Celebrity Politics, Polity Press: Cambridge and Maiden

摘要

In recent years, there has been a huge amount of academic interest in the intersection of celebrity and politics, with various studies exploring the nature of celebrity within the political system. Mark Wheeler's book makes a valuable contribution to this debate, in his systematic discussion of politicians who are celebrities and also celebrities who engage in politics. Wheeler takes as his starting point the argument that celebrity politics operates in a post-democratic context. He offers a historical contextualisation for the commodification of politics in the last 100 years, where politicians have become celebrities and celebrities have become politicians, employing the conventional shorthand CP1 to refer to the celebrity politicians who have achieved political office and CP2 for celebrities who are politicised and engage with politics in some way outside of official, elected office. He shows how the celebritisation of politics has brought about alternative forms of political engagement and shows how these can be linked with cultural changes in concepts of citizenship and participation.