The Commercialisation of Charity and the Commodification of Compassion

Abstract

Bearing in mind that many pink-ribbon wearers feel worried about breast cancer, it is unsurprising that they see their charitable donations as contributing to a fund that they are likely to make use of themselves in the future. Over a quarter of the interviewees, all of whom wore the pink ribbon, saw charity in this way. ‘Some people don’t really believe in what they’re investin’ … ‘I mean giving to’, one female teacher in her mid-20s told me, her slip revealing that she sees charity as a way of saving for future medical needs. Another female interviewee was emphatic that she ‘believed in’ charity, because ‘everyone needs help at some point’. She wore both the pink and the red ribbons, and believed that she was at significant risk of developing HIV and breast cancer. Speaking about the possibility of contracting HIV herself, she told me, ‘I would want treatment if it was there. And so, therefore, I’m quite happy to give money to it [the AIDS awareness campaign], because I think that … anyone could be attacked’. Another interviewee was similarly motivated by a belief that she would need to rely upon charity-funded services and research in the future. There is no point, she said, in thinking ‘it will never happen to me’, because, ‘what if it did happen to you and you always passed that box and never put money in?