Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy [Hardcover]

Samantha King (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 22, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0816648980 | ISBN-13: 978-0816648986 | Edition: 1

In 2005, more than one million people participated in the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s Race for the Cure, the largest network of 5K runs in the world. Consumers thoughtfully choose products ranging from yogurt to cars, responding to the promise that these purchases will contribute to a cure for the disease. And hundreds of companies and organizations support Breast Cancer Awareness Month, founded by a pharmaceutical company in 1985 and now recognized annually by the president of the United States. What could be wrong with that? In Pink Ribbons, Inc., Samantha King traces how breast cancer has been transformed from a stigmatized disease and individual tragedy to a market-driven industry of survivorship. In an unprecedented outpouring of philanthropy, corporations turn their formidable promotion machines on the curing of the disease while dwarfing public health prevention efforts and stifling the calls for investigation into why and how breast cancer affects such a vast number of people. Here, for the first time, King questions the effectiveness and legitimacy of privately funded efforts to stop the epidemic among American women. Pink Ribbons, Inc. grapples with issues of gender and race in breast cancer campaigns of businesses such as the National Football League; recounts the legislative history behind the breast cancer awareness postage stamp—the first stamp in American history to raise funds for use outside the U.S. Postal Service; and reveals the cultural impact of activity-based fund-raising, such as the Race for the Cure. Throughout, King probes the profound implications of consumer-oriented philanthropy on how patients experience breast cancer, the research of the biomedical community, and the political and medical institutions that the breast cancer movement seeks to change. Highly revelatory—at times shocking—Pink Ribbons, Inc. challenges the commercialization of the breast cancer movement, its place in U.S. culture, and its influence on ideas of good citizenship, responsible consumption, and generosity. Samantha King is associate professor of physical and health education and women’s studies at Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The pink ribbon has come to symbolize efforts to find a cure for breast cancer. But it has also become a powerful symbol for corporate philanthropy, boosting the image of corporations, that promote products from yogurt to cars, slicing off a portion of proceeds to support breast cancer research. King, a women's health issues scholar, explores the phenomenal growth of Pink Ribbons Inc.; the annual massing for the Susan G. Komen Foundation's Race for the Cure 5K runs; and other high-profile events with huge corporate sponsorships. However admirable the effort to find a cure, King argues that it overwhelms efforts to learn how and why women get breast cancer and how it can be prevented. Prevention efforts could help more low-income women who lack the means to pay for treatment. King examines the history of philanthropy and how breast cancer became such a prominent cause, garnering far more support and publicity than other diseases, demonstrating the ability of American women to flex their political and economic muscle on behalf of an important cause. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press; 1 edition (August 22, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816648980
• ISBN-13: 978-0816648986
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #666,201 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent academic overview of current breast cancer funding, December 6, 2007

By 

M. Jaye - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy (Hardcover)

Pink Ribbons, Inc. is an excellent overview of breast cancer philanthrophy's relationship to breast cancer research politics. As an epidemiology graduate student, most of the people I know with criticisms of current breast cancer research agendas are medical researchers. This book gave me valuable insights into why we have such a difficult time obtaining grants to research the correlation between environmental toxins and breast cancer.

However, because it appears to be written for academics who specialize in breast cancer history, it glosses over the social and political context that these changes are occurring in. Anyone interested in this book should read Barron H. Lerner's The Breast Cancer Wars: Hope, Fear, and the Pursuit of a Cure in Twentieth-Century America or Robert Aronowitz's Unnatural History: Breast Cancer and American Society (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine) before reading this.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Now a documentary film premiered at Toronto Film Festival 2011, October 1, 2011

By 

M - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy (Hardcover)

This documentary, based on Samantha King's Pink Ribbons Inc., was produced by Ravida Din, directed by Lea Pool, and written by Patricia Kearns, Nancy Guerin, Pool. Readers can look up more specifics. The reviews are excellent for this National Film Board of Canada release.

I've had King's excellent book for years, and yet I am surprised that I never got around to writing a review here, but attribute that omission to constantly referencing the book in the many articles, letters to editors, legislators, businesses, medical organizations, "pink" organizations, etc., I have sent in an attempt to remove the pink fog from the horrendous status of care for breast health and breast diseases.

I firmly believe that what King presents effects every single aspect of the care, or lack of care, women receive, as the more "pink," "feel-good," "infantilization," and all the rest of it that is allowed to numb and dumb. I grant that a small percentage of men get breast cancer, but I will not diminish the fact of gender-based disease by using the ubquitious, "people" when talking about breast cancer).

The big "K" has it's registered trademark. I thought of a new one today -- just popped into my mind after seeing a comic strip, no less, that was all about "pink." Caveat -- it's black humor. Here it is:
"Breast cancer for women, not for profit."

As to King's book being too academic - any woman who has had to deal with breast anomalies - learns so much about medicine, and the politics of medicine, than she might well be granted an honorary degree. And, having a very average brain, assure everyone that her writings, and the message, were crystal clear to me.

I hope the documentary receives a wide, and accessible release, because film has such power, and between King's work, (and the work of others), and film itself, I pray - I really pray -- that the public will be motivated to abandon pink profiteering, and focus on what exactly happens to women who have concerns about their breasts, the scattershot approach to care that they receive, especially if faced with unclear results, or absence of cancer -- that's poorly expressed - women who enter the cancer-system, and ultimately learns that she has a non-cancerous condition, is utterly abandoned. That's the next book I want to see written.

12 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Off on too many tangents, January 12, 2010

By 

Cari B. Clark "Cari Clark" (Northern VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy (Paperback)

King's premise is good: Where is all the money going when we consumers virtuously buy a box of crackers of a carton of yogurt decorated with a pink ribbon? Having experienced breast cancer, I am sick and tired of seeing pink ribbons everywhere I look, and have become cynical about the plethora of alleged research that's being funded right and left. Like King, I doubt that a cure is possible--there are too many factors contributing to the disease and too many different bodies experiencing it. The best we can hope for is to mitigate the causes and find more effective treatment.

King rightly points out that hopping on the "cure breast cancer!" bandwagon is just another marketing tool for companies hoping to enhance their images in the public's eyes. For example, she exposes that one would need to eat three cartons of yogurt every day for four months in order for the little lids to amount to a trifling $36. Skip the calories and send your money to your nearest research facility: that's much more effective.

But King gets caught up in a scholarly wordiness that is hard to plow through. She also spends too much verbiage criticizing the big, bad businesses that are hiding behind the pink ribbons. She feels government should "mitigate the effects of capitalism" by offering universal health care and offering more assistance to "underserved" populations. The book turns into a treatise on social policy and this angle dilutes her message. And I wonder if King realizes that the money for social programs must come from somewhere. She doesn't seem to understand that businesses pay a lot of taxes and employ people, who in turn pay taxes too, and that government has no income except those taxes!

This book needed some serious editing and cutting to make it more accessible to the general reader. But then it would only have been an article.