Celebrity Humanitarianism: Using Tropes of Engagement to Understand North/South Relations

Abstract

Celebrity humanitarianism has been transformed in its scope, scale, and organization in the last thirty years. Its flourishing has generated considerable academic interest from a wide variety of disciplines that share two characteristics. First, these studies are—unusually—well connected, which means that different disciplines have not tended to develop their own separate literatures, but learn from each other’s approaches. This makes it useful and important to identify ways different disciplinary approaches can complement each other. Second, most of this attention has focused on politics of celebrity humanitarianism in the global North. Yet focusing also on the South and on North/South relations will move the field forward. We argue that celebrity humanitarianism must be interpreted through the broader systems of which it is a part. We offer a heuristic typology of celebrity humanitarianism that continues to bridge between different disciplines and which identifies ways in which political science can complement existing studies. We also use this typology to refocus work on the politics of celebrity humanitarian relations away from merely Northern politics. This approach allows us to identify what sorts of politics and political solutions are being advocated by current forms of celebrity humanitarianism.

Celebrities’ Role in the Conflict Resolution Processes: George Clooney in South Sudan

“…These findings are in accordance with Kogen (2015), who mainly criticised the fact that celebrities create the image of powerful West who can solve the issues of developing countries. Moreover, this image created by media use the masculinised face of celebrities' engagement (see Richey and Brockington 2019). Clooney is portrayed as the one who puts his life on the line in order to reveal the truth about the violation of human rights in South Sudan.…”

“…Media also stress his power to act, both as a lobbyist in Congress and as the one who took part in launching the Satellite Sentinel project. Stressing his masculine strength and almost non-critical approach to his engagement in Sudan by media suggests the gendering of his celebrity activism (Richey and Brockington 2019).…”

“…It is based on the literature about celebrities from media and cultural studies. The research is anchored in the concepts of celebrity diplomacy and celebrity humanitarianism, evaluating celebrities' involvement in political and developmental issues (Richey and Brockington 2019). These concepts are further elaborated and applied to the political engagement of celebrities and their role in the conflict resolution processes.…”

Neoliberal Turns in Global Humanitarian Governance

“…Being the UNHCR Special Envoy, Jolie has carved out a role for herself in global refugee activism, with many photographs of her visiting refugee camps around the world being visually circulated online. Her refugee activism, moreover, has emerged from her broader pursuits of global motherhood and maternal care of distant other women, (Bergman Rosamond, 2016Richey and Brockington, 2020). That commitment rests on her subjective experiences as the mother of six biological and adopted children, enabled by her fame and privileged position in the world economy as well as a broad commitment to cosmopolitan justice (Bergman Rosamond, 2016).…”

“…Hingeing on a 'business case for gender equality', it recasts the 'Third World Woman' (Mohanty, 1984) as agentic and endlessly enterprising (Wilson, 2011;Altan-Olcay, 2016;Roberts and Zulfiqar, 2019). Recent scholarship, however, suggests that the promotion of self-reliance through vocational training and entrepreneurship programmes has become the new neoliberal mantra also among refugee-supporting agencies, policymakers and different humanitarian actors (Easton-Calabria and Omata, 2018;Turner, 2019;Richey and Brockington, 2020). Yet, little attention has been devoted to exploring how the discourse of entrepreneurship is mobilised for the presumed benefit of refugee women in the realm of humanitarian governance, here broadly conceptualised 'as the increasingly organized and internationalized attempt to save the lives, enhance the welfare, and reduce the suffering of the world's most vulnerable populations' (Barnett, 2013: 379).…”