Better (Red)™ than Dead? Celebrities, consumption and international aid

Abstract

Bono's launch of Product (red)™ at Davos in 2006 opens a new frontier for development aid. With the engagement of companies such as American Express, Converse, Gap and Emporio Armani, and now Hallmark, Dell and Microsoft, consumers can help hiv/aids patients in Africa. Aid celebrities—Bono, Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Farmer—guarantee the ‘cool quotient’, the management and the target of this new modality of aid. red functions using the guarantee of celebrity together with the negotiated representation of a distant ‘Africa’ to meet competing, and perhaps incommensurable, objectives. A ‘rock man's burden'—imagined along familiar constructions of sex, gender, race and place—frames African beneficiaries' receiving process. At the same time, red depicts consumer-citizens as fashion-conscious yet actively engaged and ethically reflexive. red rescues international aid from its dour predictive graphs and disappointing ‘lessons learnt’ and spins it as young, chic and possible. By masking the social and environmental relations of trade and production that underpin poverty, inequality and disease, red reconfigures the world of possibility in what might otherwise be rationally impossible ways.

Notes

The authors would like to thank Rita Abrahamsen, Graham Harrison and James Pletcher for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. The latter are in no way responsible for its content, and as always all shortcomings are attributable solely to the authors.

1 Official red website, at http://www.joinred.com.

2 ‘The business of hiv/aids’, Lancet, 368 (5), 2006, p 423.

3 World Bank, Strengthening Implementation of Corporate Social Responsibility in Global Supply Chains, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003.

4 L Boltanski & E Chiapello, Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme, Paris: Gallimard, 1999.

5 Global Fund, press release, 26 January 2006, at http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/media_center/press/pr_060126.asp.

6 However, red may be less attributable to celebrity genius and more to advanced international fundraising strategies. The Global Fund's marketing and media campaign, which began in 2004, includes ‘co-branded product tie-ins’ as part of a priority of ‘engaging consumer audiences in key donor markets’. See http://www.theglobalfund.org.

7 ‘View from Davos: Bono marketing his red badge of virtue’, Daily Telegraph, 27 January 2006.

8 ‘Bono bets on Red to battle Aids’, bbc News, 26 January 2006, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4650024.stm.

9 ‘View from Davos’.

10 Consumers can use the red‘impact calculator’ on the product website to generate the possible impact of their purchases on combating hiv/aids in Africa. Seeing, for example, that the purchase of one red t-shirt generates enough money to cover the cost of a single dose of nevirapine to prevent mother-to-child transmission of hiv creates the perception of tangible impact. It is not our intention in this article to measure and adjudicate whether red has a net positive impact on aids in Africa. We forgo such an evaluation on the basis that, at this stage, it would reflect more ideology than empirical argumentation. In the popular media criticisms of red for having a limited impact on aids in Africa, given its great expenditure in product marketing, such as ‘Costly red campaign reaps meager $18 million’, Advertising Age, 4 March 2007, have been quickly and skilfully rebutted by red supporters. See ‘The big question: does the Red campaign help big Western brands more than Africa?’, Independent, 9 March 2007; and Bobby Shriver's rebuttal, at http://www.joinred.com/archive/adage, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4650024.stm. ‘View from Davos’. The red argumentation rests on the premise that the initiative mobilises a previously untapped constituency to contribute to aid for aids. Marketing money would have been spent anyway by major corporations. Thus, any contribution made by red is better than the contribution that would have been made without it—nothing. But, as we noted, corporate social responsibility is increasingly popular, and there is no reason why one can assume that red budgets would not have been invested by these companies in other ethically oriented initiatives. One can not take for granted that consumers’red choices simply replace their previously ‘unethical’ ones, thus leading to a more positive outcome. However, we can observe that the framing of the impact of red as measurable and concrete (comparable only to nothing at all), is part of the construction of the initiative itself.

11 In March 2002 171 nations pledged their commitment to funding international development at the UN's international conference on financing for development.

12 World Bank, Supporting Sound Policies with Adequate and Appropriate Financing, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003, p 2.

13 UN General Assembly, A/55/L.2, New York, 18 September 2000.

14 SJ Haakonsson & LA Richey, ‘trips and public health: the Doha Declaration and Africa’, Development Policy Review, 25 (1), 2007, pp 71–90.

15 A de Janvry & E Sadoulet, ‘Beyond Bono: making foreign aid more efficient’, University of California at Berkeley working paper, 2004.

16 MP Goldstein & TJ Moss, ‘Compassionate conservatives or conservative compassionates? US political parties and bilateral foreign assistance to Africa’, Journal of Development Studies, 41 (7), 2005, pp 1288–1302, p 1300.

17 M Mandelbaum, ‘Foreign policy as social work’, Foreign Affairs, January–February 1996.

18 HP Van Dalen & M Reuser, Assessing Size and Structure of Worldwide Funds for Population and aids Activities, The Hague: Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, 2005, p 36.

19 L MacKellar, ‘Priorities in global assistance for health, aids, and population’, Population and Development Review, 31 (2), 2005, pp 293–312.

20 Ibid, p 301. The disease burden of hiv/aids is 84.5 million compared to lower respiratory infections at 91.3 million. There is also an extensive overlap between diseases occurring in developing countries. See P Hotez, DH Molyneux, A Fenwick, E Ottesen, S Ehrich Sachs & JD Sachs, ‘Incorporating a rapid-impact package for neglected tropical diseases with programs for hiv/aids, tuberculosis, and malaria’, PLoS Medicine, 3 (5), 2005, pp 1–9. Earlier analyses of co-infections of tropical diseases and hiv include E Stillwaggon, ‘hiv/aids in Africa: fertile terrain’, Journal of Development Studies, 38 (6), 2002, pp 1–22; and G Harms & H Feldmeier, ‘Review: hiv infection and tropical parasitic diseases—deleterious interactions in both directions?’, Tropical Medicine & International Health, 7 (6), 2002, pp 479–488.

21 Goldstein & Moss, ‘Compassionate conservatives or conservative compassionates?’, p 1289.

22 De Janvry & Sadoulet, ‘Beyond Bono’.

23 MacKellar, ‘Priorities in global assistance for health, aids, and population’, p 294.

24 S Huddart, ‘Do we need another hero? Understanding celebrities’ roles in advancing social causes’, mimeo, McGill University, Montreal, 2005.

25 According to Andrew Cooper, Celebrity Diplomacy, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishing, 2008, celebrity diplomats are now taking on global issues of governance, equity and regulation to such a wide extent that we are now seeing the ‘Bonoization of diplomacy’ (p 3).

26 Huddart, ‘Do we need another hero?’, p 37.

27 The marriage of branding and celebrity activism per se is not a new phenomenon. The Newman's Own range of food products has been around for 20 years, and its cumulative profits of $125 million have been donated to charities.

28 JD Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities of Our Time, London: Allen Lane, 2005, p xii.

29 Ibid, p 205.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid, p 206.

32 Huddart, ‘Do we need another hero?’, p 54. See also Cooper, Celebrity Diplomacy.

33 Huddart, ‘Do we need another hero?’, pp 52–53.

34 At http://www.live8live.com/whatsitabout/index.shtml.

35 ‘Global health summit’, Time special coverage, 1–3 November, 2005, at http://www.time.com/time/2005/globalhealth.

36 ‘Wiping out tb and aids’, US News and World Report, 31 October 2005, at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/051031/31farmer.htm.

37 P Farmer, aids and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992.

38 Paul Farmer has even been the subject of a popular audience book. T Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, New York: Random House, 2003.

39 PR Agenor, N Bayraktar, EP Moreira & K El Aynaoui, Achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Macroeconomic Monitoring Framework, World Bank: Washington, DC, 2005.

40 Cited in Ibid, p 3.

41 A Mbembe, On the Postcolony, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001.

42 J Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006, p 6.

43 Ibid, p 7.

44 PA Treichler, How to Have Theory in an Epidemic, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.

45 A Bancroft, ‘Globalisation and hiv/aids: inequality and the boundaries of a symbolic epidemic’, Health, Risk and Society, 3 (1), 2001, pp 89–98.

46 J Kitzinger & D Miller, “African aids”: the media and audience beliefs’, in P Aggleton, P Davies & G Hart (eds), aids: Rights, Risk and Reason, London: Falmer Press, 1992, pp 28–52.

47 S Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, New York: Farar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.

48 R Bleiker & A Kay, ‘Representing hiv/aids in Africa: pluralist photography and local empowerment’, International Studies Quarterly, 51 (1), 2007, p 140.

49 Ibid, pp 141–151.

50 ‘The sex appeal of Red’, Sunday Times, 26 February 2006, at women.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,18030-2046382,00.html.

51 ‘Shop with Bono’, Sunday Times, 26 February 2006, at http://women.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,18030-2045580,00.html.

52 For critiques, see Bleiker & Kay, ‘Representing hiv/aids in Africa; N Hoad, ‘Thabo Mbeki's aids blues: the intellectual, the archive, and the pandemic’, Public Culture, 17 (1), 2005, pp 101–127; C Patton, Inventing hiv/aids , New York: Routledge, 1990; E Stillwaggon, ‘Racial metaphors: interpreting sex and aids in Africa’, Development and Change, 34 (5), 2003, pp 809–832; and Stillwaggon, aids and the Ecology of Poverty, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

53 C Patton, Globalizing aids, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002, p 121.

54 See, for example, the now-classic CT Mohanty, ‘Introduction: cartographies of struggle: Third World women and the politics of feminism’, in CT Mohanty, A Russo & L Torres (eds), Third World Women and The Politics of Feminism, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991.

55 ‘Africa: a stage for political poseurs’, Spiked, 19 June 2005, at http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/printable/329; G Harrison, ‘Sovereignty, poverty, history: 2005 and Western moralities of intervention’, paper presented at the UK African Studies Association, London, 11–13 September, 2006.

56 G Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1930; and T Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions, New York: BW Huebsch, 1912.

57 For such reviews, see most recently A Aldridge, Consumption, Cambridge: Polity, 2003; B Fine, The World of Consumption: The Material and Cultural Revisited, London: Routledge, 2002; and F Trentmann, ‘Knowing consumers—histories, identities, practices: an introduction’, in Trentmann (ed), The Making of the Consumer: Knowledge, Power and Identity in the Modern World, Oxford: Berg, 2006.

58 See, inter alia, J Finkelstein, Dining Out: A Sociology of Modern Manners, Cambridge: Polity, 1989.

59 See, among others, T Marsden, A Flynn & M Harrison, Consuming Interests: The Social Provision of Foods, London: University College London Press, 2000; Trentmann, The Making of the Consumer; and N Wrigley & M Lowe, Reading Retail: A Geographical Perspective on Retailing and Consumption Spaces, London: Arnold, 2002.

60 J Baudrillard, The Consumer Society: Myth and Structures, London: Sage, 1998.

61 M Featherstone, Consuming Culture and Postmodernism, London: Sage, 1991.

62 Z Bauman, Liquid Life, London: Polity, 2005.

63 G Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society: An Investigation into the Changing Character of Contemporary Social Life, London: Sage, 1996; and A Bryman, ‘The Disneyization of society’, Sociological Review, 47 (1), 1999, pp 24–47.

64 Y Gabriel & T Lang, The Unmanageable Consumer: Contemporary Consumption and its Fragmentation, London: Sage, 1995.

65 Fine, The World of Consumption; D Miller, The Dialectics of Shopping, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001; D Slater, Consumer Culture and Modernity, London: Polity, 1987; and A Warde, Consumption, Food and Taste: Culinary Antinomies and Commodity Culture, London: Sage, 1997.

66 Aldridge, Consumption.

67 G Kelly, D Kelly & A Gamble, Stakeholder Capitalism, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997.

68 D Klooster, ‘Environmental certification of forests: the evolution of environmental governance in a commodity network’, Journal of Rural Studies, 21, 2005, pp 403–417; S Ponte, ‘Greener than thou: the political economy of fish ecolabeling and its local manifestations in South Africa’, World Development, 36 (1), 2008, pp 159–175.

69 Trentmann, ‘Knowing consumers’.

70 Video, red product launch at Davos, viewed at http://www.joinred.com.

71 ‘Motorola joins (red) to help eliminate aids in Africa’, red press release, at http://www.joinred.com.

72 J Guthman, ‘Commodified meanings, meaningful commodities: re-thinking production–consumption links through the organic system of provision’, Sociologia Ruralis, 42 (4), 2002, p 296.

73 Ibid; LT Raynolds, ‘Consumer/producer links in fair trade coffee networks’, Sociologia Ruralis, 42 (4), 2002, pp 404–424; PL Taylor, ‘In the market but not of it: fair trade coffee and Forest Stewardship Council certification as market-based social change’, World Development, 33 (1), 2005, pp 129–147.

74 See also A Appadurai, ‘Introduction: commodities and the politics of value’, in A Appadurai (ed), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

75 S Freidberg, ‘Cleaning up down south: supermarkets, ethical trade and African horticulture’, Social and Cultural Geography, 4 (1), 2003, pp 27–43; S Freidberg, French Beans and Food Scares: Culture and Commerce in an Anxious Age, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

76 Freidberg, ‘Cleaning up down south’.

77 M Power, The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997; and P Gibbon & S Ponte, Trading Down: Africa, Value Chains and the Global Economy, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2005.

78 S Ponte, ‘Bans, tests and alchemy: food safety regulation and the Uganda fish export industry’, Agriculture and Human Values, 27 (2), 2007, pp 179–193; and Ponte, ‘Greener than thou’.

79 Video, red product launch at Davos.

80 ‘Shop with Bono’.

81 The red homepage includes a section where readers can submit their own videos on ‘What does red mean to me?’ in the hope of being featured in a ‘video wall’ of people, including celebrities, talking about what aids is. See http://www.joinred.com/you.asp. Also Converse allows people to ‘create your own’ Converse (Product) red shoes. See http://www.converse.com/index.asp?bhcp=1#.

82 See http://joinred.blogspot.com.

83 ‘Bono bets on Red to battle Aids'.

84 Video, red product launch at Davos.

85 ‘The Lazarus effect’, Vanity Fair (special ‘Africa’ issue edited by Bono), July 2007.

86 ‘Want to help treat aids in Africa? Buy a cellphone’, New York Times, 4 October 2006.

87 Global Fund official website, at http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/partners/private/red, emphasis added.