Alexandra Cosima Budabin is senior researcher at the Human Rights Center, University of Dayton, and contract professor in the Programme in Media, Communication, and Culture at the Free University of Bolzano.

Lisa Ann Richey is professor of globalization at Copenhagen Business School. She is coauthor of Brand Aid: Shopping Well to Save the World (Minnesota, 2011) and editor of Celebrity Humanitarianism and North–South Relations: Politics, Place, and Power.

Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction: Batman Saves the Congo

1. Celebrity, Disruption and Neoliberal Development

2. Narrating the Congo: Dangerous Single Stories and the Organizations that Need Them

3. Choosing the Congo: How a Celebrity Builds a Development Organization

4. Marketing the Congo: Products that Sell Development

5. Saving Congolese Coffee: Celebrities and the Business Model for Development

6. Celebrities and the Local Politics of Development: As Seen from Kinshasa

7. Conclusions on Celebrity and Development: Disruption, Advocacy and Commodification

Epilogue: COVID-19 and Making ECI Relevant Again

Acknowledgments

Appendix A. Methodology and Data Collection

Appendix B. Affleck, ECI, and ECI Partner's Interactions with Congress, 2011-2017

Appendix C. K&L Gates Lobbying on Behalf of Eastern Congo Initiative

Notes

Bibliography

Index