‘Getting in Touch with your Inner Angelina’: celebrity humanitarianism and the cultural politics of gendered generosity in volunteer tourism

Abstract

Reporting on the growth of volunteer tourism, a recent Time magazine article explains, ‘Getting in touch with your inner Angelina Jolie is easier than it used to be!’. In myriad ways celebrities like Angelina Jolie and Madonna have made international volunteering sexy. These women and their adopted children from the so-called ‘Third World’ have come to symbolise popular humanitarianism in the West. This paper addresses the cultural politics of female celebrity humanitarianism and the corollary implications of this practice for 20-something female volunteer tourists in northern Thailand. Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that the cultural politics of gendered generosity in these encounters overshadows the institutional and historical relationships on which the experience is based and that, in a neoliberal sleight of hand, the political is displaced by the individual with celebrity sheen.

Notes

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4 Samman et al, ‘The role of celebrity in endorsing poverty reduction through international aid’; AB Becker, ‘Engaging celebrity? Measuring the impact of issue-advocacy messages on situational involvement, complacency and apathy’, Celebrity Studies, 3, 2012, pp 213–231; MT Boykoff & MK Goodman, ‘Conspicuous redemption? Reflections on the promises and perils of the “celebritization” of climate change’, Geoforum, 40, 2009, pp 395–406; A de Waal, ‘The humanitarian carnival: a celebrity vogue’, World Affairs, 171, 2008, pp 43–56; R Yrjölä, ‘From street into the world: towards a politicised reading of celebrity humanitarianism’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 14(3), 2012, pp 357–374; 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, 2009, pp 1–22.

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31 Jolie quoted in Barron, ‘An actress compelled to act’.

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35 Manzo, ‘An extension of colonialism?’.

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41 Ibid.

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43 Repo & Yrjölä, ‘The gender politics of celebrity humanitarianism in Africa’.

44 Ibid.

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46 Anon, I Studied Abroad in Africa.

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48 Grayson quoted in ibid.

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50 Repo & Yrjölä, ‘The gender politics of celebrity humanitarianism in Africa’.

51 Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power; Lester, ‘Obtaining “due observance of justice”’; and Rojek, Celebrity.

52 Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power.

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56 MK Goodman, ‘Star/poverty space: the making of the “development celebrity”’, Celebrity Studies, 2, 2011, pp 82, 69.

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60 A Jolie, Notes from my Travels: Visits with Refugees in Africa, Cambodia, Pakistan and Ecuador, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003, p 37.

61 Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power.

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63 Nestora, quoted in Palk, ‘Why do so many women go on volunteer vacations?’.

64 Pedwell, ‘Affective (self-)transformations’.

65 Goodman, ‘Star/poverty space’.

66 Yrjölä, ‘The invisible violence of celebrity humanitarianism’.

67 Lester, ‘Obtaining the “due observance of justice”’.

68 Berlant, Compassion.

69 Manzo, ‘Imagining humanitarianism’.

70 Lester, ‘Obtaining the “due observance of justice”’.