Celebrity Activists

The class discussion about a global civil society was interesting, however, I wish we would have had more time to discuss NGOs and their work during class. Andrew made some good points that not every NGO is the same and that in order to analyze how effective they are, several questions have to be raised.

I am really looking forward to next week’s class and the discussion about celebrity activists, and the Dieter and Kumar and Cooper readings. While I understand Dieter and Kumar’s point, I cannot fully agree with them. They criticize Bono and Jeffrey Sachs and their ideas to increase the amount aid to the developing countries. They believe that aid should actually be reduced (2008, 261). However, cutting off aid to the developing world is not the right answer, either. Instead of just giving the developing countries the aid money and let them do with it what they want, the aid money should be used to help the people in the developing world so that they can learn how to help themselves. Money should be invested in programs that, for example, train the locals how to build water wells. Dieter and Kumar do not explain in their criticism if Bono and Jeffrey Sachs just want to increase aid money regardless of what the money is used for, or if they actually want to increase aid money because they believe that the aid money should be invested in programs so that these countries can learn how to help themselves.

Celebrities like Bono are often criticized for using their celebrity status to raise awareness about issues and misdirecting global activism (Andrew F. Cooper 2007, 129). However, because they are celebrities they can reach a lot more people and make them aware of issues. When U2 wrote the song about Aung San Suu Kyi in 2000, for example, they wanted to make more people aware of what’s going on in Myanmar and that a woman fighting for democracy was put into house arrest by the military government. After the song was released a lot more people knew about Aung San Suu Kyi’s fate. The government in Myanmar even banned the album with the song because it had such a powerful message.

References

Cooper, Andrew F. 2007. “Beyond Hollywood and the Boardroom: Celebrity Diplomacy.” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs 8, no. 2 (Summer): 125-132. Accessed November 21, 2016. https://au-mir.s3.amazonaws.com/prod/Jackson+International+Relations/Readings/Cooper+-+Beyond+Hollywood+%26+the+Boardroom.pdf

Dieter, Heribert and Rajiv Kumar. 2008. “The Downside of Celebrity Diplomacy: The Neglected Complexity of Development.” Global Governance 14, no. 3 (July-September): 259-264. Accessed November 21, 2016. https://au-mir.s3.amazonaws.com/prod/Jackson+International+Relations/Readings/Dieter+%26+Kumar+-+The+Downside+of+Celebrity+Diplomacy.pdf