Celebrity and the Environment Fame, Wealth and Power in Conservation

by Brockington, Dan

• ISBN13: 9781842779736
• ISBN10: 1842779737
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-08-15
• Publisher: ZED BOOKS

Summary

The battle to save the world is being joined by a powerful new group of warriors. Celebrities are lending their name to conservation causes, and conservation itself is growing its own stars to fight and speak for nature. In this timely and essential book, Dan Brockington argues that this alliance grows from the mutually supportive publicity celebrity and conservation causes provide for each other, and more fundamentally, that the flourishing of celebrity and charismatic conservation is part of an ever-closer intertwining of conservation and corporate capitalism. Celebrity promotions, the investments of rich executives, and the wealthy social networks of charismatic conservationists are producing more commodified and commercial conservation strategies; conservation becomes an ever more important means of generating profit.Celebrity and the Environment provides vital critical analysis of this new phenomena and argues that, ironically, there may be a hidden cost to celebrity power to individual's relationships with the wild. The author argues that whilst wildlife television documentaries flourish, there is a significant decline in visits to national parks in many countries around the world and this is evidence that t a time when conservationists are calling for us to restore our relationships with the wild, many people are doing so simply by following the exploits of celebrity conservationists.

Author Biography

Dan Brockington is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The World of Celebrity and Charismatic Conservation

Conserving Celebrities and Celebrity Conservationists

Charisma: of People, Animals and Environments

The Tensions of Promoting Conservation through Wealth and Celebrity

The Political Economy of Charismatic Conservation

Celebrity and Conservation NGOs

The Rich, Super-rich and Elite Social Networks

The Complexity and Consequences of Conservation Publicity

Creating a Conserved World

Capitalism, Democracy and the Environment

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