The politics of breast cancer: Discursive practices in the making of two breast cancer *policies
Abstract
This dissertation proposed that by examining the process of policy making, a process that is made of language (Majone 1989), insight could be gained into how policy makers construct the problem of breast cancer and create “appropriate” responses to this problem. In an effort to better explain policy outcomes, this research investigates the language of policy makers to uncover how breast cancer was determined to be a problem with political status, how the problem was then defined so that something could be done about it, and how solutions to this problem were legitimized and justified. To answer these questions, the relationships between the discursive practices, the narratives they created, and the policy outcomes of two public laws that were specifically designed in response to “the problem with breast cancer” were analyzed. This research uncovers and illustrates the discursive practices that were embedded in these policy making processes in an attempt to reveal the narratives or the particular understandings policy makers had of the problem. As a result, this research fills a void in policy research because it empirically examines the discursive practices of policy makers and links those practices to legislative outcomes. The narratives of policy makers depicted breast cancer as a problem that could be solved by the provision of mammography screening to under-served, high-risk populations of women and by guaranteeing the reliability and quality of screenings for all women. While the problem of breast cancer was broadly defined, the solutions were narrow in scope. Moreover, this research reveals that the solutions to the problem were not universally supported by all the policy makers who participated in the process. By exposing the discourse of policy makers and linking that discourse to the policy outcomes, we are in a better position to understand why, given the multitude of definitions of the problem of breast cancer, the resulting policies focused on the provision and reliability of mammography.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Shaffer, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Political science|Oncology
Off-Campus Purdue Users:
To access this dissertation, please log in to our
proxy server.