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NGOs and Representation of Suffering

NGOs and Representation of Suffering. “the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it.” Susan Sontag. http://theglobaljournal.net/top100NGOs /. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan — $992.2 million George Mitchell — $750 million (bequest)

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NGOs and Representation of Suffering

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  1. NGOs and Representation of Suffering “the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it.” Susan Sontag

  2. http://theglobaljournal.net/top100NGOs/

  3. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan — $992.2 million • George Mitchell — $750 million (bequest) • Philip and Penelope Knight — $500 million • Michael Bloomberg — $452 million • John and Laura Arnold — $296.2 million • Charles Johnson — $250 million • Pierre and Pam Omidyar — $225 millionIrwin and Joan Jacobs — $221.1 million • Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki — $219 million • Jeffrey Carlton — $212 million (bequest) www.philanthropy.org

  4. Key issues • Political economy of relief • Growth of the “disaster industry” • Ethical dilemmas raised by increased marketization and commodification • Rise of “principled consumerism” • Critiques of NGOs • Changing public funding environment • Rise of new (powerful) players

  5. A Rising Wave of Criticism?

  6. NGOs Humanitarian agencies, social movements and community organisations are the ‘new institutions of representation’ (Shaw, 1996). Their representations, including visual imagery, thus, influence policies, practices and discourses of ‘development’ and connect cultures globally. (Dogra 2007: 161) • Who are they? • What do they do? • How do they gain legitimacy and “authority”? • moral and expert authority

  7. Diversity of NGOs • Orientations • Charitable orientation • Service orientation • Participatory orientation • Empowering orientation • Level • Community • Regional • National • International Types: private voluntary organizations, civil society, independent sector, self-help organizations, grassroots organizations, volunteer sector, transnational social movement organizations, and non-state actors (NSA’s)

  8. The humanitarian dilemma

  9. Scripting “humanitarian narrative” • Bridging distance suffering • Decontextualization • Social construction of relations • Victims as “bare life” • Emphasis on Needs and fulfillment • Making a difference with an act • Suffering sells, guilt compels, celebrity propels

  10. Bridging Distance • Imagery and Distant Suffering (Chouliaraki 2010) • Does distance matter? • Types of distance : geographic, social, cultural, political, economic • Media and proximity • Do ties of community create special duties to aid?

  11. commodification of suffering “Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.” ― Susan Sontag, On Photography The “hunt for more dramatic (as they’re often described) images drives the photographic enterprise, and is part of the normality of a culture in which shock has become a leading stimulus of consumption and a source of value.”

  12. Media technology and the recipe for intervention • Establishing causal connection • The conditions of the possible • Steps for successful interventions

  13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmXHfayS8y8

  14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFbGu52CG3o

  15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbqA6o8_WC0

  16. Online activity Provide an image (a link) produced by a NGO and indicate whether it fits with the “script” we discussed? If not, why not?

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