From Band Aid to South Sudan: Dynamics of Celebrity Engagement in Humanitarian Action and International Politics

Room 00-13, Ground Floor Chambers Building, OU, Milton Keynes

International Development seminar presented by Dr Tanja R Müller (Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester), who will revisit the Ethiopian famine.

Lunch (provided) from 12.00, presentation & discussion 12.30 - 14.00. To reserve your free place, please email Claire Emburey.

Abstract
The presentation will focus on media representations of 'Africa' and the surge in celebrity engagement in the Global South. The latter is traced back to the 1980s famine in Ethiopia, the iconic TV coverage of which resulted in the creation of Band Aid and subsequent celebrity activism. It will be argued that such an engagement centres on a one-dimensional representation of 'Africa' as a place of destitution in which 'innocent' women and children need 'Western' compassion. A compassion often denied by ruthless, predominately male, leaders.

Visual representations have since partly changed in celebrity campaigns – away from starving children towards the agitated celebrity. But this has not altered the underlying gaze and patterns of engagement. These are based on patronising, quasi-imperial definitions of compassion, not on a form of solidarity that respects its counterpart as equal. Even where celebrity campaigns have moved from humanitarian crisis to political engagement, such as in the Sudan campaigns made prominent by George Clooney, representations of conflicts follow a 'Western' logic that relies on the 'white' saviour but lacks real understanding of local contexts. This representation unites the celebrity and general audiences in a constituency of compassion, and ultimately plays a role in demands made from 'Western' political leaders.

Tanja R. Müller is Senior Lecturer in International Development at the Institute for Development Policy and Management, and founding member and former Director of Research (2010-14) at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, both at the University of Manchester. She is the author of The Making of Elite Women. Revolution and Nation Building in Eritrea (Brill, 2005) and Legacies of Socialist Solidarity – East Germany in Mozambique (Lexington, 2014). Her most recent work interrogates activist citizenship as a politics of resistance among refugee populations in urban contexts, as well as celebrity humanitarianism, the visual representation of 'development', and the increasing lack of 'ground truth' in relation to the Global South.