It seems like the advice is basically “represent Africa as being high status, not low status”. We also want to get across the message that people in the third world have serious problems that we can very effectively solve. If person A can easily solve person B’s problems, but person B can do nothing to help or harm person A, then person A is (much) higher status than person B. Why try to hide this reality? We generally don’t give charity money to our superiors or equals.
Perhaps there is an instrumental reason to pretend that this relationship is more egalitarian that it actually is. But while you reference data suggesting that traditional marketing is ignored by most people, you don’t present any data suggesting that other approaches work better.
You seem to be conflating status and power. Certainly there are a number of mechanisms whereby more powerful people tend to have higher status, but by itself that doesn’t give much reason to think that it’s better to make the status differential equal to the power differential, smaller, or bigger. Many people think it’s good to have a flatter landscape of status than we have of power (indeed I think this is a core western value).
Looking at the content of the post, it also mentions instrumental reasons for pushing portrayals in this direction right at the start: making people uncomfortable and getting attacked for it when not giving enough respect.
It seems like the advice is basically “represent Africa as being high status, not low status”. We also want to get across the message that people in the third world have serious problems that we can very effectively solve. If person A can easily solve person B’s problems, but person B can do nothing to help or harm person A, then person A is (much) higher status than person B. Why try to hide this reality? We generally don’t give charity money to our superiors or equals.
Perhaps there is an instrumental reason to pretend that this relationship is more egalitarian that it actually is. But while you reference data suggesting that traditional marketing is ignored by most people, you don’t present any data suggesting that other approaches work better.
You seem to be conflating status and power. Certainly there are a number of mechanisms whereby more powerful people tend to have higher status, but by itself that doesn’t give much reason to think that it’s better to make the status differential equal to the power differential, smaller, or bigger. Many people think it’s good to have a flatter landscape of status than we have of power (indeed I think this is a core western value).
Looking at the content of the post, it also mentions instrumental reasons for pushing portrayals in this direction right at the start: making people uncomfortable and getting attacked for it when not giving enough respect.