Celebrity humanitarianism, transnational emotion and the rise of neoliberal citizenship

Abstract

Celebrity humanitarianism is a form of advocacy for the poor and ill, primarily those populations residing in developing regions of the world. Often the celebrities attempt to galvanize support and care for these distant populations through various kinds of emotional practices, which are promoted and sustained across space through the invocation of community and the use of new social media. The articulation of community, empathy and fan activism creates an experience of citizenship that appears to transcend national borders and enables affective relations between distant individuals and places. In this article, I analyse the mechanisms of emotion in the constitution of these deterritorialized networks, including the specific practices and pastoral language that draw individuals into feelings of transnational solidarity, through fan groups and fan-celebrity engagement. Further, I address the ways in which the emotional enrolment of individuals in this vein can be read as part of a larger process of neoliberal citizenship formation and depoliticization, in which subjects are subtly directed away from state-based responses to problems of poverty and ill health, and towards more individualized, enterprising, and market-mediated forms of social aid.

Governing the noisy sphere: Geographies of noise regulation in the US

“…This discussion draws on recent work from geographers and others on biopolitics, health, and neoliberal forms of citizenship (e.g. Mitchell, 2016;Rosenberg, 2016;Sparke, 2017). Building on this scholarship, I argue that documents like NCA and SNO gesture toward sensible citizenship-a sphere of belonging delineated by appropriate bodily behavior, both in terms of physical activity (sense) and ethics (sensibility).…”

The ‘crooked timber’ of humanitarianism

“…The process consists in finely tuned management of emotion in advanced economies to create 'feeling of transnational solidarity' 'that draw individuals into feelings of transnational solidarity, through fan groups and fan-celebrity engagement' (ibid.). Mitchell (2016) addresses the management of emotion as part of 'a larger process of neoliberal citizenship formation and depoliticization, in which subjects are subtly directed away from state-based responses to problems of poverty and ill health, and towards more individualized, enterprising, and market-mediated forms of social aid (p. 288).…”

Political geography I: Agency

“…The broadened conception of who qualifies as a political agent has led to considerable research on the persons and groups who are less likely to participate in formal politics and have thereby tended to remain outside the purview of political geography. They include children and adolescents (Benwell and Hopkins, 2016; Korzenevika, 2016; Woon, 2017), indigenous peoples (Gibson, 2013), artists (Ingram, 2016), activists from across the political spectrum (Dittmer and Sturm, 2010; Ehrkamp and Nagel, 2017; Hopkins and Todd, 2015; Mitchell, 2016; Strange, 2013), or indeed the enterprising academics themselves (Koch, 2016). To analyze these agents is not to lapse into ontological groupism but to add facets to our view of agency and to thereby rethink agency and action (Dodds et al, 2013; see also Daley et al, 2017).…”