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What might celebrity humanitarianism have to do with empire?

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DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2015.1120153

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 Third World Quarterly

ISSN: 0143-6597 (Print) 1360-2241 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctwq20

What might celebrity humanitarianism have to do

with empire?

April R. Biccum

To cite this article: April R. Biccum (2016): What might celebrity humanitarianism have to do
with empire?, Third World Quarterly, DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2015.1120153

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 Third World Quarterly, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2015.1120153

What might celebrity humanitarianism have to do with

empire?
April R. Biccum
School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Downloaded by [Australian National University] at 14:43 10 February 2016

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The aim of this paper is to bring into conversation two apparently Received 5 July 2015
disparate debates in the fields of politics and International Relations. Accepted 11 November 2015
The first is a debate over celebrity humanitarianism that is divided KEYWORDS
between optimistic scholars, who see in it an enhancement of Celebrity
democracy, and pessimistic scholars, who link it to capitalist humanitarianism
imperialism or a throwback to older colonial tropes. The second is a globalisation
debate over a (new) American empire which has prompted scholars empire
in IR to redress IR’s historic ‘elision’ of empire and to offer new network elites
theories of empire. The paper argues that these two debates each
address the shortcomings in the other and offers speculation on what
celebrity humanitarianism might have to do with empire by bridging
the connections between structuralist political theories of empire and
the cultural accounts offered by postcolonial theory.

Introduction: a tale of two debates

The aim of this paper is to bring into conversation two apparently disparate debates in
the fields of politics and International Relations (IR). The first is a debate about ‘celebrity
humanitarianism’, or ‘diplomacy’, meaning the incursion of high-profile (usually) American
celebrities into fields normally dominated by political actors, particularly in the areas of
political lobbying and economic development. The debate on celebrity humanitarianism is
divided between optimistic approaches, which regard celebrity diplomacy as an enhance-
ment of democracy following networked models of political activity in an age when parlia-
mentary democracy and voter turn-out is under strain in many ‘advanced’ economies, and
critical approaches, which see celebrity humanitarianism as deeply embedded in global
power structures acting either as an ideological mask for globalising capital or as promul-
gating old colonial tropes (a ‘rock man’s burden’). The second is a debate over the existence
of a ‘new’ American empire. ‘Empire’ resurfaced during the previous Bush administration
in the USA to describe new forms of humanitarian intervention that side-stepped issues
of sovereignty;1 new military occupations imposing regime change under the auspices of
democratisation and security2; and the neoliberal financial and trading order which, under

CONTACT April R. Biccum April.biccum@anu.edu.au

© 2016 Southseries Inc., www.thirdworldquarterly.com
 2 A. R. Biccum

the label of ‘globalisation’, has hollowed out state apparatuses subject to its lending terms.3
The American empire debate (AED) has centred around whether or not an American empire
exists,4 whether or not it is benevolent,5 how much comparison and continuity can be had
with the British Empire,6 and thus whether or not what we are witnessing is a capitalist
empire,7 or a new form of globalised empire not localised around a particular state but
embedded in the global governance architecture of Bretton Woods and beyond.8 The AED
led to the revival of the term ‘empire’ both apologetically and as an analytic at the close of the
20th century in both the public and academic domain, and has led to scholars in IR offering
universal political theories of empire.
Why should these two debates be brought into the same analytic field? While they might
seem disparate, they are connected, first, because each hinges upon a curious problematisa-
tion of modernity and the reversal of an ‘elision’9 and, second, because each can redress the
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short-comings of the other. Where the critical literature on celebrity humanitarianism draws
upon postcolonial theory to theorise its cultural power and Marxist theories of capitalist
imperialism to critique its insertion into the global economy, it does so without theoretically
elaborating the concepts of empire and imperialism and fails to address why older colonial
tropes might persist. What the revival of the category ‘empire’ as an analytic in the lexicon of
IR has revealed is that these are not received and straightforward categories. As a result, the
AED has prompted scholars in IR to begin to redress the dearth of political theory around
empire as a form of politics, but largely in structuralist terms which fail to address the substan-
tial contribution made by postcolonial theory to both theorising the cultural dimensions of
imperial power and making empire more visible in the social sciences as an object of study.
This paper does not aim to prove definitively that celebrity humanitarianism is congruent
with American empire (however defined). Instead, it redresses the limitations of the critical
celebrity literature by asking more concretely what celebrity humanitarianism might have
to do with ‘empire’, new or continuous, American or global, rather than criticising celebrity
humanitarianism on the basis of an unexplored notion of capitalist imperialism or associating
it with older colonial tropes. It also points to a limitation of the structuralist approaches to
theorising empire politically by suggesting that empire is multi-dimensional: cultural as well
as economic and political. In so doing, the paper illustrates how the connection between
empire and celebrity humanitarianism can be made more concrete, while pointing out that
a theory of empire that is merely structural is incomplete.
Each debate occupies a healthy amount of printed space and both are structured by the
same conceptual fault lines. These are: the relationship of either celebrity or empire to dem-
ocratic politics; the place of either phenomenon in historical perspective; the nature of the
power of individual actors in a new networked terrain of governance in the case of celebrity
and, in the case of empire, the role or not of the state, particularly the American state; and
finally the centrality of capital to either phenomenon. Each hinges upon a problematisa-
tion of modernity. Sociologically modernity is associated with the separating out of social,
economic and political life into autonomous spheres.10 The current trend of A-list American
celebrity involvement in political activity (and the celebrity-like behaviour of politicians) has
come in for so much academic commentary because it blurs these boundaries;11 in so doing
it is emblematic of what political sociologists call late or second modernity.12 ‘Late modernity’
is understood by these scholars to represent the postmodern overcoming of bureaucracy
in all spheres of public and political life, be they party-bound or in state governance, which
have been replaced by more flexible, fluid and lean modalities of organisation.13
 Third World Quarterly 3

The revival of the term ‘empire’ is curious because the 20th century had been both publicly
and academically declared ‘post-imperial’. The AED has sparked a renewed interest in theo-
rising empire as a political form among IR scholars because scholars have recognised that
it has not been theorised systematically in the same as has been done for other categories
such as democracy, capital and the state. Scholars have responded by theorising empire in
structuralist and formalistic terms as a relation of governance, often using network theory,
much like the optimistic literature on celebrity humanitarianism. The formalistic approach
tries empirically to answer the question of whether or not the USA is an empire and how
the category shifts our understanding of the international system.14 Very little commentary
has been made about the revival of the term as an analytic in an era when the postwar
order that was meant to marshal in the state as the final form of government. The notion of
modernity associated with the Weberian state is thus also problematized both by the revival
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of the term ‘empire’ as an analytic and by the return of what is conventionally presumed to
be an anti-modern form of politics.
Both debates also hinge on the reversal of two elisions. Blurring the boundaries between
culture and politics is curious, because Edward Said argued in Culture and Imperialism that
part of what makes imperial culture function epistemologically is this very separation of
culture and politics operationally and analytically.15 Celebrity humanitarianism appears,
then, to be a reversal of this trend. On the other hand, the recognition that IR as a discipline
has largely ignored empire is a clear reversal of the ‘elision’ of empire in the social sciences
pointed to and partially redressed by postcolonial theory. The postwar order was meant to
herald the end of the old imperialisms and the dawn of a rational world order predicated
upon democracy, liberalism and nation-states. The return of the word ‘empire’ as a viable
description for international politics complicates the narrative of progressive modernity
underpinning so much political life and academic scholarship of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The task of theorising empire has been taken up by scholars such as Daniel Nexon, Herfried
Munkler, Alexander Motyl and Hendrik Spruyt, among others.16 IR has been a late comer to
the table in this regard because, while ‘empire’ as an analytic may have faded in the mid-
20th century (Marxist analytics of imperialism notwithstanding), the study of 19th-century
empires has expanded exponentially as a result of globalisation and postwar migration. The
1970s saw scholars enter the academy from the formerly colonised world, scholars who,
beginning in the Humanities with Edward Said, challenged its Eurocentric orientation and
pointed to the elision of empire in the making of the Western world.17 This preoccupation
with empire spread to other disciplines, notably history and anthropology, and has shifted
the way empire has been understood by including nuanced studies of popular culture and
advertising, its gendered relations and the study of empire from the perspectives of those
most marginalised by it.18
Despite this the AED largely ignores these contributions, focusing instead upon the mil-
itaristic, diplomatic and economic features of American or globalised empire and has given
almost no consideration to how an American empire might also be constructed culturally;
such considerations would include the role of popular culture in the production, mainte-
nance and spread of hegemonic narratives which in turn facilitate the production of the
subjectivities appropriate to empire. Formalistic approaches to empire ignore culture but
provide a framework for understanding empire in terms of elites and their transnational
capacities, and the role of patronage and networks in forming the backbone of empire. It is
at this cross-section – of culture, class, subjectivity and formalism – that this paper will bring
 4 A. R. Biccum

celebrity humanitarianism into the same analytic frame as the AED to argue that this most
recent trend in celebrity culture only strengthens the case for the existence of an American
empire.
The revival of empire as an analytic is confronted by both the problem of definition and
that of historical change. Empire is difficult to define because not only do empires change
their shape, style and mode of governance over the course of a single entity (such as the
500-year history of Rome or Britain) but there is also a diversity of large and powerful polit-
ical entities that have emerged and fallen over the course of human history. The term can
be applied just as easily as an analytic or pejorative in the politics of historical writing. The
response of the literature to these problems is to theorise empire in structuralist, ‘ideal-typ-
ical’ approaches, conceptualising empire in terms of its networked nature, like a wheel with
spokes and no rim.19 Alternatively scholars have tried to side-step the comparative issue by
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providing a typology of empires from great to world empires and ancient to modern.20 Once
the definition of empire is unpicked, it problematises assumptions within the critical literature
on celebrity humanitarianism that empire and imperialism are received and understood
categories that require no theoretical elaboration.
In what follows I evaluate each side the academic debate on celebrity humanitarianism
drawing out their gaps. While there is no satisfactory all-encompassing political theory of
empire, I survey across both formalistic IR, Marxist and network theories and more socio-
logical and historical accounts to show that what they all have in common is an emphasis
on the role of elites as part of the structure of empire and a key resource that has a vested
interest in empire’s maintenance and expansion. In particular I focus on S. N. Eisenstadt’s The
Political Sociology of Empires; Michael Doyle’s Empire; and Peter Cain and Anthony Hopkins’
British Imperialism, 1688–2000. I then turn to evaluating what kind of elite American celebrity
represents by reviewing some of the academic debate which establishes its historical signif-
icance, its class dimensions and its relationship to communication technologies, capital and
globalisation. I then link this discussion to the ways that changes in the political economy
of Hollywood can be connected to the advocacy and activism of A-listers, emphasising par-
ticularly the modality of class formation and articulation that are not as strongly examined
in recent works such as Ilan Kapoor’s Celebrity Humanitarianism.

Debating celebrity politics: the optimistic account

Celebrity diplomacy emphasises the symbolic, communicative, spotlight-inducing nature of
the activities.21 Celebrity humanitarianism emphasises the activism and agency of celebrity
philanthropy or charitable work.22 The distinction is not really helpful because the category of
celebrity can be stretched to include politicians and corporate magnates (such as Bill Gates
and his Foundation, which has become a global player in development and health); and
because the kinds of activities that fall under diplomacy or humanitarianism run the gamut
from UN ambassadorship and charity endorsement to the set-up and funding of NGOs (such
as Sean Penn’s Haitian Relief Organization, J/P HRO) or direct development project work
(such as Madonna’s building of a school in Malawi or Oprah Winfrey’s Leadership Academy
in South Africa). Whether celebrities engage in awareness raising (such as Mia Farrow’s role
in highlighting China’s human rights record during the Beijing Olympics in 2008), or inno-
vative intervention (such as the creation of ‘Not on our Watch’ by actors George Clooney,
Don Cheadle and Matt Damon, which uses satellite technology to monitor and document
 Third World Quarterly 5

atrocities by governments in Darfur, Burma and Zimbabwe), their activities have invited
academic commentary and debate.
The literature on celebrity humanitarianism is distinct from the field of celebrity studies
and occurs across a several disciplines, notably IR and Political Science, Development Studies,
Mass Communications Studies, Cultural Studies and Critical International Political Economy.
The optimistic accounts either want to measure celebrity power in terms of its impact on
behaviour or policy,23 offers pragmatic descriptions of how it can be more effective or cele-
brates it as part of a democratising trend facilitated by communications technologies that
also engender new capacities for political organisation and mobilisation, and new modali-
ties of governance.24 While some have argued that celebrity humanitarianism has resulted
in a decline in the quality of public debate,25 others have emphasised the particularities of
celebrity subjectivities as flexible nodes of public identification that are emblematic of ‘late
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modernity’. Celebrities constitute new reference points of association and model new forms
of civic engagement beyond partisan politics and into single-issue local and international
campaigns, be they environmental, developmental, health or human rights. ‘Celebrities’,
argues Wheeler, ‘represent an engagement with politics based on post-ideological life style
choices’.26 Celebrities become privileged, highly autonomous and flexible agents in this hori-
zon of activity that then enables more ‘eclectic, fluid, issue-specific and personality bound
forms of political recognition’;27 they transcend other agencies of social authority and give
political voice to those who follow them.
Most of the literatures which engage network theory wax optimistic about the flexi-
ble, entrepreneurial and non-bureaucratic nature of networks. Celebrity humanitarians are
regarded as lean and efficient actors able to bypass the bureaucratic structure of states, NGOs
and multilateral agencies.28 The market-oriented activities of many are in keeping with recent
challenges to the bureaucratic aid architecture, both in the form of ‘aid effectiveness’ and a
through a literature which argues that free agents divested from donor apparatuses could
do development better.29 The celebrity and entertainment industry in advanced consumer
capitalist countries follows this network trend. Scholars have observed a disaggregation of
national cultural industries, with the opening of markets, rising affluence in some diaspora
communities and the rise of alternative sources of cultural products, such as Bollywood,
creating a more competitive and fluid global domain of popular culture and an increas-
ingly crowded marketplace. These developments have led to a critique of Herbert Schiller’s
‘Cultural Imperialism’ in preference for an emphasis on ‘Global Culture’.30 In this context link-
ing the US entertainment industry with any notion of empire or imperialism has become
passé. The cultural imperialism thesis has been discredited and the elision of empire in the
social sciences thus far means that it commonly equated only with colonialism and was
misunderstood as centralised and direct governance abroad. The association of globalisa-
tion with democratisation makes it easy for these scholars to be optimistic about the role of
celebrity humanitarians in an emerging global culture or an expansion of democratic politics.
However, much of this literature fails to frame it in an international context, yet most
celebrity diplomacy cannot be separated from the analytic of development politics and
globalisation. While changes to democratic participation at the level of the consumer cit-
izen might be state-specific in advanced economies, the agency, scope for action and the
issues in which the highest profile celebrities engage are transnational. The framework of
globalisation and global capital is taken up by other areas of the literature which situate the
 6 A. R. Biccum

trans-nationality of celebrity politics in broader historical context and connect its contem-
porary manifestation with empire or imperialism.

Debating celebrity politics: the pessimistic account

There are two approaches in the critical literature. One that sees celebrity humanitarianism
as a throwback to older colonial tropes and one that sees it as performing an ideological
masking of real material relations. For example, Zine Magubane offers a reading of the ways
that Bono and Oprah Winfrey deploy the memory of empire in the recounting of their biog-
raphies to establish their legitimacy, and argues that identitarian issues of race and class
play out in each case. Magubane takes the colonial throwback approach: ‘Celebrities can
be seen as modern day missionaries who are also engaged in a process of image building
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through philanthropy’, which ‘has its roots in the nineteenth century’.31 Product Red is a
manifestation of a centuries-old process which ties commodity culture to a ‘civilising mis-
sion’. Celebrity humanitarianism has a latent connection with empire by being the modern
day version of some of its cultural functionaries and/or being historically rooted in some
of the same assumptions. Other contributions in the ‘throwback approach’ argue that the
optimistic empirical approach ‘participates itself in the production of a new colonial order of
Western global governance’.32 It has also been elaborated in Robert Clarke’s edited volume
Celebrity Colonialism: Fame, Power and Representation in Colonial and Postcolonial Cultures,
which makes the case in several of its chapters that celebrity functions ‘as a vehicle for pro-
motion of Euro-American cultural hegemony’.33
Other contributions to the literature contend that celebrity humanitarianism does its
ideological work by masking material relations which are really imperialistic. For example,
Richey and Ponte make the case that Bono’s Product Red represents a new modality of aid
which mobilises familiar representation tropes of sex, gender and race, masking the social
and environmental relations of trade and production that underpin poverty, inequality and
disease. The erasure of material conditions in the spectacle of charity make Product Red
an updated reinvention of European imperial relations with Africa, a ‘Rock man’s burden’.34
Michael Goodman makes the case that celebrity advocacy has an ambiguous effect on the
cultural politics of fair trade by shifting the locus of solidarity with farmers in the global South
in the purchasing of fair trade products to an association with celebrity anesthetisation of
those same products, which masks the shifting politics in fair trade production.35
The most sustained critical account comes from Ilan Kapoor, who deploys a Zizekian
ideological critique with its origins in Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Celebrity charity work is ideological work: it not only masks the cause of inequality, but hand-
somely profits from this deception too. The very emergence of celebrities as diplomats on the
world stage is tied to the development of late capitalism […] which promotes individual initiative
and philanthropy as a panacea for structural problems.36
Kapoor addresses the question of materiality through the celebrity humanitarian’s personal
economic gain. He argues that in the ‘humanitarian celebrity’ we have witnessed the creation
of a new ‘Brand identity’ that has a more economic and less philanthropic interest (although
one cannot lay claim to knowledge of the motivations of these actors) in their humanitarian
work. Kapoor points out that charity work increases brand value and there are apparatuses
in place to help connect celebrities to causes that contribute directly to an increase in remu-
neration per film. For instance, there are significant tax benefits from establishing a charitable
 Third World Quarterly 7

foundation of one’s own and these foundations have higher administrative costs than the
sum of the donations they disperse; some celebrities merely lend their name to a foundation
for a fee and celebrities are an endemic part of the corporate world earning some of the
highest incomes globally. Kapoor also points out that many of the celebrity humanitarians
are entrepreneurs in their own right, building their own diverse investment portfolios and,
as in the case of Bono, not always delinking their business interests from their humanitarian
work. According to Kapoor, Bono set about ‘advertising Africa as a business opportunity in
the manner of an agent of capital’.37
Not only are humanitarian celebrities deeply immersed in capitalism but their charity work is
entangled within it and unquestioningly promotes it. Yet what they fail to realise (or admit) is
that it is this very capitalism that is so often the root cause of the inequality they seek to address
through their humanitarianism.38
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Kapoor offers a class and material analysis of celebrity humanitarianism but, just as with other
critical scholars, he marshals a received understanding of imperialism. For instance, while he
points out that Angelina Jolie’s ‘politicisation’ occurs via her filming in Cambodia, where it
is the lower production costs that keep her salary so high, Kapoor says ‘but such economic
imperialism is complemented and supported by cultural imperialism with the third world
being used by celebrities as both cultural backdrop and dumping ground’.39 Kapoor separates
economic from cultural imperialism when one of the contributions of postcolonial theory to
the social sciences (apart from making empire more visible as an object of study) has been
that culture was integral to the structure and functioning of empire and imperialism. When
is empire or imperialism not always already cultural? This under-investigation of empire and
imperialism occurs again when Kapoor concludes: ‘In other words, new humanitarianism has
increasingly become neo-imperialism, allowing the west to “transform conflicts, decrease
violence and set the stage for liberal development”’,40 with no elaboration of how and when
imperialism is renewed and what deeper theoretical apparatus of capitalism and historical
change needs to accompany the application of the suffix ‘neo’.
All this literature makes sound contributions to a critique of celebrity humanitarian-
ism, but what it does not do is situate its analysis within the contemporary debate on
empire, American or otherwise. It also fails to consider how celebrity might function as
much structurally as representationally in the empire’s construction and maintenance.
My argument is that, to link the phenomena of contemporary celebrity diplomacy with
empire (American or otherwise) there needs to be a discussion about celebrities as elites,
whose status as elites arises fundamentally from the economic structure in which they
are embedded and promote.

Structuralist theories of empire and the role of elites

Despite the problems with defining and theorising empire thrown up by the AED, three texts
help elaborate the role of elites, patronage and transnational actors in empires of various
types, each with a slightly different disciplinary framing. Eisenstadt’s The Political Systems of
Empires offers a political sociology of early ‘historical bureaucratic empires’; Doyle’s Empires
offers a structuralist approach in the IR tradition, centring its definition on relations between
states; and Cain and Hopkins’ British Imperialism, 1688–2000 offers a Marxist and materialist
reading of the continuities of British capitalist imperialism predicated upon the continuities
of finance capital and a ‘gentlemanly Capitalist Class’.
 8 A. R. Biccum

Eisenstadt’s text is trying to account for vestiges of modernity (understood as bureaucratic

differentiation) in localities conventionally regarded by sociology as ‘traditional’. The existence
of what he calls ‘historical bureaucratic empires’ requires a certain degree of state centralisa-
tion, which breaks down ‘traditional pastoral’ forms of governance, produces differentiation
in governance and a change in the type of elites, creating ‘free floating’ resources that then
create the ability for the empire to expand. Bureaucratic differentiation divides governance
up into groups of tasks, breaks down established ascriptive networks, creating new types of
elites who become ‘free floating’ but can then sometimes threaten the existing regime or be
reorganised or coalesce into new ascriptive or patronage formations, creating the continuing
threat of imperial attrition.41 What is important about later editions of Eisenstadt’s text is
that, while it was originally trying to account for why vestiges of ‘modernity’ were apparent
in an antiquated political form (following Weber’s teleological understanding of historical
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development), he is forced later to admit that the study of empires shows that Europe does
not have the monopoly on modernity and historical change does not follow a set path.
Michael Doyle offers a much simpler account of the structure of empire as the relation-
ship characterised by one highly centralised metropolitan state with control over both the
domestic and foreign policy of its periphery. Colonial governance from the centre, direct or
indirect, will depend on the type of polity that exists in the periphery, ie patrimonial states
and strong states can be governed indirectly, more ‘traditional’ societies require more direct
administration. Here again is the role of elites in both the metropole and the periphery; where
strong elites exist already a more indirect mode of governance is necessary. This feature of
(European maritime) empires is what gets missed when scholarship in the social sciences
takes the category as read and presumes that there is nothing imperial in globalisation
because there is no longer any direct administration. Doyle also emphasises the role of
transnational forces in the metropole, which arise as a result of development and modernity
and are crucial in the spread, maintenance and governance of empires.42
Cain and Hopkins focus on elites and their role in the reorganisation of capital via the
shift from mercantilism to finance capital and their articulation and reproduction as a ‘gen-
tlemanly’ class. They periodise the British Empire from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which
was saw a revolution in financing facilities, a centralisation of the state and the invention of
the Bank of England. Cain and Hopkins then trace an historical continuity of the ascendency
of the financial elite, who need to be understood in class terms via their education, their
family structure and marriage patterns. For example, wealthy industrialists would marry
their daughters into banking families to acquire the advantages and 'gentlemanly' status
of the banking elite, while the aristocracy would send their younger sons to administrative
outposts within the empire. Their study is important because it underscores again how an
elite class emerges from the economic arrangements of the metropole, which then become
the mobile transnational forces of administration, colonisation and investment,43 but also
how these class arrangements are indelibly rooted in familial and gender structures.
The network-centric literature theorises empire as a series of differential bargaining
among metropolitan and peripheral elites; these are governance arrangements.44 Here there
is no new insight as there is already a host of studies which point to the role of patronage as a
means of the insertion into and socio-cultural reorganisation of peripheries. Most notable has
been Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm’s notion of the ways that empires ‘invent tradition’,45
whereby colonial governance rearranges relations of power according to assumptions about
the local ‘traditional’ culture, creating hierarchies of patronage where they did not always
 Third World Quarterly 9

exist or were not so rigidly configured or so sharply hierarchical.46 Benedict Anderson’s now
seminal study of the origins of nationalism in the periphery of European empires also implies
a structure of empire predicated upon a network of bureaucratic functionaries capable of
being placed interchangeably throughout the empire (in this case Iberian) and who form
a language community, which meant that they formed a transnational resource for empire
that could not be pinched by rival monarchs.47 More recent studies on the impacts of neo-
liberal restructuring have also emphasised its effects on elites and patronage. Studies such
as those by Joel Migdal, Betrand Badie, J.-F. Bayart, and Achille Mbembe have, in varying
degrees of empirical detail, argued that reforms endorsed by the institutions of global gov-
ernance have ‘hollowed out’ the state and created the conditions for more corruption and
the exacerbation of patronage networks.48 What is clear from this disparity of studies on the
form that empire takes is that, if modern European non-contiguous empires are networked,
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elites as transnational forces and networks of patronage are a vital part. It doesn’t mean that,
wherever you find patronage, there you will find empire, but the network character of these
particular historical empires is also one populated by people in hierarchical arrangements
of power. Class and subjectivity, politics, economics and culture are thus vital components
of theorising empire.

Celebrity: what kind of elite?

There is also a debate in Celebrity Studies organised broadly around the relationship between
celebrity, communications and democracy, and how to understand celebrity historically,
economically or in class terms. Scholars in this debate have defined celebrity as new types
of branded subjectivity specific to capitalism, or as ‘historically situated discursive forma-
tions’49 that are regarded as part of the historical shift caused by technological changes in
communications, and concomitant societal shifts in organisation, governance and culture.
Many scholars offer distinctions between fame, notoriety and celebrity. The capacity for
fame and notoriety is dependent upon the geographical reach of communicative networks.
There are limitless reasons why people might achieve fame or notoriety now and in the past.
A queen might be known in or beyond her realm, with her image on the coinage of empire;
an unapprehended serial killer might have nightly news coverage that makes him or her
notorious, but not a celebrity. Chris Rojek distinguishes between ‘three different categories
of celebrity’, ascribed following bloodlines and patronage; achieved as a result of perceived
accomplishments; and attributed, public representations of an individual as noteworthy by
intermediaries.50
Scholars debate whether celebrity is new or has historical antecedents in older types of
elites, such as European court society.51 The debate about historical antecedents also has
differences of opinion about the relationship between celebrity and democracy. For other
scholars celebrity in its modern form is linked inimically to the rise of mass consumer cul-
ture, with print commodities from the late 17th century which had democratising effects,52
not least of which was the breakdown of elite control of symbolic representation (in high
European art), the decline of the royal court and the growth of a literate civil society.53
Alternatively celebrity can be situated via the ideas of the Enlightenment and Industrial
Revolution as an expression of the rising class of industrialists needing to assert their power
over the aristocracy and making ample use of new media and bourgeois culture.54 Other
contributions in the literature have made the point that, read historically, the phenomenon
 10 A. R. Biccum

of celebrity is not exclusive only to Western modernity but can be found in antiquity;55 or
that the phenomenon changes over time and must be considered within an interdisciplinary
framework.56
For some celebrity is peculiar to American popular culture and its entertainment indus-
try, which both produces and functions upon a steady supply of celebrity. These scholars
point out that celebrity requires subsidiary organisational requirements and techniques to
create and maintain celebrity status, such as products for sale – from cookery books to films
or television series – and an entire apparatus that engineers visibility from public relations
firms to agents, photographers and journalists. What makes celebrity peculiar to American
culture in particular is its association with individualism and egalitarianism.57 Celebrity helps
to naturalise the American cultural assumption of meritocracy: celebrity is open to all. Other
scholars argue that class dimensions make celebrity a peculiar form of elite, with an ability
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to cash in on their fame, ‘the rank that celebrity provides cries out to be displayed through
its privileges’.58 The higher the rank of celebrity, the greater the level of privilege.
Another conundrum occurs around the centrality of communications in making celebrity
possible and its centrality for democracy (when they remain autonomous) or imperialism
(when they are monopolised or marketised). One of the founding scholars in the field of mass
communications argued that imperial governance as the capacity to govern at greater and
greater distances is dependent upon technologies of communication.59 So, on the one hand,
literature in political communication and political sciences argues that celebrity diplomacy
is in keeping with new modes of flexible networked non-hierarchical modes of governance;
on the other hand, studies like that of Harold Innis in 1950 make the case that communica-
tions technologies are not only indispensable to the existence of empires and their capacity
to govern ever more disparate and non-contiguous territories, the type of communication
technology – papyrus versus stone hieroglyphics for instance – will determine the organisa-
tion of governance: highly centralised or bureaucratic. Here I want to query the assumption
that sees a one-to-one relationship between organisation and political effect by offering
another interpretation regarding the role and function of celebrities as elites. The argument
with respect to form and function is ambivalent, it cuts both ways. In these competing
accounts of the relationship between communications, subjectivity and governance there is
an ambivalence between the capacity of communications to foster freedom, accountability,
political mobility, civil society and democracy and the centrality of communications also to
enable power, hegemony, political control and governance from a distance.
While there might be a technological determinism at work in early theorists of mass
communications, there is a formalism at work in this line of argumentation which presumes
that the type of organisation – fluid, non-hierarchical and networked – predetermines the
political effect – transient, mobilising and inclusive. The incursion of celebrities into politics,
and of politics into the realm of celebrity, raises more fundamental sociological questions
about the changing nature of elites via globalising capitalism and authority in advanced
consumer societies that accompany the changing capacities for organisation, management
and culture wrought by technological changes in communications. P. David Marshall argues
that celebrity is not intelligible outside the rubric of globalisation and celebrities themselves
are vehicles for globalisation via the politics of distribution of their cultural products and their
social capital for marketing consumer goods to foreign markets.60 Celebrities represent one
of the few demographics able to travel almost anywhere with ease. This is because they are
‘commodities as well as people…their images and synergies are packaged, bought and sold
 Third World Quarterly 11

across national borders in much the same way as soft drinks or books’.61 The transnational
capacity of (American) celebrity and power lies in the ability to control to a limited degree
and to export its images and products globally.
Changes in the economic structure of the American film industry in Hollywood are integral
to the question of how these elites have obtained their level of power, access and transna-
tional capacity. The monopoly structure of the old Studio system vertically disintegrated in
the early of the 20th century (1948), making it one of the earliest industries to operate on a
flexible and disaggregated model with the separating out of financing, distribution and pro-
duction and the remuneration of talent on a project-by-project basis. Adam Leaver assesses
the debate on the business of Hollywood. The disaggregated business model is regarded as
highly efficient by forging temporary alliances of the creative, finance and business elements
of the industry, thereby reducing bureaucracy and overhead costs and improving quality
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through production processes that align companies and personnel appropriately for projects
rather than having to rely on in-house talent and management.62 Accordingly, Hollywood
made the transformation early to the economic model that has facilitated globalisation, an
‘economic shift from market to network organization and from ownership to access, so that
soon every industry will look increasingly like the movie business’.63
The other side of the debate highlights the fact that perpetual corporate unprofitability
of the film industry has led to increased conglomeration to spread risk, the argument being
that, rather than an economic model that is efficient and flexible, the initial vertical disinte-
gration of 1948 has led to vertical and horizontal mergers creating huge entertainment con-
glomerates. For Leaver, neither explanation is satisfactory for understanding the perpetual
unprofitability of the American film industry, which has not been improved by the increase
in mergers and acquisitions. Leaver offers an alternative explanation which emphasises the
growth of star power, which has been the net effect of the vertical disintegration of the
industry driven by the growth of agent intermediaries, a process which has driven up the
inequality within the sector.
In organizational terms, Hollywood may now host a global image business which penetrates
multiple geographical and product markets […] But in financial terms Hollywood is a machine
that enriches a small number of individuals with privileged structural positions, with little or no
profit for the majority of publicly listed firms operating within it. This value skimming by a small,
well-placed elite has ramifications for others in the sector when majors have little option but to
adjust below-the-line costs, resulting in an expansion of runaway productions and off-shoring
to lower labour cost areas like Canada, Prague and Bucharest.64
A-list celebrities are a particular type of elite whose emergence is linked to an economic
restructuring in the USA which links its entertainment industry to the global market, both
materially and ideationally. They are not the product of a meritocracy and they are organ-
ising themselves into ever more ascriptive arrangements whose political activities align
consistently with mainstream, pro-market policy on global political issues.

Conclusion: so what might celebrity humanitarianism have to do with

empire?
A-list celebrities are not, as Kapoor contends, the beneficiaries of a corporate cultural
imperialism that is globalising. Rather, a handful of elite actors and directors is structurally
positioned to siphon off most of the profits and benefit from the increasing inequality of
 12 A. R. Biccum

the sector and its insertion into global disparities in production costs. This means that the
celebrities produced by the American entertainment industry are the elites of elites from
A to D list, with the highest rank being established not solely by his/her remuneration per
film or product endorsement, but by the increasing value of his/her brand and its ability to
sell goods, films (or political causes), by increasing levels of privilege and access to other
global elites and politicians and a diversification of her/his portfolio of wealth from property,
investment and products (such as perfumes or clothing lines), and by occupation (such as
directing, producing, financing and the creation of film studios or production companies).
This has caused a shift in power away from the ability of studios, producers and directors to
create and control the careers of ‘stars’ to one in which studios need A-list celebrities attached
to their projects to get them funded.
The astronomical rise in A-list star power has also led to a shift in the gender and class
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dynamics of A-listers themselves. According to Kapoor, celebrity adoption and the baby
boom among women A-listers can also be explained via this rise in power. This means that
the women of this elite class are freer to exercise their reproductive rights without harm-
ing their careers. But Kapoor doesn’t elaborate enough on the relationship between family
structure and class formation. Many of the highest profile celebrities have their advantage
and status in Hollywood cemented by ascriptive networks. Mia Farrow, Robert Downey Jr,
Angelina Jolie, Drew Barrymore, Keanu Reeves (this list is by no means exhaustive) all have
parents, and sometimes grandparents, who are in the business as actors, directors and cast-
ing agents. The baby boom merely extends and accentuates the ever more ascriptive nature
of Hollywood celebrity with more and more child celebrities that have their careers assured
because of their heritage. Some are even setting their families up to produce entertainment
dynasties, such as Will Smith and Jada Pinkett, who have mentored their children into the
entertainment industry and have family meetings seeking to capitalise and extend their
family brand.65
In addition to the creation of family dynasties and the increasing entrepreneurialisation of
A-listers with diverse portfolios of products and business ventures, there is also increased use
of patronage in hip hop circles to encourage new talent to brand their image and diversify
and control their product lines. Jay-Z is well known not only for diversifying his own prod-
uct line but for mentoring other rap-stars to do the same and to take ownership of their
brand image.66 The relationship between cultural production and patronage is an important
one, already examined in the earliest scholarship to link art and culture with economics
and politics.67 If an analogy can be drawn between Hollywood and its celebrity-generating
architecture and the aristocracy of the 19th century, the differences are that the wealth and
power of this elite is not land-based, its children will not be involved in direct administration
and it has far more wealth and flexibility than the old European aristocracy. Celebrities have
become a transnational force in their own right, with their wallets fattened by the trans-
national market for Hollywood film and global product endorsement. They have a vested
interest in the continued globalisation of markets for their products over which, as actors,
directors, producers and distributors, they have increasing control. As celebrities move up the
ladder, a key sign of their success, and increasingly an expectation, is that they will involve
themselves in some form of charitable cause, making celebrity philanthropy an exercise in
elite class articulation.
This is not out of step with more empirical scholarship trying to come to grips with the
policy, public and political impact of celebrity humanitarianism. Calls for more empirical
 Third World Quarterly 13

measurement of the actual political impact of celebrity humanitarianism have been met
with mixed methods studies such as those of Daniel Brockington, whose work has shown
that, while the public impact of celebrity humanitarianism has been limited, the relationship
between celebrity and the development sector has undergone significant change, becom-
ing more systematised and professionalised (with specialist agencies popping up to make
industry connections, with the growth of the UN ambassador programme and with growth
of NGO liaison officer to facilitate the connection).68 Moreover, Brockington’s work illustrates
the class and elite-making dimensions of celebrity humanitarianism by showing that, if this
phenomenon has had limited measureable public impact, it is part of a ‘more general ori-
enting of the corporate sector towards the celebrity sector’.69 Where the optimistic literature
regards celebrity humanitarianism as an extension of democracy, Brockington argues that
it is post-democratic, not fuelled by or affecting public demand but rather influencing cor-
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porate power.70 In other words, it represents a change in the composition of elites and the
character of democracy. While this argument has implications for a ‘capitalist imperialism’
approach to celebrity humanitarianism, Brockington does not draw out this connection.
Thus, the empirical approach he takes is important for the claim I’m making here regarding
the necessity to think more concretely about what celebrity humanitarianism might have to
do with empire or imperialism, beyond received understandings and ideology critique. The
answer I have suggested has to do with how celebrity humanitarianism structures celebrities
and their corporate partners as elites.
Thus the elite-making and class-consolidating nature of these activities warrants close
attention. This becomes striking when compared with celebrities who take a political stand
on issues in a way not endorsed by the NGO/development architecture (Daryl Hannah,
Russell Brand, Richard Gere), who are punished by exclusion and derision. It isn’t just that
celebrity activities cover over the complexities of development and humanitarian interven-
tion, or evoke older colonial tropes, it is that their activities actively endorse and perpetu-
ate development policies and practices already agreed upon by the most powerful donors
within the development architecture, and that their activities are consistently embedded in
a market logic. For example, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Foundation is endorsing conservationism
and market regulation of overfishing. This would require extended powers of international
institutions. Sean Penn’s NGO JP/HRO Haitian Relief Organisation is endorsing microcredit.
Bono of U2 sat on the Africa Commission and is the managing director and co-founder of
Elevation Partners, a private equity firm that stands to gain from the expansion in Africa of
media and entertainment products. Angelina Jolie teamed up with economist Jeffrey Sachs
to produce a series of YouTube videos highlighting development issues in Africa.
The AED debate has prompted renewed scholarly attention within IR to theorise empire
from a network-centric perspective. These accounts of empire provide structuralist and ‘ide-
al-typical’ accounts of empire as a hub and spokes model of divide and conquer bargaining
techniques. Scholars such as Nexon and Wright, and Spruyt claim that their approach to
empire in part helps to redress the problem that IR scholarship has with addressing historical
change.71 However, what these scholars themselves fail to account for is that their ideal-typ-
ical model addresses one historical formulation of empire, European, modern and non-con-
tiguous. Nexon and Wright, and Spruyt contend that the USA is not an empire because
its emphasis on state sovereignty in the system is not in keeping with their ideal-typical
network-centric model. They do, however, claim that the heuristic of empire can be made
use of for foreign policy advice.72 This is an important shift in the terrain of international
 14 A. R. Biccum

relations and it is the reason why critical scholars need to take extra care to be robust in
their theoretical framing of empire and imperialism, particularly when the AED, and the IR
contributions following it, have exposed the difficulty in defining and theorising these terms.
This is also important following the insight drawn from Harold Innis that communications
technology actually changes the structure and mode of governance of empires. We would
expect that advances in communications technology, such as the digitisation of informa-
tion, would change the form, structure and capacity for governance of a global capitalist
empire. Here I am not evoking Hardt and Negri’s post-Marxist account of a globe-girdling,
networked, post-sovereign empire. Rather my claim is that an adequate political theory
of empire needs to move beyond the structuralist approaches adopted by network-cen-
tric IR scholars to include the cultural elaborations of postcolonial theory and sociological
accounts focused on the role of transnational elites produced by empire and central to its
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functioning. Equally this paper is arguing that, in light of the revival of the term empire
as both an analytic and apologetic policy prescription for the USA, critical scholarship on
celebrity humanitarianism needs to engage a little more systematically with what is meant
by empire and imperialism rather than marshalling platitudes and received understandings.
If new communications technologies can change the capacity of imperial governance, then
perhaps celebrity humanitarians mobilising politically around free market global solutions
is the activity of a new kind of elite for a new kind of empire.

Notes on Contributor
April Biccum is Lecturer in Postcolonial International Relations at the Australian National University.
Her research examines the resurfacing of ‘empire’ into the lexicon of the social sciences and emerging
political theories of empire in International Relations. She also looks at new forms of cosmopolitanism,
global education and efforts to produce subjectivities amenable to capitalist globalisation, included
in which is celebrity humanitarianism. She has published in Interventions, Third World Quarterly and
Development and Change, and her book Global Citizenship and the Legacy of Empire has recently been
reissued in paperback.

Notes
1. Ignatieff, Empire Lite.
2. Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire.
3. Harvey, “The ‘New’ Imperialism.”
4. Layne and Thayer, American Empire.
5. Fergusson, Colossus.
6. Lal, In Praise of Empires.
7. Meiksins Wood, Empire of Capital.
8. Hardt and Negri, Empire.
9. Elision is ordinarily a grammatical term but is commonly used by Post-colonial theorists
following Edward Said to refer to the suppressing or writing out of empire, or other historical
information for political and ideological purposes.
10. Featherstone, Global Culture.
11. Street, “‘Prime Time Politics’”; and Inthorn and Street, “‘Simon Cowell for Prime Minister’?”
12. Beck, Risk Society.
13. Bang, Governance.
14. Spruyt, “‘American Empire’.”
15. Said, Culture and Imperialism.
 Third World Quarterly 15

16. Nexon, The Struggle for Power; Munkler, Empires; Motyl, Imperial Ends; and Spruyt, Ending Empire.
17. Said, Orientalism.
18. Mackenzie, Propaganda and Empire; Cooper and Stoler, Tensions of Empire; McClintock, Imperial
Leather; and Guha and Spivak, Selected Subaltern Studies.
19. Colas, Empire.
20. Munkler, Empires.
21. Cooper, Celebrity Diplomacy.
22. Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism.
23. Inthorn and Street, “‘Simon Cowell for Prime Minister’?”; and Busby, “Bono made Jesse Helms
Cry.”
24. Street, “Celebrity Politics”; Wheeler, “The Democratic Worth of Celebrity”; and Marsh et al.,
“Celebrity Politics.”
25. Street, “Do Celebrity Politics?”
26. Wheeler, “The Democratic Worth of Celebrity,” 410.
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27. Ibid.
28. West, “Angelina, Mia, Bono.”
29. Holloway et al., Independent Review; Moyo, Dead Aid; and Collier, The Bottom Billion.
30. For a defence of Schiller, see Morely, “Globalisation and Cultural Imperialism.”
31. Magubane, “The (Product) Red Man’s Burden,” 102.10.
32. Yrjola, “From Street into the World,” 6.
33. Clarke, Celebrity Colonialism, 6.
34. Richey and Ponte, “Better (Red) than Dead.”
35. Goodman, “The Mirror of Consumption.”
36. Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 33.
37. Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 31.
38. Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 29–32.
39. Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 39.
40. Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 89.
41. Eisenstadt, The Political Systems.
42. Doyle, Empires.
43. Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism.
44. Nexon and Wright, “What’s at Stake?”
45. Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition.
46. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject.
47. Anderson, Imagined Communities.
48. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States; Badie, The Imported State; Bayart, The State in Africa;
and Mbembe, On the Postcolony.
49. Yrjola, “From Street into the World.”
50. Rojek, Celebrity.
51. Van Kriekan, Celebrity Society.
52. Morgan, “Historicising Celebrity.”
53. Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown.
54. Inglis, A Short History of Celebrity.
55. Garland, “Celebrity Ancient and Modern.”
56. Wanko, “Celebrity Studies.”
57. Hollander, “Why the Celebrity Cult?,” 390.
58. Lawler, “Celebrity Studies Today,” 419.
59. Innis, Empire and Communications.
60. Marshall, The Celebrity Culture Reader.
61. Littler, “Introduction,” 1.
62. Leaver, “A Different Take,” 457.
63. Leaver, “A Different Take,” 457–458.
64. Leaver, “A Different Take,” 472.
 16 A. R. Biccum

65. See an episode of Oprah Winfrey, excerpts from which can be found at http://www.oprah.com/
showinfo/Will-Smith-Jada-Pinkett-Smith-and-the-Whole-Family_1.
66. Two articles in Forbes Magazine detail Jay-Z’s entrepreneurial and political position. See “Jay-Z’s
Occupy Wall Street Problem is Hip-Hop’s Occupy Wall Street Problem,” Accessed January 6, 2016.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2012/09/10/jay-zs-occupy-wall-
street-problem-is-hip-hops-occupy-wall-street-problem/; and “The Forbes Five: Hip
Hop’s Wealthiest Artists 2011,” Accessed January 6, 2016. http://www.forbes.com/sites/
zackomalleygreenburg/2011/03/09/the-forbes-five-hip-hop-wealthiest-artists/.
67. Adorno, The Culture Industry.
68. Marsh et al., “Celebrity Politics”; Brockington, “The Production and Construction”; and
Brockington, “Signifying the Public.”
69. Brockington, “The Production and Construction,” 100.
70. Brockington, Celebrity Advocacy.
71. Nexon and Wright, “What’s at Stake?”; and Spruyt, “American Empire.”
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72. Nexon and Wright, “What’s at Stake?,” 266.

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