The ironic spectator :solidarity in the age of post-humanitarianism /

by Chouliaraki, Lilie. Published by : Polity Press, (Cambridge, Malden, MA :) Physical details: ix, 238 p. : ill. ; 23 cm. ISBN:9780745642109 (hbk.); 0745642101 (hbk.); 074564211X (pbk.); 9780745642116 (pbk.). Year: 2013 Item type: Book
Current library Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Riara University Library
General stack
HM1206.C475 2013 (Browse shelf (Opens below)) C.1 Available 8603/16
Total holds: 0

Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-231) and index.

Solidarity and spectatorship -- The humanitarian imaginary -- Appeals -- Celebrity -- Concerts -- News -- Theatricality, irony, solidarity.

This path-breaking book explores how solidarity towards vulnerable others is performed in our media environment. It argues that stories where famine is described through our own experience of dieting or or where solidarity with Africa translates into wearing a cool armband tell us about much more than the cause that they attempt to communicate. They tell us something about the ways in which we imagine the world outside ourselves. By showing historical change in Amnesty International and Oxfam appeals, in the Live Aid and Live 8 concerts, in the advocacy of Audrey Hepburn and Angelina Jolie as well as in earthquake news on the BBC, this far-reaching book shows how solidarity has today come to be not about conviction but choice, not vision but lifestyle, not others but ourselves - turning us into the ironic spectators of other people's suffering. -Publisher Description.

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