Development Studies Annual Lecture
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Clore Management Centre
No booking required
Popular representations of development: creating global alliances or reproducing inequalities?
Professor Uma Kothari
University of Manchester
Most people gain their knowledge about poverty and inequality and other development-related concerns from very public representations of the lives of other people in distant places. Indeed, since the 1980s there has been a vast proliferation of campaigns, charity adverts, musical movements, fair trade marketing, celebrity endorsements and media promotions to support international development. But do these popular representations of international development concerns and the diverse public spheres in which engagements with development take place have the potential to instil ideas of global interconnectedness, produce an ethos of care for distant suffering others and forge new kinds of global alliances? Or do popular, visual images and the increasing involvement of public figures, celebrities and the media reproduce global inequalities, obscure the structural realities of poverty and rather than forging a common humanity reinforce hierarchies between people and places? This lecture explores these issues through an analysis of historical and contemporary representations of international development and the use of popular, visual campaigns to strengthen global connections.
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