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Abstract
This paper traces the emergence of Band Aid celebrity humanitarianism and its ongoing legacy, making use of Tester’s concept of ‘common-sense humanitarianism’ and Fassin’s reasoning on ‘humanitarian governance’. Using different examples of celebrity engagement during the 1983–85 famine in Ethiopia and the 2011 famine in Somalia, it argues that the, in essence, anti-political understanding of disaster propagated by celebrity humanitarians not only masks the underlying dynamics of power and of social and economic relations that underpin every famine, but at the same time manufactures a truth about ‘Africa’ and other places perceived as destitute. In doing so celebrity humanitarianism more generally legitimises a global hegemonic system characterised by increasing inequalities.
Notes
1 P Drake & M Higgins, ‘“I’m a celebrity, get me into politics”: the political celebrity and the celebrity politician’, in S Holmes & S Redmond (eds), Framing Celebrity: New Directions in Celebrity Culture, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, pp 87–100; S Huddart, ‘Do we need another hero? Understanding celebrities’ roles in advancing social causes’, mimeo, McGill University, Montreal, 2005; and J Littler, ‘“I feel your pain”: cosmopolitan charity and the public fashioning of the celebrity soul’, Social Semiotics, 18(2), 2008, pp 237–251.
2 L Boltanski, Distant Suffering: Politics, Morality and the Media, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; and R Yrjölä, ‘From street into the world: towards a politicised reading of celebrity humanitarianism’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 14(3), 2011, pp 1–18. Boltanski discusses cultural responses to suffering more generally and does not engage with celebrity as a distinct category; he traces the politics of pity back to the philosophy of the Enlightenment.
3 K Tester, Humanitarianism and Modern Culture, Pennsylvania, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010, p 34.
4 A Biccum, ‘Marketing development: celebrity politics and the “new” development advocacy’, Third World Quarterly, 32(7), 2011, p 1334.
5 C Mouffe, ‘Which ethics for democracy?’, in M Garber, B Hanssen & R Walkowitz (eds), The Turn to Ethics, New York: Routledge, 2000, p 86.
6 C Mouffe, On the Political, London: Routledge, 2005; and J Street, ‘Celebrity politicians: popular culture and political representation’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 6(4), 2004, pp 435–452.
7 D Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012, pp ix–xii.
8 R Bleiker & A Kay, ‘Representing hiv/aids in Africa: pluralist photography and local empowerment’, International Studies Quarterly, 51(1), 2007, pp 139–163. Bleiker and Kay use the example of representation of hiv/aids in Africa to develop their typology of naturalist (neutral and value free), humanist (geared towards suffering and compassion) and pluralist (victims themselves produce photographs) forms of representation.
9 G Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Agamben’s theoretical approach is particularly useful for understanding the dialectics behind celebrity humanitarian action. It is based on the Greek distinction between zoë and bios to fully comprehend human life. Zoë refers to ‘the simple fact of living common to all living beings’, whereas bios is life qualified by the political and the social, the ‘way of living proper to an individual or a group’. Thus zoë is the ‘bare life’ all living organisms have in common whereas bios denotes the specific human characteristics of social and political beings.
10 Bleiker & Kay, ‘Representing hiv/aids in Africa’, p 141.
11 ONE International, ‘Hungry no more: drought is an act of nature, famine is man-made’, at http://www.one.org/c/international/actnow/4137/, accessed 17 April 2012, copy on file.
12 Biccum, ‘Marketing development’, p 1333.
13 R Abrahamsen, ‘Africa in a global political economy of symbolic goods’, Review of African Political Economy, 39(131), 2012, pp 140–142; and LA Richey & S Ponte, ‘Brand Africa: multiple transitions in global capitalism’, Review of African Political Economy, 39(131), 2012, pp 135–136.
14 Littler, ‘“I feel your pain”’; and Tester, Humanitarianism and Modern Culture. For a critical overview of the renaissance of affect, see R Leys, ‘The turn to affect: a critique’, Critical Inquiry, 37(3), 2011, pp 434–472.
15 C Lousley, ‘Sentimental globalism: the affective politics of Live Aid’, paper presented at the asauk Biennial Conference, University of Oxford, 16–19 September 2010.
16 B Baulch, ‘Entitlements and the Wollo famine of 1982–1985’, Disasters, 11(3), 1987, pp 195–204; A de Waal, Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa, Oxford: James Currey, 1997; and C Clapham, Transformation and Continuity in Revolutionary Ethiopia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
17 B Hendrie, ‘Relief aid behind the lines: the cross-border operation in Tigray’, in J Macrae & A Zwi (eds), War and Hunger: Rethinking International Responses to Complex Emergencies, London: Zed Books, 1994, pp 125–138; D Pool, ‘Revolutionary crisis and revolutionary vanguard: the emergence of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front’, Review of African Political Economy, 7(19), 1980, pp 33–47; J Young, ‘The Tigray and Eritrean People’s Liberation Fronts: a history of tensions and pragmatism’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 34(1), 1996, pp 105–120; and J Young, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia: The Tigray People's Liberation Front, 1975–1991, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
18 Article 19, Starving in Silence: A Report on Famine and Censorship, 1990, at http://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/3/en/starving-in-silence, accessed 3 April 2010, copy on file; R Brauman, ‘Ethiopie: l’aveuglement’, first published in Géopolitique Africaine, 1986, republished as a paper by Fondation Médecins Sans Frontières–Centre de Réflexion sur l'Action et les Savoirs Humanitaires (crash), Paris; C Clapham, ‘The structure of regional conflict in northern Ethiopia’, Disasters, 15(3), 1991, pp 244–253; and de Waal, Famine Crimes.
19 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj2jf0US8zI, accessed 19 April 2012.
20 P Gill, A Year in the Death of Africa: Bureaucracy and the Famine, London: Paladin, 1986, p 91.
21 T Vaux, The Selfish Altruist: Relief Work in Famine and War, London: Earthscan, 2001, p 52.
22 S Franks, ‘The neglect of Africa and the power of aid’, The International Communication Gazette, 72(1), 2010, pp 71–84; SD Moeller, Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death, London: Routledge, 1999; and Vaux, The Selfish Altruist.
23 J Benthall, Disasters, Relief, and the Media, London, IB Tauris, 1993. For a good example of how this individualisation of suffering operates, see the chapter on ‘Saving Birhan’ in Tester, Humanitarianism and Modern Culture.
24 Tester, Humanitarianism and Modern Culture, p 10.
25 J Edkins, Whose Hunger? Concepts of Famine, Practices of Aid, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000, p 122.
26 LA Richey & S Ponte, Brand Aid: Shopping Well to Save the World, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011, p 171. Band Aid can thus be seen as having laid the foundations for subsequent ventures like Product (red)™, where celebrities like Bono act as mediators between consumers and beneficiaries of aid, and which allow consumers to engage in providing such aid without any challenge to a lifestyle of affluence. For further discussion on Product (red)™, see ibid; and Richey & Ponte, ‘Better (red)™ than dead? Celebrities, consumption and international aid’, Third World Quarterly, 29(4), 2008, pp 711–729.
27 C Calhoun, ‘A world of emergencies: fear, intervention, and the limits of cosmopolitan order’, Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 41(4), 2004, at http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-127162707/world-emergencies-fear-intervention.html, accessed 25 March 2010, copy on file; and R Yrjölä, ‘The invisible violence of celebrity humanitarianism: soft images and hard words in the making and unmaking of Africa’, World Political Science Review, 5(1), 2009, pp 1–23.
28 For a good compilation, see Médecins Sans Frontières, ‘Famine and forced relocations in Ethiopia, 1984–1986: msf speaks out’, internal document, Paris, 2005, accessed 18 March 2010. See also JW Clay & BK Holcomb, Politics and the Ethiopian Famine 1984–1985, Cambridge, MA: Cultural Survival Inc, 1985; and Cultural Survival, Food and Famine in Ethiopia—Weapons Against Cultural Diversity, 2009, at http://www.culturalsurvival.org/print/4686, accessed 5 April 2010, copy on file.
29 Franks, ‘The neglect of Africa and the power of aid’, p 81.
30 Clay & Holcomb, Politics and the Ethiopian Famine; and P Harrison & R Palmer, News out of Africa: Biafra to Band Aid, London: Hilary Shipman, 1986.
31 S Milas & JA Latif, ‘The political economy of complex emergency and recovery in northern Ethiopia’, Disasters, 24(4), 2000, pp 363–379; A de Waal, Democratic Political Process and the Fight against Famine, ids Working Paper 107, 2000, pp 1–28; TR Müller, ‘“The Ethiopian famine” revisited: Band Aid and the antipolitics of celebrity humanitarian action’, Disasters, 37(1), 2013, pp 61–79; and T Silkin & B Hendrie, ‘Research in the war zones of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia’, Disasters, 21(2), 1997, pp 166–176.
32 P Gill, Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia since Live Aid, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
33 G Harrison, ‘The Africanization of poverty: a retrospective on “Make Poverty History”’, African Affairs, 109(436), 2010, pp 391–408; and N Karnik, ‘The photographer, his editor, her audience, their humanitarians: how Rwanda’s pictures travel through the American psyche’, Association of Concerned Africa Scholars Bulletin, 50–51, 1998, pp 35–42.
34 For a detailed analysis of the media report and its aftermath, see Müller, ‘“The Ethiopian famine” revisited’. See also S Franks, ‘Why Bob Geldof has got it wrong’, British Journalism Review, 21(2), 2010, pp 51–56.
35 J Zarocostas, ‘Famine and disease threaten millions in drought hit Horn of Africa’, British Medical Journal, 343, 2011, d4696; Zarocostas, ‘UN intensifies relief efforts as Somali famine is predicted to spread’, British Medical Journal, 343, 2011, d4949; and U Karunakara, ‘Famine in Somalia: a man-made crisis’, Guardian, 2 September 2011. A note on numbers is in order here. As a long-term observer of humanitarian crises has pointed out, to establish with any accuracy the numbers of those affected in a country like Somalia, which at the same time is represented as a failed state with little bureaucratic oversight, is rather misleading. Rony Brauman, personal conversation, 30 April 2012. Any such claims should be regarded with suspicion, if not outright as a propaganda tool of some of the agencies that are to benefit from famine relief operations.
36 http://www.imgonnabeyourfriend.org, accessed 26 April 2012.
37 http://www.one.org/c/international/actnow/4137/?, accessed 26 April 2012.
38 This may not apply to other appeals by humanitarian NGOs in a broader sense nor to non-emergency situations, as discussed by L Chouliaraki, ‘“Improper distance”: towards a critical account of solidarity as irony’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 14(4), 2011, pp 363–381.
39 International Crisis Group (icg), Somalia: The Transitional Government on Life Support, Africa Report No 170, Brussels: icg, 2011; icg, Somalia: An Opportunity that Should Not Be Missed, Africa Briefing No 87, Brussels: icg, 2012; K Menkhaus, ‘The crisis in Somalia: tragedy in five acts’, African Affairs, 106(204), 2007, pp 357–390; P Moszynski, ‘Militant attacks are jeopardising famine relief in Horn of Africa’, British Medical Journal, 343, 2011, d6729; and J Vidal, ‘Famine we could avoid’, Guardian, 21 July 2011.
40 J Gettleman, ‘UN says Somalia famine has ended, but warns that crisis isn’t over’, New York Times, 3 February 2012; and United Nations, ‘UN says Somali famine over, but warns action needed to forestall new crisis’, at http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?Cr1=famine&NewsID=41133&Cr=somalia#, accessed 3 May 2012, copy on file.
41 See also D Fassin & P Vasquez, ‘Humanitarian exception as the rule: the political theology of the 1999 Tragedia in Venezuela’, American Ethnologist, 32(3), 2005, pp 389–405.
42 C Bob, ‘Merchants of morality’, Foreign Policy, March/April, 2002, pp 36–45.
43 Huddart, ‘Do we need another hero?, p 4.
44 H Dieter & R Kumar, ‘The downside of celebrity diplomacy: the neglected complexity of development’, Global Governance, 14, 2008, pp 259–264; and A Donini, ‘The far side: the meta functions of humanitarianism in a globalised world’, Disasters, 34(S2), 2010, pp S220–S237.
45 M Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011, p 16.
46 C Magone, M Neuman & F Weissman (eds), Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed: The msf Experience, London: Hurst & Company, 2011; and F Terry, Condemned to Repeat? The Paradox of Humanitarian Action, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.
47 See C Bishop & D Hilhorst, ‘From food aid to food security: the case of the Safety Net policy in Ethiopia’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 48(2), 2010, pp 181–20, for a discussion of the latter in relation to Ethiopia.
48 C Douzinas, ‘The many faces of humanitarianism’, Parrhesia, 2, 2007, pp 1–28.
49 M Watts, ‘Entitlements or empowerment? Famine and starvation in Africa’, Review of African Political Economy, 19(51), 1991, pp 9–26; Harrison, ‘The Africanization of poverty’; and J Pottier, Re-Imagining Rwanda: Conflict, Survival and Disinformation in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
50 L Chouliaraki, ‘Post-humanitarianism: humanitarian communication beyond a politics of pity’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 13(2), 2010, pp 107–126; P Gopal, ‘The “moral empire”: Africa, globalisation and the politics of conscience’, New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics, 59, 2006, pp 81–97.
51 Douzinas, ‘The many faces of humanitarianism’, p 12.
52 Ibid, p 22.
53 M Ticktin, ‘Where ethics and politics meet: the violence of humanitarianism inFrance’, American Ethnologist, 33(1), 2006, p 35.
54 Franks, ‘The neglect of Africa and the power of aid’.
55 Oxfam, Crises in a New World Order: Challenging the Humanitarian Project, Oxford: Oxfam, 2012.
56 De Waal, Famine Crimes.
57 Fassin, Humanitarian Reason, pp 1–4.
58 Gopal, ‘The “moral empire”, p 85.
59 Yrjölä, ‘The invisible violence of celebrity humanitarianism’, p 7.
60 G Harrison, ‘Images and representations of Africa: old, new and beyond’, Review of African Political Economy, 39(131), 2012, pp 142–145.
61 Fassin, Humanitarian Reason, pp 242–252.