The Biopolitics of Breast Cancer: Changing Cultures of Disease and Activism.

• Author: Dubriwny, Tasha N.

The Biopolitics of Breast Cancer: Changing Cultures of Disease and Activism. By Maren Klawiter. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008; pp. xxxi + 397. $25 paper.

In the current marketplace for cancer awareness, breast cancer is the leader. Despite Lance Armstrong's visibility as a testicular cancer "survivor," Katie Couric's televised colonoscopy (raising awareness about colorectal cancer), and the extensive list of celebrities and politicians who have revealed their battles with prostate cancer, nothing quite compares to the avalanche of pink ribbons, pink products, fundraisers, and races that peaks every October during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The visibility of breast cancer is the end result of a highly successful and multifaceted social movement. Maren Klawiter's The Biopolitics of Breast Cancer joins the ever-expanding scholarship on the breast cancer movement, and adds to this scholarship an insightful analysis of what Klawiter discusses as "cultures of action," or COAs. Simply put, Klawiter recognizes that there is a dearth of scholarship that pays attention to the diversity of motives, strategies, and goals of breast cancer activists. The dominant narrative spun about the breast cancer movement focuses on the development and advocacy of "mainstream" organizations (for example, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the National Breast Cancer Coalition) and Beltway politics. Klawiter's book, on the other hand, with its focus on the Bay Area and its three COAs, "represents an intervention in, and an alternative to, the standard account of the breast cancer movement and the standard models of social movements" (p. xxii). This statement points to the dual purpose of Biopolitics, for although the breast cancer movement is her primary focus, she also constructs a new approach for analyzing social movements.

The breadth of Klawiter's project is reflected in the organization of the book which includes an introduction, a first chapter that speaks specifically to the issue of social movement studies, three major sections about breast cancer (each with several chapters), a conclusion, and a methodological appendix. Following the introduction in which she situates herself as an activist and a researcher--one whose own interest in the breast cancer movement began in 1993 at a gay pride parade in San Francisco--and situates her book in relation to the standard narrative about breast cancer, she offers a first chapter that...