Humanitarian relief worker Sean Penn: A contextual story

This epilogue presents some closing thoughts on key concepts discuses in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows how Angelina Jolie's visits to refugee camps in Thailand create hope and expectations among Burmese refugees, at the same time as these same refugees have abandoned hope that the UN organizations for whom Jolie appears might do anything for them. It presents how Madonna's charitable ventures in Malawi have resulted in impoverishment for particular villagers, and how that poverty is disconnected from the political debates nationally. The book examines how the grant-making practices and political engagements of Ben Affleck's work in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), dedicated to not cultivating elite politics, throws into stark relief his thoroughly elitist strategy of political engagements in Washington. It explores how South African consumer politics are served and wage disputes constituted, through local celebrity humanitarianism.