Marketing Development: celebrity politics and the ‘new’ development advocacy

Abstract

Politics and culture, once considered separate, are now fusing in new and interesting ways. Political activism is becoming popular, particularly through the expansion of a new kind of development advocacy made highly visible through celebrity involvement. Theorists of globalisation celebrate the democratisation of civil society made possible by new information and communications technology; critical theorists will note the various ways in which ict ambivalently makes the contradictions in global capitalism more obvious and has become the means by which globalisation is contested. Some metropolitan governments have sought to capitalise on this new knowledge economy by making knowledge for development part of their strategies to produce ‘global citizens’ necessary for the global economy. This paper examines the linkages between celebrity and government-funded development advocacy in Australia, which comprise the introduction of free market principles to form a marketing campaign for neoliberal globalisation.

Notes

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3 M Duffield & H Vernon (eds), Empire, Development & Colonialism: The Past in the Present, Woodbridge, UK: James Curry; and M Frey, ‘Control, legitimacy, and the securing of interests: European development policy in South-East Asia from the late colonial period to the early 1960s’, Contemporary European History, 12, 2003, pp 395–412.

4 M Kaldor, ‘Civilising globalisation? The implications of the “Battle in Seattle”’, in J Sen & M Kumar (eds), Are Other Worlds Possible? The Open Space Reader on the World Social Forum and its Engagement with Empire, New Delhi: 2000; and S Amin, ‘For struggles, global and national’, in J Sen, A Anand, A Escobar & P Waterman (eds), World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, New Delhi: Viveka Foundation, 2004.

5 J Sachs, The End of Poverty: How we can Make it Happen in our Lifetime, London: Penguin, 2005; D Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid is not Working and How there is a Better Way for Africa, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009; R Calderisi, The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid isn't Working, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006; and P Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What can be Done about It, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

6 C Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic, London: Verso, 2004; M Hardt & A Negri, Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000; and M Mann, Incoherent Empire, London: Verso, 2003.

7 Ausaid, Overseas Aid Study, Canberra: Government of Australia.

8 In the UK government-funded Development Awareness is being phased out under the new coalition government not only because of partisan differences in approach to development policy, but also in response to the global financial crisis. Australia's engagement with this policy is brief. This does not, however, negate the argument being made here that there is a new development advocacy comprised of an expanded terrain of activists and advocates.

9 A Darnton & M Kirk, Finding Frames: New Ways to Engage the UK Public in Global Poverty, London: bond for International Development, 2011.

10 L Brainard & D Chollet (eds), Global Development 2.0: C an Philanthropists, the Public and the Poor Make Poverty History?, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008, p 12.

11 See http://jphro.org/.

12 SP Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

13 E Said, Culture & Imperialism, London: Vintage, 1994.

14 DM West, ‘Angelina, Mia and Bono: celebrities and international development’, in Brainard & Chollet, Global Development 2.0, p 75.

15 J-F Bayart, Global Subjects: A Political Critique of Globalisation, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007; R Falk, ‘An emergent matrix of citizenship: complex, uneven, fluid’, in N Dower & J Williams (eds), Global Citizenship: A Critical Introduction, London: Routledge.

16 A Escobar, ‘Beyond the Third World: imperial globality, global coloniality and anti-globalisation social movements’, Third World Quarterly, 25, 2004, pp 207–230; and MS Drake, ‘Power, resistance and “anti-globalisation” movements in the context of the “war on terror”’, in M Mullard & B Cole (eds), Globalisation, Citizenship and the War on Terror, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

17 This is the argument of Michael Drake, ‘Power, resistance and “anti-globalisation” movements in the context of the “war on terror”’.

18 M Cowen & RW Shenton, Doctrines of Development, London: Routledge, 1996.

19 M Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007 pp 4–12.

20 I Kapoor, The Postcolonial Politics of Development, London: Routledge, 2008.

21 M Aaltola, Western Spectacle of Governance and the Emergence of Humanitarian World Politics, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

22 SL Robertson, ‘Re-imagining and rescripting the future of education: global knowledge economy discourses and the challenge to education systems’, Comparative Education, 42, 2005, pp 151–170.

23 DE Bloom, ‘Globalization and education: an economic perspective’, in MM Suárez-Orozco & DB Qin-Hilliard (eds), Globalization: Culture & Education in the New Millennium, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004.

24 Robertson, ‘Re-imagining and rescripting the future of education’.

25 dfes Curriculum & Standards, Developing the Global Dimension in the School Curriculum, London: Department for Education & Skills (dfes), 2001, 2005; dfes, Putting the World into World Class Education: An International Strategy for Education, Skills and Children's Services, London: dfes.

26 Despite the desire expressed in Labour policy documents for the production of a global citizen, actual attempts on the ground were mired by two sets of circumstances: first, the fact that the UK under Labour had the highest social exclusion rates in Europe (so the production of global citizens needs also to be contextualised vis à vis British parochialism and the need to dissuade disaffected diasporic youth from becoming politically radicalised; and, second, the fact that practitioners of development education were for the most part fully aware of some of the contradictions in British education policy and the complexities involved in development. Thus the policy as the government envisaged it was far more complex in its implementation on the ground.

27 http://collections.europarchive.org/tna/20100423085026/dfid.gov.uk/working-with-dfid/funding-oppor tunities/not-for-profit-organisations/daf/guidelines-and-procedures-201011/.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 H Thornton & S Hext, ‘Review of dfid's work to build support for development through the Development Awareness Fund and the Mini-Grants Programme’, London: Department of International Development & Veralum Associates.

31 B McGettrick, ‘Lessons to be learned’, Developments, London: dfid/Limehouse Group, at http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100823124637/http://www.developments.org.uk/articles/lesson-to-be-learned.''>http://jphro.org/.

32 D Harvey, The New Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

33 dfid, Eliminating World Poverty: Making Globalisation Work for the Poor, London: dfid, 2000, emphasis added.

34 http://www.ausaid.gov.au/about/default.cfm.

35 P Evans, ‘Counter-hegemonic globalization: transnational social movements in the contemporary global political economy’, in T Janoski, AM Hicks & M Schwartz (eds), Handbook of Political Sociology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

36 ME Keck & K Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.

37 PD Marshall, The Celebrity Culture Reader, New York: Routledge, 2006.

38 Ibid, p 6.

39 For a list of successful applicants, see http://www.ausaid.gov.au/hottopics/topic.cfm?ID = 9799_ 8200_757_8783_6781.

40 Darnton & Kirk, Finding Frames.

41 http://www.globalpovertyproject.com/pages/about_the_presentation.

42 M Ignatieff, Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo & Afghanistan, London: Vintage, 2003.