Instead of being passive receivers of donations, it’s time Ethiopians were paid for their work in the global compassion industry, writes Lisa Ann Richey.
This year’s anniversary remake of Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ was unveiled amid renewed discussion about the song’s portrayal of Africa.
For 40 years now, Ethiopians specifically, and Africans in general, have been doing the work of being worthy recipients for Band Aid. Now, they should be recognised for that work and rewarded as workers. Africa has become a market for profiting from Whiteness. Instead of spreading the royalties of charity singles, the more reasonable approach to fulfilling all those generous Christmas-inspired longings, is to pay Africans for their work.
Like the ghost of Christmas past, the tedious melody of white saviourism/effective emergency fundraising (pick your lens) hit the playlists in December, and we returned to tired debates over whether disempowering stereotypes of suffering strangers are OK, if they generate income to reduce their pain. Sir Bob Geldof summed up his defence of the jingle saying: “There are 600 million hungry people in the world – 300 million are in Africa. We wish it were other but it is not. We can help some of them. That’s what we will continue to do.”
Actually Bob, there are other ways to understand the problem of global hunger and of working towards its solution. Geldof’s framing of the ‘problem,’ echoes prevalent understandings that African suffering is the result of a combination of ‘natural’ disasters, local malevolence and mismanagement. None of which, of course, are linked to global production chains and capitalism, which serve elite interests, not hungry people.
The commodifying compassion collaborative research project explains how producing the good feelings for helpers is a form of affective labour. Causes have been treated as commodities, and sold by celebrities like Geldof for decades. Consumer humanitarianism, ‘brand aid’ and celebrity activism are examples of the corporate norms infiltrating humanitarianism and development.
Moral responsibility, the currency peddled by Geldof, is based on pity for the Ethiopians suffering from famine, not on demands for justice. While pity historically played a role in charity-based philanthropy, the marketability of feeling of compassion is a recent trend in contemporary neoliberal capitalism. When Band Aid is again revived to try to reinvigorate the attention economy for ageing superstars, Ethiopian spokespeople are working to educate Northern publics on the absurdity of these well-intentioned interventions that sent cake and gold to unwitting strangers at the cost of defining an entire nation as pitiful, suffering and lacking.
Work that produces something of value, understood as something that can be sold for a profit, should be paid. Following this argument, the money made from six iterations of Band Aid singles, including celebrity appearances, merch, donations to charities, and of course, the record itself, should be considered as profit. Geldof estimates that they have raised more than £200 million and issued a statement confirming that “100 per cent of all publishing revenues from the sale of the song over the past 35 years (and continuing) and amounting to tens of millions of pounds go and have gone directly to the Band Aid Trust for distribution to projects that aim to help the poor in several countries in Africa.”
Yet, framing the problem as whether or not the celebrities directly profit is a red herring to distract the public from more deeply critical considerations of why claiming to help Africans can produce a profit to begin with. Why are recipients of Band Aid considered to be just that— passive takers of the goodwill of compassionate people in the places where Christmas is the chance to claim our moral worth? Because there are profits to be made from worthy help. Global ‘helping’ initiatives like Band Aid should be held to the same standards as global corporations. Businesses must balance payments between their inputs and labour. Then after balancing inputs and outputs to reveal profit, they are required to distribute dividends with all their shareholders.
Ethiopians should not be recipients of help but agents, working as part of the production cycle for feelings of beneficence. These sentiments, emotions and feelings are used to sell stuff.
Instead of worrying only about whether the profits are going to celebrity humanitarians themselves, this new year we should recognise that the recipients of all the global do-gooding are providing their labour in the production of our good feelings. Thus, they should be paid for this work.
Photo credit: Wes Candela used with permission CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
