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New Actors and Alliances in Development brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars exploring how development financing and interventions are being shaped by a wider and more complex platform of actors than usually considered in the existing literature. The contributors also trace a changing set of key relations and alliances in developmentthose between business and consumers; NGOs and celebrities; philanthropic organizations and the state; diaspora groups and transnational advocacy networks; ruling elites and productive capitalists; and between 'new donors' and developing country governments. Despite the diversity of these actors and alliances, several commonalities arise: they are often based on hybrid transnationalism and diffuse notions of development responsibility; rather than being new per se, they are newly being studied as engaging in practices that are now coming to be understood as 'development'; and they are limited in their ability to act as agents of development by their lack of accountability or pro-poor commitment. The articles in this collection point to images and representations as increasingly important in development 'branding' and suggest fruitful new ground for critical development studies.

Consumers, partnering with corporations and celebrities, are forming new alliances in international development through what we call 'Brand Aid' initiatives. At a time of shifting relationships between public and private aid, commodities are sold as the means for achieving development for recipients and good feelings for consumers simultaneously. In this article, first we formalize our conceptual model of Brand Aid at the triple interface of causes, branded products and celebrities. Then, we conduct a systematic empirical analysis of contemporary Brand Aid initiatives including three in-depth case studies of: 'Win One Give One', TOMS shoes and Product (RED). We argue that these not only use imaginaries of development to sell products to Northern consumers, but also engage in the work of a 'story factory'producing truths about international development and consumer engagement that make development appear simplified, manageable and marketable. We conclude that, in Brand Aid, the problems themselves and the people who experience them are branded and marketed to Western consumers (through celebritized multi-media story-telling) just as effectively as the products that will 'save' them.

Celebrity advocacy for environmental causes has grown dramatically in recent decades. An examination of this expansion and the rise of causes such as climate change reveals the shifting politics and organization of advocacy. We address these changes to the construction and interpretation of celebrity advocacy and detail how they have produced a rich variety of environmental celebrity advocates. We also account for differences between legacy (e.g., radio, TV, newspapers) and online celebrities and their practices (e.g., hashtag publics, brandjacking, online communities). Environmental celebrity advocates’ performances can be divided into nine tropes, each characterized in part by the particular varieties of environmentalism that they promote. We present the tropes and discuss their five cross-cutting themes. We conclude with a set of questions for future research on celebrity environmentalism. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 45 is October 19, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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