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Framing as a cultural resource in health social movements: funding activism and the breast cancer movement in the US 1990–1993
Author(s) -
Kolker Emily S.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/j.0141-9889.2004.00420.x
Subject(s) - framing (construction) , social movement , political science , breast cancer , movement (music) , sociology , public relations , public administration , medicine , cancer , law , politics , history , archaeology , philosophy , aesthetics
Disease‐specific funding activism in the US has required health social movements (HSMs) to draw on both structural and cultural resources in order to persuade audiences and to redefine dominant conceptions of disease. Using a social constructionist analysis of Congressional testimony and media accounts of breast cancer funding activism between 1990–1993, this paper demonstrates that the use of culturally resonant frames served as an important cultural resource for breast cancer activists in the early 1990s. The breast cancer movement's use of three interconnected and culturally resonant frames aided the movement in redefining breast cancer as a problem of individual women to a major public health problem in need of governmental attention. This research contributes to both social movement and HSM scholarship by demonstrating that cultural resources, in the form of movement frames, are as central to social movement analysis as structural resources.