The Branding AIDS Conference brought together some interesting and experienced speakers from academic, medical and advocacy backgrounds. I was hoping the conference would explore greater themes of ethical consumerism and corporate social responsibility but it was mainly focused on Red products and media representation of HIV/AIDS. However, the conference did provide some much needed dialogue approaching the broader issues; I find that most of the material broaching corporate aid is overly simplistic and divisive.

some interesting points that were discussed:
- issues of representation including a shift from statistics and illness to human individuals, the disavowal of the cultural and socioeconomic diversity of an entire continent and the obscuring of African voices, implications of commercial exploitation of human suffering
- role of the media and celebrity figures
- implications of a shift away from the political and socioeconomic context of HIV/AIDS towards consumerism and viable solutions
- tendency for the rhetoric of "emergency" and "crisis" silencing debate
- ubiquitousness of brand culture/logic, the containment of discourse within "market citizenship", commodification of social justice
- focus on HIV/AIDS obscuring or taking resources from other diseases and social problems

I had also hoped for speakers coming from a commerce background because the main arguments supporting these types of initiatives went along the lines of "it's better than nothing" or "if we don't capitalize upon this, someone else will step in and be less ethical". Pretty weak rationalizations if you ask me. A friend of mine offered a better point: that corporations have incredible resources and manpower at their disposal to "incubate" or execute social programs that other organizations like your traditional nonprofit may not. (Although my answer to that would be to start examining why our governments or say, NGOs are not capable of/unwilling to adopt similar functions.)

After the conference, it seemed to me that the most negative aspect of campaigns like (Product) Red, is not the opportunism and hypocrisy they are frequently criticized for, but rather, their potential to dampen alternatives to social activism and aid, to appropriate social justice into the logic of consumerism. These campaigns don’t try to foster active participation through educating people and engaging citizens in advocacy work. Instead, as keynote speaker Dr. Lisa Ann Richey notes, we are being presented with a “myth of consumer sovereignty” where the logic of consumerism becomes colluded with the system of democracy. While corporate aid does not cause a displacement of activity from civic engagement to consumer choice, it does play a role in facilitating it. But to explore this issue further, we need to adopt a greater perspective. I think Dr. Rinaldo Walcott summed up many attendee’s thoughts when he said that the triumph of neoliberalism was in limiting our imaginations…