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.

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9780190606848

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Reviews

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 <em>How Organizations Develop Activists</em> 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 <em>Hiding Politics in Plain Sight</em> 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 <em>Affirmative Advocacy: Race, Class, and Gender in Interest Group Politics</em>

Author Information

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.

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