Brand Aid: Shopping Well to Save the World is a wonderful book. The authors examine the specific case of Product RED, the co-creation of U2 lead singer Bono and the Global Fund, to analyze the new phenomenon of “Brand Aid,” which “is the combined meaning of ‘aid to brands’ and ‘brands that provide aid’ (10). The book is not an analysis of the motivations of people who give aid or the perceptions of those who perceive it, but rather an analysis of what might be called philanthropic marketing and consumerism. Nevertheless, its short, well-written, and engaging chapters cover an amazing breadth of material.

The first chapter develops the notion of the “aid celebrity”—a social actor who is given the authority to manage spectacles to promote both international good causes and his or her own brand. In “Band Aid to Brand Aid” they recount “celebrity activism from the 1960s onwards as a succession of ‘waves’”(32). They demonstrate that the Product RED initiative should be considered the latest, a “fourth wave of celebrity activism that marks a fundamental break with the past” because, for the first time, “as celebrities are endowed with expertise, experts are reconfigured as celebrities” (33, 26). This is significant because aid celebrities are given the leeway to act as “emotional sovereigns” who intercede between politicians and “the people,” and between Africa and the rest of the world. Aid (or AIDS) celebrities do this by what the authors call “treatment virtualism,” wherein the celebrity mediates the relationship between consumer items and anti-retrovirals (ARVS) which equates dollars spent to pills bought. As they point out in chapter 2, Africa becomes a place the consumer can “know from a distance,” while “the fundamental imbalance of power between the givers and the recipients, in this case the Western consumers and the women and children with AIDS in Africa, is not part of the problem to be solved” (57). As such, aid celebrities are not concerned with circumventing the system; rather, they are given license to form the system. “It is not that the celebrities must follow the rules, but that the institutions, the system must function like a celebrity to be considered credible by the general population” (47).

This idea is further developed in the latter half of the book, which explains how the phenomenon of “aid celebrity” has transformed the notion of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In chapters 3 and 4 the authors develop their most compelling and original argument—that RED is a new modality of aid financing that works not only to enhance the brand value of the consumer items under its banner, but also, more important, to rebrand the notion of development aid itself. The authors make the point that “traditional aid (i.e., public aid coming from bilateral and multilateral donors) is being increasingly portrayed as in need of reform or even discontinuation altogether” (118). RED emerges in this atmosphere of perceived crisis to “rebrand” some forms of aid—most notably, public–private partnerships. They note that “aid celebrity verification” differs fundamentally from fair trade or other social movements because it does not devote any attention or advocacy to the social conditions of production. The focus on “distant others”—Africans with AIDS—works to displace any discussion of “problems of workers producing RED products or minimizing the deleterious impact of production on the environment” (124). Furthermore, as they discuss in chapter 4, whereas traditional CSR might have focused on changing the actions of companies—by amending their labor practices, focusing on the environmental impact of their products, or extending their manufacturing to Africa in order to create industry and benefit the general population—the “disengaged CSR” promoted by RED focuses on changing the actions of consumers. As they explain, “the radical difference with RED is that in order to do good it has severed the link with producers (or workers) completely. The problem with the product (e.g., low prices paid to producers) is substituted with the problem with the people who benefit from RED profits (women and children with AIDS)” (164).

Although the arguments the authors develop are quite sophisticated, their writing style is breezy, almost conversational. The authors have a gift for making difficult economic and sociological concepts understandable to lay readers, while still providing a lot of “food for thought” for experts in the field. The accessible style of the book, coupled with its length, makes it ideal for use in African studies classes, sociology classes, and international development classes. It would also be useful in cultural studies courses.