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Abstract
Despite the fact that corruption is essentially invisible, communication campaigns by the global anti-corruption industry regularly feature photographic images. So far, however, we do not know much about the narratives that are encoded in these images. Through the theoretical lens of postcolonialism, this paper takes a first step towards developing an understanding of the visual representation of corruption. Specifically, the paper applies semiotic and iconographic methods to two photography competitions run by Transparency International – the major non-governmental player in the anti-corruption industry. The analysis shows, first, that the anti-corruption industry reinforces colonial stereotypes, suggesting that the ‘sinful’ and ‘irrational’ Global South is waiting to be civilised by the North. Second, through its visual imagery, the anti-corruption industry also emphasises ideas of a ‘humanitarian family’, which serves to cover up the North’s role in transnational webs of corruption. These findings are triangulated with semiotic/iconographic analyses of the Transparency International logo and the Corruption Perceptions Index map.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Linda Åhäll and Jack Holland as well as the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Notes
1 Dye, “Corruption and Fraud Detection,” 304.
2 Bauman, Liquid Fear, 19.
3 Sampson, “Anti-Corruption Industry,” 262.
4 For a comprehensive overview of this paradigm, see Kunicová, “Democratic Institutions and Corruption”; and Rose-Ackerman, “Institutional Economics of Corruption.”
5 See Hellmann, “Historical Origins of Corruption”; and Della Porta and Vannucci, Hidden Order of Corruption.
6 See De Sardan, “Moral Economy of Corruption in Africa?”; and Smith, “Kinship and Corruption in Contemporary Nigeria”, respectively.
7 For a summary of the ‘corruption buys peace’ argument, see Le Billon, “Buying Peace or Fuelling War.”
8 Kelsall, Business, Politics, and the State in Africa; Rock and Bonnett, “Comparative Politics of Corruption.”
9 Lazar, “Citizens Despite the State”; Auyero, “Logic of Clientelism in Argentina.”
10 Persson, Rothstein, and Teorell, “Why Anticorruption Reforms Fail.”
11 Andersson and Heywood, “Anti-Corruption as a Risk to Democracy.”
12 de Graaf, Wagenaar, and Hoenderboom, “Constructing Corruption”; De Maria, “Measurements and Markets.” For a more general argument of how the global anti-corruption programme is driven by a neo-liberal agenda, see Hindess, “Investigating International Anti-Corruption.”
13 Williams, Meth, and Willis, Geographies of Developing Areas, 9.
14 eg Hansen, “Theorizing the Image for Security Studies”; Heck and Schlag, “Securitizing Images.”
15 Bleiker, “Mapping Visual Global Politics,” 9.
16 INGO communication manager cited in Thompson and Weaver, “The Challenges of Visually Representing Poverty,” 382.
17 Hall, “Spectacle of the ‘Other,’” 234.
18 Hall, “The West and the Rest.”
19 Said, Orientalism.
20 For a more optimistic discussion of these changes, see Lidchi, “Finding the Right Image.”
21 eg Zarzycka, “Save the Child”; Wells, “Melodrama of Being a Child”; Manzo, “Imagining Humanitarianism”; Dogra, Representations of Global Poverty.
22 Thompson and Weaver, “The Challenges of Visually Representing Poverty,” 383.
23 Dogra, Representations of Global Poverty, 38.
24 For example, Wilson, “‘Race’, Gender and Neoliberalism”; Dogra, “Mixed Metaphor of ‘Third World Woman.’”
25 Moeller, Compassion Fatigue, 107.
26 Manzo, “Imagining Humanitarianism,” 329.
27 Zarzycka, “Save the Child,” 36.
28 Dogra, Representations of Global Poverty, 120.
29 Hall, “The Work of Representation.”
30 Barthes, Elements of Semiology.
31 Tinkler, Using Photographs in Social and Historical Research, 21.
32 van Leeuwen, “Semiotics and Iconography,” 94.
33 Barthes, Mythologies, 113.
34 Dogra, Representations of Global Poverty, 188.
35 Rose, Visual Methodologies, 110.
36 eg see Zarzycka and Kleppe, “Awards, Archives, and Affects”; and Manzo, “Images of Africa in World Press Photo.”
37 Sampson, “Anti-Corruption Industry,” 274.
38 Barthes himself acknowledges the polysemic character of photographs. See Barthes, Mythologies, 132.
39 Exceptions are a small number of local chapters that operate under different names, such as Poder Ciudadano (Argentina) or Towards Transparency (Vietnam).
40 Foroudi, Melewar, and Gupta, “Corporate Logo,” 182.
41 Skaggs, FireSigns, 71.
42 Harley, “Maps, Knowledge, and Power.”
43 MacEachren, How Maps Work, 242.
44 van Leeuwen, “Semiotics and Iconography,” 106.
45 Müller, “Iconography and Iconology as a Visual Method,” 288.
46 Dogra, "Mixed Metaphor of ‘Third World Woman,’” 335.
47 In particular, the stock photo used in 2013 was cropped and de-saturated. The original photograph is available at: http://istockpho.to/2uCGzEp.
48 Alexander, Perspectives on Place, 74.
49 Bate, Photography: The Key Concepts, 116.
50 Battersby, The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference, 146.
51 Feldman, “Visualizing the Ends of Oil”; Peeples, “Toxic Sublime: Imagining Contaminated Landscapes”; Nurmis, “Visual Climate Change Art.”
52 Peeples, “Toxic Sublime: Imagining Contaminated Landscapes,” 380.
53 Hall, “The West and the Rest,” 308.
54 For a similar argument in the critical literature on humanitarian aid INGOs, see Dogra, Representations of Global Poverty, 72.
55 If the photographs are seen in isolation, participants may not seem like victims of corruption. However, it needs to be remembered that the images were submitted to corruption photography competitions and have since been published in TI reports. The contextual content thus ‘anchors’ participants as victims of corruption.
56 Machin, Introduction to Multimodal Analysis, 110–1.
57 Lacey, Image and Representation, 21.
58 For example, see Lange, Lineages of Despotism and Development.
59 A perfect example is the Mobutu regime in Zaire (1965–1997); see Young and Turner, Rise and Decline of the Zairian State. Similarly, see Hanlon, “Do Donors Promote Corruption?” on how donors are willing to turn a blind eye to corruption in recipient countries if domestic elites comply with externally imposed market reforms.
60 Otusanya and Lauwo, “Role of Offshore Financial Centres.”
61 On the ineffectiveness of international efforts against corruption, see Heywood, “Corruption,” 371–4; Hough, Corruption, Anti-Corruption and Governance, 29–30.
62 On the importance of including aspects that have not been mapped when conducting a semiotic analysis of maps, see MacEachren, How Maps Work, 334.
63 Klinghoffer, Power of Projections, 21.
64 On the semiotics of colour in map design, see Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps, 69.
65 Grimley Kuntz and Braver, “Ascent/Descent,” 79.
66 Battistini, Symbols and Allegories in Art, 216–7.
67 Ekelund et al., Sacred Trust, 154–5.
68 Danesi, “Semiotizing a Product into a Brand,” 469.
69 Niemeier, “To Be in Control.”
70 Apostolos-Cappadona, “Beheading/Decapitation,” 121.
71 Oswald, Marketing Semiotics, 93.
72 Boeckl, “Penitence/Repentance,” 721.
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Olli Hellmann
Olli Hellmann is Senior Lecturer in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Waikato, Aotearoa/New Zealand. His research interests include political communication and the comparative analysis of political institutions. He has previously published on questions of corruption, including papers in Crime, Law and Social Change and the Japanese Journal of Political Science.