Crisis and Consumption: ‘Saving’ the Poor and the Seductions of Capitalism

Abstract

This article examines the crisis of capitalist seduction through the lens of online shopping platforms that raise funds for international assistance organizations and development celebrity advertising. Consumer-based giving has altered the commodity fetish into cliché, subsequently masking the capitalist produced crisis of endemic poverty and global inequality. Celebrity supported consumer-based giving and product advertising are used to illustrate the seductions of capitalism. This article argues that international assistance organizations are embedded in the substance and lifeblood of capitalisms' dependence on inequality and poverty to generate profits/wealth. Consumer driven assistance remains a pervasive crisis hidden by seductive shopping platforms camouflaged as compassion.

Charities under austerity: ethnographies of poverty and marginality in Western non-profit and charity associations

“…In other words, clients are channeled through consumption in order to be integrated in the market-driven society. Similarly, fundraising and charity campaigns (particularly for international humanitarianism) increasingly adopt consumer-based principles, offering online shopping platforms for ethical consumption and using celebrities for branding, thereby banalizing the suffering of others (Fluri, 2017). More than a century ago, Engels, in his 1845 treatise on the condition of the working class in England, already pointed out that charitable giving, whether by governments or individuals, is often seen by the givers as a means to conceal suffering that is unpleasant to see.…”