Representations of Global Poverty

Aid, Development and International NGOs

Nandita Dogra

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781780767734
• eBook ISBN: 9780857732613
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Through the efforts of increasingly global and media-aware NGOs, people in the west are bombarded with images of poverty, suffering and inequality. Representations of Global Poverty is the first comprehensive study of the communications and imagery used by international NGOs to represent the developing world. An enlightening study, this book explores the discursive constructions of global poverty and development by international charities and their role in mediating between developed countries and the developing world. It presents a detailed empirical review of the communications of international NGOs, utilizing an original postcolonial analytical framework to better understand and evaluate these public messages. The book examines three interlinked levels of the public messages of UK-based international development NGOs (INGOs) - representation, production and reception. This review of the fundraising and advocacy messages of INGOs shows a dualism of 'difference' and 'oneness'. While these messages portray the developing world as different and distant, they are also at pains to present it as sharing the same human values. These oversimplified representations circumvent the historical context of, and continuities between, European colonialism and current global poverty. Instead they connect the globe through a de-historicised universal humanism. This decontextualization in INGOs' communications stems from both institutional isomorphism and sociological assumptions about audiences. Dogra's book goes on to reveal the role of western collective histories in shaping global inequalities and our subjectivities in the way we perceive and position ourselves in relation to the majority world. From historical amnesia to denial, charity to justice and rights, feel-good consumerism to activism, humanism and cosmopolitanism to Eurocentrism and Britishness, it analyses NGO representations through a variety of discourses. Boldly interdisciplinary, the book draws upon sociology, NGO management, development, social policy, political science, postcolonial, cultural and media studies and as such is essential reading for students and scholars across these diverse fields. This book should become the starting point for future debates on representations and global poverty that concern not just charities, international aid bodies, governments and academic institutions but all of us who live in a deeply connected but divided world.

PART I

DIFFERENCE AND DISTANCE

What is ‘out there’ is, in part, constituted by how it is represented.

(Stuart Hall, 1992b: 14)

Introduction

The book shows that INGOs’ public messages construct and connect the developed and developing worlds through a dualism of ‘difference’ and ‘oneness’. This projects the global poor as separate from the West while still being like us through our shared humanity. This part focuses on the first theme of ‘difference’. It demonstrates that difference, as seen in INGOs’ predominantly oversimplified, decontextualised and ahistorical narratives, is projected through specific characters, space, causes of global poverty and its solutions in the shape of easy, do-able development.

Part I demonstrates that INGOs’ public messages construct ideas of ‘difference’ and ‘distance’ (more difference) through the presence/inclusion and absence/exclusion of different characters, spaces and issues, and the discursive positioning of the developed and majority worlds as oppositional especially through the use of binaries and distinctive framings of global poverty and development. The categories of ‘difference’ and ‘distance’ overlap and have been divided only for the purpose of analytical clarity.¹ The overlaps also support the argument that INGOs’ messages (just like any message) are polysemous, which implies that they have multiple meanings, but the polysemy is circumscribed in two ways – across space and time. The concepts of ‘intertextuality’ and ‘palimpsest’ are useful here. First, messages are intertextual; that is, they are produced and read within the context of other messages including INGOs’ other messages and wider messages available in a given society at a given time. Second, messages are also linked to time as they are in relation to messages prevalent in a society across time. This means that just like a palimpsest, a parchment that has been written over but still reflects previous writings, messages contain traces of the ‘past’. The messages may also be understood by the audiences within the context of historical ways of seeing that they are accustomed to.

Difference and distance, shown through binary positioning, takes many forms in INGOs’ messages. But why are binaries so problematic? The concept of ‘liminality’ illustrates this well. Deriving from the word ‘limen’, which means threshold, it is an ‘interstitial or in-between space’ (Ashcroft et al., 1998: 130). Binary systems of representation ‘suppress ambiguous or interstitial spaces between the opposed categories’ (Ashcroft et al., 1998: 23). And such liminal spaces are where understanding and change can take place. Widespread use of binaries in INGOs’ messages suppresses liminality or in-between spaces, thereby constructing more difference or ‘distance’.

Part I of this book shows that INGOs’ messages work within dominant themes of difference and distance albeit in manifold, intricate, overlapping and paradoxical ways. Chapter 2 shows how this is achieved by way of discursive strategies of infantilisation and feminisation through portrayals of children and women; and through binary depictions of the DW and MW as ‘active givers’ and ‘passive receivers’ respectively.

In addition to people or characters, space features in INGOs’ messages to enhance the difference and lengthen the distance between the DW and the MW where the latter are shown as lands of famines and disasters, and as an infinite, unchanging village. Distance, thus, becomes exaggerated across both time and space through ‘biblical’ depictions of starvation and rurality that project a timeless and ahistoric ‘Third World’ as against a modern, urban ‘First world’. Chapter 3 maps how the discursive strategies of geographical symbolism, cartography, different settings, homogenisation and the absence of urban life, modern symbols, historical context and linkages are used to achieve this.

Finally chapter 4 explores representations of the core issues of global poverty – the causes of the problems and their solutions in the form of development. It shows that INGOs’ messages circumvent the historical context of global poverty and construct it in two ways – global poverty as a consequence either of ‘internal’ factors such as corruption, overpopulation and violence in MW or a result of God-given ‘natural’ factors. Further, in contrast to the massive scale of global problems, these messages suggest that solving global poverty through development is actually simple, easy and technical, not systemic or political.

Overview of INGOs’ annual messages: 2005/6

A summary of the content analysis of INGOs’ public messages in UK’s national press, and the dominant features of themes and characters, is given here.

During the year (February 2005 to January 2006) there were a total of 88 INGO fundraising and advocacy items in UK’s national newspapers, of which 5%, i.e. 13 messages, were purely textual and did not carry an image.² Many messages contained more than one image and the total number of images was 263, which clearly shows the predominance of image-based messages and the overall importance of images vis-à-vis text in INGOs’ messages.

There were twelve INGOs with press presence in terms of adverts and/or inserts in the national newspapers. The largest NGO, Oxfam, had the highest number with 29 messages followed by Christian Aid (CA) with 17 messages. Of the other INGOs, Plan International UK (Plan) showed ten messages, Concern Worldwide UK (Concern/CW) carried nine messages while ActionAid (AA), Save the Children (SCF), World Vision (WV), Care International UK (CARE), Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD), Farm Africa (FA) and Action Against Hunger (AAH) showed two to six messages each. War on Want (WOW) did not have any press advertisements, but it had a single insert.³ The high press presence of larger INGOs such as Oxfam and CA highlights an in-built selectivity of messages as a result of the dominance of large INGOs over smaller ones.⁴ While the small size of an NGO is not an indicator of its radicalism, the relatively low power of smaller organisations to reach mass audiences compared to the giant INGOs does have implications for the overall plurality of messages. The high concentration of income in the hands of the larger NGOs has also been a growing trend since the 1990s (Smillie, 1995). This trend of oligopoly and concentration of resources is also reflected in their public messages, suggesting a clear link between income and publicity and the consequent crowding out of minor INGO voices. When seen in terms of ‘brands’, a larger INGO has more users than a smaller INGO, which gives it an added advantage. As consumers are inclined to use large brands more often than small brands, the advertising of large brands becomes relatively more productive and less expensive as a proportion of their income (Jones, 2007: 105, 109–110).

With regard to the intended purpose of the messages or the ‘type’ of messages, fundraising messages clearly dominate. Although 50% of total messages were hybrid as they gave information and raised funds, in all 80% to 85% of messages were aimed at fundraising. Only 15% of the total messages could be categorised as advocacy/campaign and awareness-generation messages. The hybridity of messages might suggest that INGOs have responded positively to the criticisms that they separated fundraising from awareness-generation and advocacy, as was suggested in the ‘imagery debate’ literature. Closer analysis, however, reveals that usually only limited information, most commonly about the INGOs’ own work and projects, is added to the fundraising message, which means that their response is in fact somewhat limited. Only seven out of a total of 139 hybrid messages were about awareness-generation of deeper contextual issues; the remaining 132 merely gave information about the INGO’s activities and simply publicised the INGO’s own achievements. This specific form of combined messaging seems to echo a similar trend in the United States where ‘self publicity comes to masquerade as “raising awareness’” (Sogge, 1996: 12).

A mere 12% of overall messages were related to advocacy, which includes political mobilisation and awareness-generation about a specific issue. These included the issues of Make Poverty History (MPH) – debt, trade and aid – and showed individuals, mostly from the DW, campaigning over MPH issues. There were also specific issues such as universal registration for children and some messages that attempted to bust ‘myths’ and stereotypes of MW. Three percent of messages were information-giving and contained information about or updates on work carried out by the INGO without directly asking for any funds. Many advocacy appeals contained fundraising elements, thereby making the actual purpose of these messages ambivalent.

The blurring of lines exists not just between fundraising and advocacy but also between the themes of disasters and development, with many images falling within more than one category. A broad theme-based analysis indicates that ‘development’ is the most common theme of INGO messages, followed by disasters. Nearly half of INGO messages can be categorised under ‘long-term developmental’ messages. These include developmental activities such as education, health, water and livelihood as shown directly in the form of INGO projects or Christmas gifts and in child sponsorship appeals. This is a loose categorisation because the focus varies in each message. For instance, while many child sponsorship messages show developmental activities, the spotlight is generally on a child, which makes such messages people-oriented or character-based rather than activity-based.

While most messages can be said to show an issue or activity, around 7% of messages are more people-oriented in that they do not show an issue directly but focus on MW people, mainly women and children, to project a sense of childhood, motherhood or womanhood which, in turn, characterises the MW in specific ways. Similarly, disasters including food crises, natural disasters and political conflict, form the second most prominent theme at 27% of the total messages. However, while many of the emergency messages do not show any image, there are many developmental items such as supplements in newspapers which include images of, say, HIV/AIDS that would fall under the category of disaster images.

The high incidence of hybrid messages in terms of intention and content, with unclear lines between disaster/emergency/crisis imagery and developmental imagery, has important implications for both the debate and practices of INGOs’ communications. Hybridity dissolves any clear-cut distinction between fundraising and advocacy. The mixed, and occasionally inconsistent, nature of messages also makes it hard to categorise advocacy and fundraising under the respective labels of ‘positive’/‘good’ and ‘negative’/‘bad’, as was argued in the imagery debate of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

CHAPTER 2

CAST OF CHARACTERS

The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.

(Guy Debord, 1994: 12)

A review of INGOs’ public messages in the UK national press during 2005/6 shows that people are the main subject of these messages. I argue in this chapter that INGOs’ messages work within dominant themes of ‘difference’ and ‘distance’ (more difference) through the representations of characters. This is implemented by way of discursive strategies of infantilisation and feminisation through portrayals of children and women respectively, as well as depictions of DW as active and giving and MW as passive and receiving. The first and second sections respectively analyse portrayals of the most popular characters in INGOs’ messages – children and women. The third section illustrates forms of binary positioning of DW and MW through the representations of people.

INGOs’ messages are people-centred with nearly four-fifths of the messages showing characters. Ordinary MW people are the most commonly used characters, in tune with the most common themes of development and disaster in the messages showing the involvement of MW people in ‘passive’ or ‘active’ modes. Ordinary MW inhabitants formed the subject of 71% of messages while 14% of messages showed MW landscape, animals, maps or ‘developmental’ products. Ordinary DW individuals and famous persons (DW leaders and celebrities) were shown in 7% and 3% of the messages respectively and 5% of messages did not contain any images but were text-based.

The proportions of different types of characters within the total people shown in INGOs’ messages are given in Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1 shows that 42% of all characters are MW children, making them the most popular character in INGOs’ messages. These are followed by MW women at 30%: a category that includes images of mother and children at 17% of all characters. The dominance of children and women in INGOs’ messages also lends strong support to the arguments of ‘infantilisation’ and ‘feminisation’ of MW. In terms of characters, these also set up MW as ‘different’ – inhabited mainly by children and women and usually without men, who form only 9% of total characters.

MW characters also appear mostly in fundraising and information-giving messages. Further, when they appear within advocacy messages, they are used for awareness-generation, not political mobilisation. For example, CAFOD’s ‘Ethiopia Lives’ photographic project aims to bust stereotypes of Ethiopia by showing Ethiopians engaged in ‘normal’ activities such as going to school and sipping tea. ‘Normality’ here becomes defined as ordinary day-to-day or non-disaster life. DW people, on the other hand, mostly appear in advocacy images. The use of MW and DW people for different purposes also partially explains their active–passive characterisation because advocacy messages, in general, show more active images compared to fundraising and other messages.¹

Figure 2.1 Breakdown of characters in INGOs’ messages

NB: Other MW People: mixed groups of people, children with adults, and crowds that cannot be seen clearly.

Several important findings emerge from the content analysis. The messages are dominated by MW characters, particularly children and women, who also tend to appear more in fundraising and information-giving messages when compared to their DW counterparts. Furthermore, developmental activities and disasters form a large percentage of INGOs’ overall messages. This analysis is useful to gain an overview of INGOs’ messages that also aids the following qualitative analysis.

Innocent children

MW children’s images form an overwhelming proportion of INGOs’ messages at 42% of the total messages showing characters. Seen in terms of their popularity, children truly are the ‘development candy’ of INGOs’ messages. The ‘universal’ appeal of children to evoke visceral emotions, irrespective of their ethnicity, as in the slogan ‘A Hungry Child Has No Politics’ (Cohen, 2001: 178), is a part of their apparent attractiveness. Children’s images, however, work in complex and divergent ways as metaphors to symbolise childhood and MW across axes of ‘need’, vulnerability, universal appeal, ‘hope’ and, above...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Images
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Part I – Difference and Distance
• Part II – Oneness
• Part III – Reflexivity
• Annex I: Comparison of methods of textual & visual analysis
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• eCopyright