In recent years a new trend is increasingly gaining hold in international cooperation circles: philanthrocapitalism or the use of market rules and tools to advance such goals as education, public health or water sanitation by individuals like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and other corporate magnates.
However, there is a growing sense of concern regarding the potential conflict of interests and moral dilemmas posed by transnational corporations replacing non-for-profit entities and intergovernmental organizations in alleviating misery and poverty in many cases caused by the very same economic model where they thrive and profit.
We have selected a piece by Niamh Hayes & Richard Seymour in The Jacobin Magazine on an aspect in some ways linked to the philanthrocapitalism which is celebrity activism. Which agenda is serving this kind of activism and who ultimately benefits are some of the issues forcefully tackled by this piece. We have added hyperlinks and context material at the end.
Bono rocking it at the World Economic Forum in 2007 /Copyright World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org)
swiss-image.ch/Photo by Remy Steinegger
swiss-image.ch/Photo by Remy Steinegger
Philanthropic poverty. Bono and other philanthropic capitalists push charity to defend property by Niamh Hayes & Richard Seymour The Jacobin Magazine
When there is a problem in Africa, who are you going to call? Bob Geldof
and Bono repeatedly nominate themselves. But why should anyone’s fate
be entrusted to the delusional, creepy, self-parodying rock-star
messianism of this pair of rich tax dodgers? What do they have to offer?
The short answer is, they offer us a spectacle. And a spectacle, as Guy Debord argued,
is not just a collection of images. It is a social relationship
mediated by images. Those who participate in the spectacle get to
experience this social relationship in a special way by consuming the
images.
The spectacle of Band Aid
— a “charity supergroup” responsible for the 1984 festival Live Aid and
its hit single, “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” and subsequent events
including the 2005 debt campaign Live 8 — is rooted in a colonial
relationship to Africa in which, as the political scientist Graham
Harrison has shown, “Britishness” is traditionally constructed through
campaigns to “save” the continent from blights and disasters. The “feel
good” factor derives from the spectacle-positioning of Britain as “doing
good” in the world.
