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2019 | Book

Introduction: “You, Elie Wiesel, and Paris Hilton” Read chapter Read first chapter

The Mass Appeal of Human Rights

Author: Dr. Joel R. Pruce

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Human Rights Interventions

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" , Springer Professional "Technik"

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About this book

This book narrates the integration of consumer culture into transnational human rights advocacy and explores its political impact. By examining tactics that include benefit concerts, graphic imagery of suffering, and branded outreach campaigns, the book details the evolution of human rights into a mainstream moral cause. Drawing inspiration from the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, the author argues that these strategies are effective in attracting masses of supporters but weaken the viability of human rights by commodifying its practices. Consumer capitalism co-opts the public’s moral awakening and transforms its desire for global engagement into components of a lifestyle expressed through market transactions and commercial relationships, rather than political commitments. Reclaiming human rights as a subversive idea can reconnect the practice of human rights with its principles and generate a movement bound to the radical spirit of human rights.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Introduction: “You, Elie Wiesel, and Paris Hilton”
Abstract
Human rights advocacy integrates mass media and popular culture as central strategic features of outreach, fund-raising, and movement-building efforts. What was an agitated rallying cry for fairness and justice is now also a key component of the mainstream moral imagination. Particularly as embodied in the work of major transnational nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), human rights have become integrated as products of privileged lifestyles, accommodating rather than challenging structures of inequality. To engage in human rights advocacy today is to participate in a practice once proprietary to iconoclasts and lawyers but now subsumed within daily rituals of consumers and television audiences. The practice has in fact been incorporated into habits of average individuals in a way that makes the performance commonplace and undisruptive to everyday life.
Joel R. Pruce
Chapter 2. Mass Appeals for the Rights of Others
Abstract
Human rights campaigns assert controversial arguments about the importance of human dignity in the face of the arbitrary exercise of power. The history of human rights is indeed a history of confrontation between forces seeking to preserve the status quo and those acting in defense of marginalized underdogs. Yet, a new tradition was created when human rights advocates designed platforms that are in tension with—or even antithetical to—the radical history of human rights. The critical theory of the Frankfurt School warns of the political risks for movements that rely on commercial transactions and marketized relationships. Today, elements of consumerism and popular culture are integral to human rights movement-building efforts, but this new direction poses risks for the long-term viability of the movement.
Joel R. Pruce
Chapter 3. Benefit Concerts, Constituencies of Compassion, and the Culture Industry
Abstract
Celebrity charity events were crucial in raising awareness among the public of human rights issues, as well as central in generating resources for use in the campaigns. Amnesty International initiated this trend and passed the baton to famine relief campaigns, Band Aid, Live Aid, and USA for Africa and the megahit, “We Are the World.” Mass benefit concerts emerged out of economic necessity in the 1970s and blossomed into mainstays due to their effectiveness in the context of 1980s obsession with television, celebrities, and pop culture. However, these events relied on patterns in consumerism to drive engagement, framing human rights obligations as sufficiently fulfilled through entertainment. A tension persists between the political demands of human rights campaigns, the charitable dictates of humanitarianism, and the seductive aspects of mass consumption.
Joel R. Pruce
Chapter 4. The Spectacle of Suffering, Transnational Witnessing, and Solidarity
Abstract
The post-cold war era presents cases of spectacular suffering beamed into the homes of the audience, awakening concern, and demanding intervention in places such as Somalia. Due to advances in mass media technology, such as satellite communications and cable news networks, this wave of globalization brought victims of war and famine to primetime television. As audiences shared emotional experiences through the graphic coverage of atrocity, civil society began to cry out for a humanitarian response. However, while new visual media provide venues for snapshots and highlight reels, coherent plotlines are more difficult to articulate. Spectacular television coverage of human suffering provokes profound reactions from the audience but does not translate these expressions into sustained political responses.
Joel R. Pruce
Chapter 5. Bumper Sticker Advocacy and the Branding of Save Darfur
Abstract
In response to the violence in Darfur, Sudan, beginning in 2003, new human rights organizations sprang up to respond and build a permanent constituency for action. The Save Darfur Coalition (SDC) in particular sought to galvanize public attention and raise the costs of inaction for elected officials. To this end, Save Darfur employed corporate marketing firms to brand their campaign and spread the news about the “genocide” in progress. Utilizing advertising techniques as no human rights actor ever had, the organization made consistent headlines and forced elites to stake out policy positions. However, the branding strategy sacrificed factual accuracy for the sake of mass appeal. In the process, Save Darfur departed from trusted advocacy tactics and created credibility problems for itself that circumscribed its political salience.
Joel R. Pruce
Chapter 6. Reclaiming Human Rights as a Politics of Resistance
Abstract
Amnesty International reboots its legendary benefit concerts in 2014, bringing together familiar faces with newer ones, including Pussy Riot—a punk rock activist collective infamously imprisoned for their protests against Vladimir Putin. This attempt to embrace the radical, critical, and insurgent sensibility within human rights in the context of a mass benefit concert closes the loop and highlights the fundamental dilemmas inherent in this model of transnational advocacy. Reclaiming human rights as a subversive idea and unleashing the force of the individuality and creativity of its supporters can help reconnect the practice of human rights with the principles by which it is constituted will produce a movement of advocates and organizations bound to the radical spirit of human rights.
Joel R. Pruce
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
The Mass Appeal of Human Rights
Author
Dr. Joel R. Pruce
Copyright Year
2019
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-92075-7
Print ISBN
978-3-319-92074-0
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92075-7

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