One of the marked characteristics of globalization is the emergence of new forms of public authority. This cluster will study one form of charismatic authority—the celebrity--as a mediating actor, and ‘celebritization’ as a process situated in both the global and local interface of cultural, economic and social life. Thus, celebrities may be able to teach us more about forms of public authority that cross cultural boundaries through global media, while embodying or potentially challenging local norms.

Our cluster focuses on new global actors, civil society, non-state actors that mediate both within and between states, teaching us how the mediation of global agency works across North/South configurations. As people become increasingly delinked from their closest social relations, and as interactions across a significant social distance with people we do not know become more important, the celebrity figure serves as a new way of creating community through the media and as a mediator between causumers and the beneficiaries of causes. Celebrities are now beginning to be taken seriously as actors in international politics, environmental conservation and climate change, fair trade and social justice.

This cluster is linked to an international research network on Celebrity and North-South relations.  You can read about this network and its activities at celebnorthsouth.wordpress.com