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Breast Cancer: Society Shapes an Epidemic provides an innovative look at the social and political contexts of breast cancer and examines how this illness has become a social problem. This is not a book about breast cancer as a biological disease, its diagnosis and treatment, or the latest research to cure it. Rather, it looks at how economics, politics, gender, social class, and race-ethnicity have deeply influenced the science behind breast cancer research, spurred the growth of a breast cancer industry, generated media portrayals of women with the disease, and defined and influenced women s experiences with breast cancer. The contributors address the social construction of breast cancer as an illness and as an area of scientific controversy, advocacy, and public policy. Chapters on the history of breast cancer, the health care system, the environment, and the marketing of breast cancer, among others, tease apart the complex social forces that have shaped our collective and individual responses to breast cancer.
List of contents
Introduction - living with breast cancer, S.J. Ferguson, A.S. Kasper. Part I Breast cancer - the historical context: inventing a curable disease - historical perspectives on breast cancer, B.H. Lerner; deformities and diseased - the medicalization of women's breasts, S.J. Ferguson. Part II Breast cancer as a social problem: the economics of breast cancer - breast cancer and the evolving health care system, E.R. Shaffer; profits from pain - the political economy of breast cancer, J.S. Zones; Women, their bodies, and the illness experience - women's experience of breast cancer, M.E. Rosenbaum, G.M Roos; barriers and burdens - poor women face breast cancer, A.S. Kasper; the politics of breast cancer - breast cancer policymaking, C.S. Weisman; controversies in breast cancer research, S.V. Rosser; the environmental link to breast cancer, S. Steingraber. Part III Breast cancer and social change: breast cancer in popular women's magazines from 1913-1996, J.R. Fosket, C.LaFie, A. Karran; sister support - women create a breast cancer movement, B.A. Brenner. Conclusion: eliminating breast cancer from our future, A.S. Kasper, S.J. Ferguson.
About the author
ANNE S. KASPER is Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
SUSAN J. FERGUSON is Associate Professor of Sociology at Grinnell College.
Summary
Breast Cancer: Society Shapes an Epidemic provides an innovative look at the social and political contexts of breast cancer and examines how this illness has become a social problem.
Report
"A refreshing addition to the literature of breast cancer, this book contends that it is societal change as much as anything that will lead to better treatment and prevention of breast cancer" - Publishers Weekly
"This is not the first book to bring a feminist, social analysis to the issue of breast cancer and the activism it has inspired. It is, however, one of the best..." - Women's Review of Books
"...a trenchant analysis of the social, economic, and political dimensions of breast cancer..." - New England Journal of Medicine
...a very good book... writing is accessible, individual chapters are clear and pointed, and the book succeeds...
-Contemporary Sociology
