Ga families: A study of modern innovations and traditional practices. The main goal of the study was to examine how the chronically sick were cared for within Ga families, with respect to rapid changes in Ghanaian family cultures of survival and care. The context of the study was constructed around the increasing incidence of chronic non-communicable diseases in Ghana and the marginal interest of the formal health sector in chronic non-communicable diseases at the time (Agyei-Mensah and de-Graft Aikins 2010; Atobrah 2009). Although there was a high spate of globalisation, there were almost no institutions in Ghana to provide non-medical care for chronically ill patients (Atobrah 2009). The family remained the main repository of such care despite notable changes in family traditions of care and survival in general. Engaging the theories of symbolic interactionism, social construction of reality and the sociology of emotions as analytical frameworks, my overarching goal was to investigate, through ethnography, how families conceptualised, innovated, rationalised and managed care for the chronically sick, analysing changes in Ga family cultures of care for the chronically sick.