Hiding Politics in Plain Sight: Cause Marketing, Corporate Influence, and Breast Cancer Policymaking

by Patricia Strach

Overview

As late as the 1980s, breast cancer was a stigmatized disease, so much so that local reporters avoided using the word "breast" in their stories and early breast cancer organizations steered clear of it in their names. But activists with business backgrounds began to partner with corporations for sponsored runs and cause-marketing products, from which a portion of the proceeds would benefit breast cancer research. Branding breast cancer as "pink"--hopeful, positive, uncontroversial--on the products Americans see every day, these activists and corporations generated a pervasive understanding of breast cancer that is widely shared by the public and embraced by policymakers. Clearly, they have been successful: today, more Americans know that the pink ribbon is the symbol of breast cancer than know the name of the vice president. Hiding Politics in Plain Sight examines the costs of employing market mechanisms--especially cause marketing--as a strategy for change. Patricia Strach suggests that market mechanisms do more than raise awareness of issues or money to support charities: they also affect politics. She shows that market mechanisms, like corporate-sponsored walks or cause-marketing, shift issue definition away from the contentious processes in the political sphere to the market, where advertising campaigns portray complex issues along a single dimension with a simple solution: breast cancer research will find a cure and Americans can participate easily by purchasing specially-marked products. This market competition privileges even more specialized actors with connections to business. As well, cooperative market activism fundamentally alters the public sphere by importing processes, values, and biases of market-based action into politics. Market activism does not just bring social concerns into market transactions, it also brings market biases into public policymaking, which is inherently undemocratic. As a result, industry and key activists work cooperatively rather than contentiously, and they define issues as consensual rather than controversial, essentially hiding politics in plain sight.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190606879
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	08/18/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Patricia Strach has a dual appointment as Associate Professor in the Departments of Political Science and Public Administration and Policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Foundations: Cause Marketing, Breast Cancer, and Framing in America Chapter 3 Cooperative Market Mechanisms Chapter 4 Telling Stories Chapter 5 Effects Chapter 6 Defining Issues: Breast Cancer and the Creation of Consensus Politics Chapter 7 Hiding Politics in Plain Sight Appendix A Model Details for Chapter 3 Appendix B Regression Results for Chapter 5 Appendix C Notes on Methodology and Sources Appendix D Citizen Consumer Survey Notes References Index

Editorial Reviews

"Patricia Strach has given us a new lens through which to see some of the more subtle but most powerful elements of corporate influence: framing complex issues as simple, deathly ones as hopeful and optimistic, and conflictual ones as simply not worth worrying about." — Perspectives on Politics

"Strach's timely and meticulously researched book tracks the way cause marketing has reshaped political life in America. It is a compelling and, at times, startling book that both scholars and citizens will want to read to understand democratic life in the twenty-first century."
—Hahrie Han, University of California at Santa Barbara, author of How Organizations Develop Activists

"We usually think of cause marketing campaigns as win-win efforts that benefit the bottom lines of both popular charities and major corporations. Yet Strach's compelling and groundbreaking book makes clear that pink ribbons and checkout-charities have a way of depoliticizing issues and individualizing their solutions, with major consequences for society and politics. This book will influence students of politics, social movements, management, and health policy for years to come."
—Edward Walker, University of California, Los Angeles

"Hiding Politics in Plain Sight explores what happens when contentious politics are usurped by market mechanisms and the illusion of consensus. Focusing on the 'pinking' of breast cancer, Patricia Strach illuminates the ways in which activists with corporate backgrounds raised awareness about a previously taboo illness but did so by framing it in ways that led the public to view it through depoliticized, non-feminist, and pink-tinted happy glasses. In so doing, this book illuminates a crucial-and until now under-appreciated-route through which private industry shapes politics and policy."
—Dara Strolovitch, Princeton University, author of Affirmative Advocacy: Race, Class, and Gender in Interest Group Politics

"This book is an extremely worthwhile contribution to our understanding of the relationship between activists, politics, and the market. I applaud Strach for studying a type of activism that is too often ignored by social movement scholars and forcing us to think critically about its ability to achieve meaningful outcomes."
—Mobilization

From the Publisher

09/01/2016
Reporting for the New York Times last year (ow.ly/r2FE302p8f1), Gina Kolata noted that some groups fighting breast cancer eschew what has come to be called "pinkification" or "pinkwashing"—there's enough awareness, they say; it's time for action. Strach (political science & public administration & policy, SUNY Albany; former Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research, Harvard Univ.), however, argues that marches and other kinds of "cause marketing" do more than raise awareness: they're a strong force for policy change and have helped alleviate the stigma surrounding the disease. Strach's work is "something different" to add to the shelves of business and marketing programs and will be informative to political-leaning cancer patients, too.

Library Journal