ABSTRACT
The pop star charity spectacles of the 1980s remain a touchstone in debates about media representation, humanitarianism and public engagement in development education. Media, communication and development studies scholars argue that the charity representations of Band Aid and Live Aid, in relying on the pitiful image of the racialized ‘famine child’, shaped popular British stereotypes about Africa and development for a generation, creating persisting impressions of Africans as needy, and white development and aid workers as their caring saviours. 2 This neocolonialist critique is complemented by what Chouliaraki (2012: 4) terms the “commodification argument”, which points to how the socio-ecological complexities of humanitarian emergencies and development processes are reduced to simplistic marketing slogans and sentimental narratives of individual generosity, whereby “suffering turns into a fleeting spectacle without moral content”. And yet the period is also remembered as “the golden age of humanitarianism” in recent memoirs, television commemorations and legacy events that strive to recapture its populist energy, most notably the 2005 Live 8 concerts that targeted the meeting of the economically dominant Group of Eight national leaders. 3 For example, in his memoir, Oxfam relief manager Tony Vaux (2001: 43) recalls the electrifying experience in Britain during the Ethiopian famine of 1984 when “humanitarianism quickly became a popular cause and the status of aid workers rose high. People in towns and villages all over the UK organized fund-raising events. The whole world joined in simultaneous pop concerts to express their compassion. Money poured into aid agencies as never before”. This vision of a ‘whole world’ participating in compassionate display explains the utopian aspiration that Band Aid still represents; as Edkins (2000: 122) writes, “in supporting Band Aid and Live Aid, even when they knew that this type of aid was problematic, people were participating in the production of the social fantasy, the new humanitarian international community”.
