Development Made Sexy: How it happened and what it means

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 29, Issue 8, 2008, Pages 1475-1489

  Cameron, John ^a   Haanstra, Anna ^a  

^a DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY; POWER RELATIONS; SOCIAL ORGANIZATION;

EID: 58149346020     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: 13602241     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436590802528564     Document Type: Article

References (88)

1. Product (Red) is a business model developed to generate funding for the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis. See www.joinred.com.
2. Bono, 'Bono brings Africa to Vanity Fair', at www.youtube.com, accessed 14 April 2008.
3. Steve Thompson, 'Sustainable Development Forum: Report Summary', Royal society of New Zealand, at http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/Site/news/ science_topics/sustain/sustainable/forum_feb02.aspx, accessed 14 October 2008. Emphasis added by authors.
4. Actress Angelina Jolie became the Goodwill Ambassador for the UNHCR in 2001. Former member of the all-female pop-rock band Spicegirls, Geri Halliwell, became Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Population Fund in 1998. Sue Wheat, 'Celeb appeal', Developments, nd, at www.developments.org.uk, accessed February 2008.
5. See the web-based advertisement for the t-shirts at http://www.millenniumpromise.org/site/PageServer?pagename=gi_event1.
6. Andew Cooper, Celebrity Diplomacy, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2008; and
7. Charlie Lee- Potter, 'Can celebrity endorsement save the planet?', New Statesman, 134, 2005, pp 32-33.
8. For example, an article on actor Matt Damon's humanitarian activism in Africa in the Canadian news magazine MacLean's ran under the cover headline 'The world's sexiest man bares his soul'. Brian, Johnson, 'The world's sexiest man bares his soul', MacLean's, 120 (48), 2007, pp 20-22.
9. Matt Smith & Helen Yanacopulos, 'The public faces of development: An introduction', Journal of International Development, 16 (5), 2004, p 658.
10. Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
11. VSO, The Live Aid Legacy: The Developing World Through British Eyes - A Research Report, London: VSO, 2002, at www.vso.org.uk/Images/ liveaid_legacy_tcm8-784.pdf.
12. Betty Plewes & Ricky Stuart, 'The pornography of poverty: A cautionary fundraising tale', in Daniel Bell & Jean Marc Coilaud (eds), Ethics in Action: The Ethical Challenges of International Human Rights Nongovernmental Organizations, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp 23-37.
13. Ian Smillie, The Alms Bazaar: Altruism Under Fire - Non-Profit Organizations and International Development, Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 1995, p 136.
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17. Research by VSO in Britain found that 74% of the British public believed that countries in the global South 'depend on the money and knowledge of the west to progress'. VSO, The Live Aid Legacy, p 3. See also Canadian Council for International Cooperation, Focus on Ethics: Addressing Tensions in Choosing Fundraising Images, Ottawa: CCIC, 2008.
18. Plewes & Stewart, 'The pornography of poverty'; Nandita Dogra, 'Reading NGOs visually: Implications of visual images for NGO management', Journal of International Development, 19, 2007, pp 161- 171; and
19. David Je.eress, 'For sale - peace of mind: (neo)-colonial discourse and the commodi.cation of Third World poverty in World Vision's "Telethons'"', Critical Arts, 16 (1), 2002, pp 1-21.
20. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, New York: Pantheon, 1980. See also Escobar, Encountering Development.
21. Stuart Hall, 'The West and the rest: Discourse and power', in Stuart Hall & Bram Gieben (eds), Formations of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992; and
22. Hall, 'The work of representation', in Hall (ed), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, London: Sage, 1997.
23. Dogra, 'Reading NGOs visually', p 163. See also H Lidchi, 'Finding the right image: British development NGOs and the regulation of imagery', in T Skelton & Tim Allen (eds), Culture and Global Change, London: Routledge, 1999.
24. VSO, The Live Aid Legacy, p 3.
25. Plewes & Stewart, 'The pornography of poverty', p 30.
26. See, for example, R Wade & A Grunsell, 'I didn't know there were cities in Africa', Development Education Journal, 3, June 1995, pp 26-29.
27. Daniel Bell & Joseph Carens, 'The ethical dilemmas of international human rights and humanitarian NGOs: Reflections on a dialogue between practitioners and theorists', Human Rights Quarterly, 26 (2), 2004, pp 326-328;
28. Dogra, 'Reading NGOs visually'; and J MacKeith, 'Raising money or raising awareness: Issues and tensions in the relationship between fund-raisers and service providers', Centre for Voluntary Organization Working Paper 12, London: London School of Economics, 1992.
29. VSO, The Legacy of Live Aid, p 2.
30. Andew Darnton, 'Make poverty history: End of year notes from the public perceptions of poverty research program', 2006, at www.bond.org.uk/pubs/ campaign/mph/ad_mph_notes.pdf, accessed 25 February 2008.
31. Michael Edwards, Future Positive, London: Earthscan, 2001, p 194.
32. Ian Smilley, 'Public support and the politics of aid', Development 42 (3), 1999, p 72.
33. Alison Van Rooy, 'Good news! You may be out of a job: Reflections on the past and future of 50 Northern NGOs', Development in Practice, 10 (3-4), 2000, p 311.
34. Ibid, p 311.
35. See Development Education Association, 'Eliminating world poverty: The contribution of development education', response from the Development Education Association to the DFID White Paper consultation document of January 2006, at http://www.dea.org.uk/uploads/ 4453d22a64a184b4f76a113996448fcf/dea_response_d.d_mar_06.pdf, accessed 27 February 2008; Smillie, 'Public support and the politics of aid'; Edwards, Future Positive
36. and Matt Smith, 'Mediating the world: Development, education and global citizenship', Globalization, Societies and Education, 2 (1), 2004, pp 67-81.
37. Edwards, Future Positive, pp 191, 195.
38. Richard Sennett, Respect in a World of Inequality, New York: WW Norton, 2004, p 146.
39. Cited in Marjorie Garber, 'Compassion', in Lauren Gail Berlant (ed), Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion, London: Routledge, 2004, p 19.
40. Susan Moeller, Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death, London: Routledge, 1998.
41. Smillie, 'Public support and the politics of aid', p 72.
42. Ibid, p 72; and
43. Bruce Link et al, 'Public knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about homeless people: Evidence for compassion fatigue?', American Journal of Community Psychology, 23 (4), 1995, pp 533-555.
44. David Fetherstonhaugh et al, 'Insensitivity to the value of human life: a study of psychological numbing', Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 14 (3), 1997, pp 283-300.
45. See also C Summers et al, 'Psychological numbing: An empirical basis for perceptions of collective violence', in C Summers & E Markusen (eds), Collective Violence: Harmful Behaviour in Groups and Governments, Lanham, NJ: Rowman & Little.eld, 1999.
46. Fetherstonhaugh et al, 'Insensitivity to the value of human life', p 297.
47. Sennett, Respect in a World of Inequality.
48. Paul Rutherford, A World Made Sexy: Freud to Madonna, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007, p 254.
49. Robert Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, New York: Morrow, 1993.
50. Fetherstonhaugh et al, 'Insensitivity to the value of human life', p 283.
51. Smillie, The Alms Bazaar, pp 137, 149, 154. In 2006 top-grossing Northern development NGOs allocated between 6% and 10.6% of their total revenue to fundraising, which amounted to $88 million and $21 million in the cases of World Vision USA and Save the Children USA, respectively. See www.worldvision.org; and www.savethechildren.org
52. Cited in Martin Wright & Sophie Hooper, 'Break it down, open it up... ', Green Futures: The Sustainable Solutions Magazine, 2001, at www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/greenfutures/articles/60483, accessed 6 February 2008.
53. Ibid.
54. Cited in ibid.
55. Wheat, 'Celeb appeal'.
56. Cooper, Celebrity Diplomacy
57. Alan Cowell, 'Celebrities' embrace of Africa has critics', New York Times (electronic edition), 1 July 2005, at http://www.nytimes.com/ 2005/07/01/international/africa/01geldof.html, accessed 29 February 2008
58. Julie Hollar, 'Bono, I presume? Covering Africa through celebrities', Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), 2007, at http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3119, accessed 29 February 2008; and
59. Lee-Potter, 'Can celebrity endorsement save the planet?'.
60. Richard Black, 'Millenium goals: Down the pan?', BBC News (electronic edition), 15 September 2005.
61. Mark Steyn, 'Hygiene's uncool? Tell the dying', MacLean's, 1 October 2007.
62. D Gregory, Geographical Imaginations, Oxford: Blackwell, 1994, p 29, cited in Smith, 'Mediating the world', p 69.
63. See also Edward Said, Orientelism, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978.
64. Lamers, 'Representing poverty, impoverishing representation?', p 40.
65. Ibid, pp 72-73.
66. http://www.joinred.com/vail/.
67. Uzodinma Iweala, 'Stop trying to "save"' Africa', Washington Post (electronic edition), 15 July 2007, at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/13/ AR2007071301714.html, accessed 29 February 2008, emphasis added.
68. Darnton, 'Make poverty history', p 5.
69. http://www.joinred.com/vail/.
70. The first line of the Product (Red) Manifesto states: 'As First World consumers, we have tremendous power. What we collectively choose to buy, or not to buy, can change the course of life and history on this planet.' See http://www.joinred.com/manifesto/.
71. Lisa Ann Richey & Stefano Ponte, 'Better (Red) than dead: "Brand Aid", celebrities and the new frontier of development assistance', Danish Institute of International Studies Working Paper No 2006/28, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2006, p 26.
72. Lamers, 'Representing poverty, impoverishing representation?', p 39; and
73. A Simpson, 'Charity begins at home', Quarterly Photographic Magazine 19, 1984, pp 23-24.
74. Rutherford, A World Made Sexy.
75. Darnton, 'Make poverty history', pp 5-8.
76. Richey & Ponte, 'Better (Red) than dead', p 26.
77. Rutherford, A World Made Sexy, p 47.
78. See for example, Seth Kalichman et al, 'Gender attitudes, sexual violence, and HIV/AIDS risks among men and women in Cape Town, South Africa', Journal of Sex Research, 42 (4), 2005, pp 299-305.
79. Ibid. See also UNAIDS, 07 Aids Epidemic Update, 2007, at http://data.unaids.org/pub/EPISlides/2007/2007_epiupdate_en.pdf, accessed 18 March 2008.
80. Dogra, 'Representing NGOs visually', p 167.
81. Ibid, p 168.
82. Ibid.
83. Matt Smith, 'Mediating the world', p 73.
84. DFID and BBC, 'Making sense of the world: A joint BBC News-DFID study of public perceptions of television news coverage of developing countries', 2002, at http://www.d.d.gov.uk/pubs/files/makingsense.pdf, accessed 14 October 2008.
85. Cited in Wright & Hooper, 'Break it down, open it up'.
86. Greenpeace, 'Mr Splashy pants goes viral', 28 November 2007, at http://weblog.greenpeace.org/whales/2007/11/ mr_splashy_pants_goes_viral.html
87. Greenpeace, 'You named him, now save him', 10 December 2007, at http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/splashy-101207; and
88. Chris Turner, 'Radically goofy', Globe and Mail (Toronto), 5 January 2007, p F7.