As we write this, the UK is slowly emerging from its period of self-imposed lockdown restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic and facing the virus's lasting impacts upon society at every scale imaginable.Felt acutely in the upending of the everyday practices that define our daily routines and engagements with others, there have been monumental, far-reaching changes to the many everyday actions we, in the Minority World, take for granted.These have included a complete halt for many people of getting in the car for work or on a plane to go on holiday, to immense disruptions to the ways we do our jobs, acquire food and engage in the social relations that allow us to be family members, citizens, friends and neighbours.The pandemic shined a harsh light on these practicesfor example, who can continue to work from home and who cannot, who can access and afford food delivery and who cannot-and the very real race, class and gender inequalities embedded in the ability and ways these daily routines are performed.

Many corporations are now in the business of bringing climate change ‘home’ in the everyday products that those, in much of the Minority world, can purchase and use, providing opportunities for consumers to literally and figuratively ‘buy in’ to climate mitigation. Yet, what are the implications of this form of highly commoditised, corporate-led, consumer-focused climate branding? In the spaces and practices of the everyday, how and in what ways are corporations framing and socialising responses to climate change and global environmental and social issues? This paper explores these 'questions through a multimodal discourse analysis of Unilever’s ‘Sustainable Living Plan’ ( 2010) and its ‘Project Sunlight’ campaign (2010–2016). Situating Unilever’s sustainability agenda as indicative of the contemporary climate politics of the corporate sector, that also represents a pivotal moment in the cultural politics of climate change, we critically interrogate Unilever’s mobilisation of the affective and emotional registers of everyday life and human relations in its model of sustainable living. Specifically, we focus on the ways that Unilever encourages acts of branded consumption as a form of—what we call here—climate care, by invoking normative discourses of gender and family through a form of biopolitics, and, at a larger scale, how the corporation is shaping how particular forms of climate capitalism are socialised, normalised and practiced. In doing so, we shift critical attention away from sustainable business analyses of Unilever onto the unexplored socio-cultural dimensions of Unilever’s sustainability model. We argue that Unilever’s socialisation of climate branding and care works to depoliticise climate change actions and actors through a biopolitics that creates a false veneer of democratisation in the form of consumer choice, thereby curtailing more progressive societal action on climate change.

This chapter outlines some of the deeper ways in which celebrity activism can be very closely aligned with political and economic power by demonstrating the consistencies between some of the key instances of Western celebrity activism and the overarching political-economic doctrines that governed state policy at the time. It argues that distinctions are quite superficial, and demonstrates how throughout Bob Geldof's career, his activism is very much consistent with the form of neoliberal governance that was dominant at the time. The chapter shows that after the 2008 financial crises, Geldof has aligned himself with a group of committed business leaders and activists who are working to reinvigorate the neoliberal project. Geldof himself derided the anti-G8 protestors as 'a bunch of losers'. In each phase of Geldof's political career, he has been represented as a 'punk' outsider to authority who dismisses the protocols of diplomacy in an effort to get things done.

Abstract Since the mid-2000s, entertainment celebrities have played increasingly prominent roles in the cultural politics of climate change, ranging from high-profile speeches at UN climate conferences, and social media interactions with their fans, to producing and appearing in documentaries about climate change that help give meaning to and communicate this issue to a wider audience. The role afforded to celebrities as climate change communicators is an outcome of a political environment increasingly influenced by public relations and attuned toward the media’s representation of political ideas, policies, and sentiments. Celebrities act as representatives of mass publics, operating within centers of elite political power. At the same time, celebrities represent the environmental concerns of their audiences; that is, they embody the sentiments of their audiences on the political stage. It is in this context that celebrities have gained their authority as political, social, and environmental “experts,” and the political performances of celebrities provide important ways to engage electorates and audiences with climate change action. More recently, celebrities offer novel engagements with climate change that move beyond scientific data and facilitate more emotional and visceral connections with climate change in the public’s everyday lives. Contemporary celebrities, thus, work to shape how audiences and publics ought to feel about climate change in efforts to get them to act or change their behaviors. These “after data” moments are seen very clearly in Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary Before the Flood. Yet, with celebrities acting as our emotional witnesses, they not only might bring climate change to greater public attention, but they expand their brand through neoliberalism’s penchant for the commoditization of everything including, as here, care and concern for the environment. As celebrities build up their own personal capital as eco-warriors, they create very real value for the “celebrity industrial complex” that lies behind their climate media interventions. Climate change activism is, through climate celebrities, rendered as spectacle, with celebrities acting as environmental and climate pedagogues framing for audiences the emotionalized problems and solutions to global environmental change. Consequently, celebrities politicize emotions in ways that that remain circumscribed by neoliberal solutions and actions that responsibilize audiences and the public.

This article analyses a range of initiatives, labelled as ‘conscience capitalist’, that have become prominent since the 2008 financial crash. Conscience capitalism encompasses projects emerging in both the for- and non-profit sectors that seek to connect neoliberal capitalism with concepts of morality and conscience. The article begins by unpacking conscience capitalism, showing how its for-profit advocates seek to transform capitalism by orienting it towards accounting for social and environmental externalities, and how its non-profit supporters seek to incorporate components of neoliberalism to serve their environmentally and/or socially focused agendas. Conscience capitalism appears to be a re-evaluation and call for reform of the prominent forms of neoliberalism. However, this article argues that, rather than comprising a hindrance, conscience capitalism offers a means of advancing the project. This is evident in its attempts to reconstitute social and environmental externalities in terms relatable to the market, and represent social and environmental problems in quantitative terms in which the success of market-based solutions can be read. Acknowledging some of the successes of conscience capitalist campaigns, the article concludes by arguing that this continued neoliberalisation of the non-profit sector favours campaigns consistent with neoliberalism and has the potential to undermine the democratic governance of non-profits.

This article engages with several pressing issues revolving around ‘citizen witnessing’, with specific reference to the human rights advocacy group, WITNESS. In the course of tracing WITNESS’ development over the past two decades, it offers an evaluative assessment of the challenges its members have faced in promoting a grass-roots, citizen-centred approach to video reportage. More specifically, this advocacy is informed by an ethical commitment to advancing human rights causes by equipping citizens in crisis situations with cameras, and the training to use them, so that they might bear witness to the plight of others. In so doing, this article argues, WITNESS offers a tactical reformulation of the guiding tenets of peace journalism, one with considerable potential for recasting anew its strategic priorities.

Promotional Cultures aims to ‘observe how the professions and practices of promotion have spread and come to influence society more generally’ (p. 1). Davis’ thesis is, of course, that they have. T...

This article reviews a framework developed by John Street which positions aesthetics, style and performance, and celebrity politics as legitimate features within representative democracy. It applies this framework to the example of (RED), a political consumerism campaign fronted by U2 singer Bono, which raises funds for African AIDS victims. It accounts for the use of style by Bono as a celebrity politician to represent himself as an authoritative figure and (RED) as a legitimate response to the epidemic, and relates this representation to the organisational arrangements underpinning the campaign. Further, it examines the relationship between the interests of these organisations and the manner in which (RED) represents AIDS. The article argues for a further integration of textual readings of celebrity politicians based on their aesthetic qualities, and an appreciation of the organisations that contribute to the production of their campaigns.