Gates, Buffet and the Corporatization of Kids

[Onyango Oloo]

www.commondreams.org/views06/0628-30.htm

[roughrider]

Mmmh Good food for thought. I've always looked at 'philanthropists' and 'charity' with healthy suspicion

[fanyamambo]

I recently noticed that Muguga Green Primary School is now painted in the Celtel colours. I find that disturbing on several levels.

[roughrider]

I was in traffic when i noticed that school - are those Celtel colours? Is it now ok for corporations to advertise on school walls? Who will be next? Kenya Breweries?...

[kamalet]

School needs a coat of paint, cannot afford it. So bring in a corporate that will do so at the small price of advertising. Ultimate benefit, the school with clean coat of paint, the local authority for advertising revenue and the corporate for some business turnover and a claim to corporate social responsibility!!!

.....and all are winners!!!

[roughrider]

Not too fast, Kamale. Advertising in schools can be insidious and it can take many forms – on school notice boards, billboards, exercise and text books covers or like the do in the US - TV channels in schools: children are brought up in the image of the sponsoring corporate. Corporations can invade childhood, perverting values and identity.

In an article - The Corporatized Child - appearing in the California Psychologist, Allen D. Kanner, Ph.D. makes some compelling arguments, in part:

...What is the result of all this advertising? We don’t know the full story yet, but marketing to children has been implicated in childhood obesity and child-onset diabetes, violent behavior, cigarette and alcohol consumption, pressure on pre-teens to dress and act sexually, a narrowing of creative play in young children, and the adoption of materialistic values. Materialistic values, in turn, have been causally linked to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and psychosomatic symptoms in children.

This materialistic message underlying marketing is worth special attention for it goes beyond selling undesirable products, such as junk food and violent media, to the formation of children’s values and worldview. The consumer ideal — that happiness comes from the accumulation of money and material goods — is a subtext in all advertising, irrespective of the product or service being sold. Even ads for beneficial products contribute to the materialistic theme.

Modern marketing, however, does not merely inculcate materialistic values. Rather, it promotes what I call corporate materialism, which is the idea that happiness comes specifically from corporate products and, by extension, from corporations themselves.

Marketing departments work hard to create corporate images that transcend any product a corporation may produce. They want children to identify with their corporate image, a marketing technique called “branding.”

To the extent that branding is successful, children come to identify themselves with specific corporations and, more generally, with the corporate system itself. Over time, they come to believe, consciously or unconsciously, that they are dependent on corporations and their products for a satisfying and meaningful life. They become the corporatized child.

In the case of Celtel and Muguga Green, there is a further persuasion. Safaricom headquarters are literally next door and it appears Celtel strategists wanted to spit at their rivals faces in very bright pink-red colors, everyday. A school called green painted pink? Poor children were caught in the corporate crossfire.

[mzeiya]

Beggars cannot be choosers. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have every right to dictate how, where and when their 'donations' will be used.

Take it or leave it. No questions asked.

[job]

Clever & Corporate-savvy enterpreneurs & Billionaires don't always apply the political route today to advance their corporate & business interests into new markets.

That's too risky a course to advance your business interests and often carries some political price . Besides, that route is ladden with numerous bureaucratic bottlenecks and kick-backing check-points. It's too expensive, cumbersome and subject to scrutiny. The new route to advance your business interests into new frontiers today is,......through charity!

Just like the early colonialists & business/economic explorers who ventured into Africa & other frontiers wielding bibles,....... disguised as missionaries,...yet keenly intent on commercial interests,.....todays billionaires like Microsoft mogul Bill Gates or even Warren Buffet apply SAFER capitalist venturing schemes disguised as philanthropy to gain the advance confidence & LOVE of such new markets and fronts. We are yet to know their true motives. Maybe not anytime soon.

When Daniel Arap Moi says his Moi Africa Foundation-i.e his philanthropic mission in South Sudan- is meant to promote peace and bring charity to the formerly troubled region (yet now a promising economic Canaan with numerous infrastructure contracts, business opportunities & oil to boot) ,....you may quite get the hidden relationship between charity(philanthropy) & business.

As of direct charity like that provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation , specifically the HIV/AIDS -Thirld World initiative,.....sounds quite good on paper. There may be millions earmarked to directly benefit.

For the US based education & scholarship funds,....already complaints are emerging here in America since that specific education grant/ charity ,......comes with some attached conditions. Those conditions may be setting stage to directly advance Bill Gates' future interests,..who knows?

That's where & why some people call for caution.

As for the direct beneficiaries,...they can only say Thank you to Bwana Gates and Bwana Buffet or Mzee Moi as they also advance their well-intentioned and also VEILED interests.

Job