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.