Documents University of Minnesota Press 2 results

"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."

"Social life, conducted within economic, political, and cultural boundaries, is fundamentally spatial. Adopting an explicitly geographical perspective, this volume demonstrates that labor unionism, no less than any other social practice, is spatial in nature as well.

These essays take up two primary questions: What is the relationship between workers' and unions' social practices and the making of the geography of capitalism? And, how does spatial sensitivity contribute to an understanding of workers' and unions' social behavior? The authors address these questions from a wide range of geographical scales, from the very local to the truly global, and in a variety of contexts including 1920s California, 1930s Massachusetts, 1940s Japan, and contemporary Eastern Europe. An essay by editor Andrew Herod offers a comprehensive review of work done in geography relating to the spatiality of labor unionism."