Brand Aid: Shopping Well to Save the World

(Paperback)

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'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.

Reviews

"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

"Readers and academics interested in the ways corporate philanthropy is evolving will find this useful, as will armchair sociologists."Publishers Weekly

"This is a thoroughly researched and well-written book and one that pulls no punches; you know from the very first pages how the (RED) initiative will be dissected and found wanting. Thoughtful and highly critical." Times Higher Education

Author Bio

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. Stefano Ponte is senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. He is the coauthor of Trading Down: Africa, Value Chains, and the Global Economy and The Coffee Paradox: Global Markets, Commodity Trade, and the Elusive Promise of Development.