Disease Categories and Disease Kinships: Classification Practices in the U.S. Environmental Breast Cancer Movement

Abstract

U.S. breast cancer activists have increasingly focused their efforts on addressing environmental causes of the disease. These efforts have included raising public awareness about environmental risks, pushing for scientific research on environmental causes, and promoting more stringent environmental regulations. As part of this work, activists have consistently "classified" breast cancer within broader disease categories that shape how activists conceptualize and carry out their political agendas. In this paper I explore the role that three disease categories--women's health, cancer, and endocrine disruption--have played in the U.S. environmental breast cancer movement. In doing so, I also show how activists' classification practices are simultaneously "disease kinship" practices that are just as integral to the movement's efforts as are the disease categories to which they are bound. By examining the centrality of diseases classification and disease kinship practices to environmental breast cancer activism, my account demonstrates the potential benefits of conducting similar analyses of other health-based social movements.

The nation‐family: Intimate encounters and genealogical perversion in Armenia

“…But kinship may not necessarily involve procreation; it can also involve different relations of mutuality. Family, in other words, can be understood as a network of “chosen” friends who rely on one another (Weston ) or as people who feel belonging to one another through a shared experience, like disease (Ley ).…”

The Pivotal Role of the Social Sciences in Environmental Health Sciences Research

“…Social scientists promoted consideration of SDOH and put the development of this concept in context by noting the social movements that have influenced scientific understanding of disease risk and the research enterprise 16,17 This includes the broad social interest in literacy and increased opportunities for higher education in the United States since the 1950s, the empowerment movements that led to social acceptance of the role of the public to advocate for change 18,19 and the emergence of the Environmental Justice (EJ) movement. [20][21][22][23] Rachel Kahn Best, for example, noted the effectiveness of public input to shape health policies and the vastly increased research funding that the combined efforts of disease-specific organizations were able to achieve.…”

“…18 Barbara Ley had also identified disease classification as a potential means for repositioning disease advocacy for broader relevance. 19 The EJ movement also influenced the conduct and purpose of community-based research by expanding consideration of health disparities to include the policy implications of findings, particularly when findings confirmed the socioeconomic nature of disproportionate environmental exposures. Since the causes and effects of environmental injustices are so deeply embedded in the culture of communities and its economies, EJ research additionally required the full participation of affected groups.…”