Brand Aid

Brand Aid

Shopping Well to Save the World

Lisa Ann Richey and Stefano Ponte

A critical account of the rise of celebrity-driven “compassionate consumption”

272 Pages, 6 x 9 in

BUY
  • Paperback
  • 9780816665464
  • Published: March 11, 2011
  • Series: A Quadrant Book
BUY

Details

Brand Aid

Shopping Well to Save the World

Series: A Quadrant Book

Lisa Ann Richey and Stefano Ponte

ISBN: 9781452916569

Publication date: November 30th, 2013

272 Pages

12

8 x 5

There is a desperate need for critical intervention in debates about Product RED and other manifestations of development capitalism. Brand Aid, a smart and edgy book, deftly meets that need. It asks big, penetrating questions about production, consumption, and global inequality and it answers them in rich and provocative ways.—Samantha King, Queens University


Brand Aid is an original and important contribution to the critique of international development. Lisa Ann Richey and Stefano Ponte argue that the celebritization of aid marks an important shift that in effect divests the wealthy of any responsibility for global poverty. Brand Aid is a great book.—Vinh Kim Nguyen, University of Montreal


“Has there ever been a better reason to shop?” asks an ad for the Product RED American Express card, telling members who use the card that buying “cappuccinos or cashmere” will help to fight AIDS in Africa. Cofounded in 2006 by the rock star Bono, Product RED has been a particularly successful example of a new trend in celebrity-driven international aid and development, one explicitly linked to commerce, not philanthropy.

In Brand Aid, Lisa Ann Richey and Stefano Ponte offer a deeply informed and stinging critique of “compassionate consumption.” Campaigns like Product RED and its precursors, such as Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong and the pink-ribbon project in support of breast cancer research, advance the expansion of consumption far more than they meet the needs of the people they ostensibly serve. At the same time, such campaigns sell both the suffering of Africans with AIDS (in the case of Product RED) and the power of the average consumer to ameliorate it through familiar and highly effective media representations.

Using Product RED as its focal point, this book explores how corporations like American Express, Armani, Gap, and Hallmark promote compassionate consumption to improve their ethical profile and value without significantly altering their business model, protecting themselves from the threat to their bottom lines posed by a genuinely engaged consumer activism. Coupled with the phenomenon of celebrity activism and expertise as embodied by Bono, Richey and Ponte argue that this “causumerism” represents a deeply troubling shift in relief efforts, effectively delinking the relationship between capitalist production and global poverty.

Lisa Ann Richey is professor of international development studies at Roskilde University. She is the author of Population Politics and Development: From the Policies to the Clinics.

PrefaceIntroduction: Product (RED) and the Reinvention of International Aid1. Band Aid to Brand Aid: Celebrity Experts and Expert Celebrities2. The Rock Man’s Burden: Vanity, Value, and Virtual Salvation3. Saving Africa: AIDS and the Rebranding of Aid4. Hard Commerce: Corporate Social Responsibility for Distant Others5. Doing Good by Shopping Well: The Rise of “Causumer” CultureConclusion: Celebrities, Consumers, and Everyone ElseNotesWorks CitedIndex