ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the mediated communication that celebrity philanthropy and activism create, focussing on the gendered nature of a particular set of stories about their engagement in international relations and diplomacy, development and humanitarian actions characterised by ‘taking it home’. This intense form of engagement involves the presentation of the political persona merging with the private. Two instances are analysed: taking it home through romantic relationships and marriage, looking at US actor and philanthropist-activist George Clooney’s relationship to Amal Alamuddin, an international law and human rights lawyer and activist. The second instance of taking it home concentrates on celebrity transnational adoptions, i.e. famous people are willing to uproot their private lives to further sociopolitical causes, analysing the cases of US pop star Madonna and actress-director Angelina Jolie. The chapter elaborates on how these cases create stories not just about ‘the West’ and ‘the Rest’, but about gender, relating it to the historical role of women in global processes of imperialism and to notions of motherhood and parenting.
