”De lever så här varje dag, liksom”: Representationer av fattigdom i svenska insamlingsgalor.

Abstract

In this essay, I investigate the representations of poverty in two charity galas on Swedish television. Moreover, through a discourse analysis, I look at how the concepts of ‘development’ and ‘poverty’ are used in these galas. I have watched two galas from 2012; Tillsammans för världens barn and Humorgalan. The shows turned out to be quite different from each other, as one of them was problematizing the concept of ‘poverty’ more than the other. Despite this, my conclusion is that the charity galas on Swedish television 2012 are both belonging to a colonial discourse, where ‘us’ and ‘them’ are frequently created on the basis of developed/underdeveloped areas in the world as a binary opposition, and where white ‘experts’ are defining the problems of poverty and their solutions.