Abstract: This article introduces the concept of sustainability-rooted anticonsumption (SRAC), which refers to consumers' anticonsumption practices of voluntary simplicity in living and, on a smaller level, collaborative consumption and boycotting with the goal of supporting sustainable economic development. The SRAC measurement approach is validated based on three empirical studies. Results of a representative German sample (Study 2) reveal that SRAC is predominantly negatively linked to consumer overconsumption dispositions. Exemplary, voluntary simplification and boycott intention may result in declining levels of indebtedness. Study 3 shows that psychosocial well-being is positively related to SRAC and overconsumption. However, a simplified lifestyle and a greater willingness to boycott are not necessarily associated with psychosocial well-being. This article provides insights for practitioners and policymakers to leverage existing SRAC values via “new” business models (sharing offers) or to influence the existing level of consciousness to effectively pave the way for solid progress in the sustainability movement.

Abstract: Boycott movements are often one of the most effective anticonsumption tactics used against companies that engage in practices deemed unethical or unjustified. This research explores the motives, causes, and targets of consumer boycott behavior using content analysis of Twitter feeds. Additionally, human sentiment analysis is used to investigate the relationship between boycott motives and the emotional intensity of boycott messages. The findings from analyzing a sample of 1,422 tweets show that while human rights issues constitute the leading cause of boycotts, business strategy decisions and corporate failures are also frequent causes, with for-profit providers of products and services being the most common boycott targets. The results also indicate that although consumer boycott messages are more commonly motivated by instrumental motives, noninstrumental motives have higher emotional intensity. This study provides a deeper understanding of consumer boycott behavior, and offers implications for consumers and businesses.

Abstract: Do consumers boycott in response to international conflict? We show that during the 2003 U.S.–France dispute over the Iraq War, the market share of French-sounding, U.S. supermarket brands declined. The dispute was a negative shock to U.S. consumers’ associations with France. French-sounding brands, which consumers perceive to be French imports but are not, allow us to isolate the dispute’s effect on economic behavior, as these brands’ only link to France is through consumers’ associations. Our estimates, derived from a nationwide sample of weekly supermarket sales for over 8,000 brands, are robust to a variety of alternate explanations. We also show that supermarkets with a higher proportion of customers who are U.S. citizens (i.e., who more strongly identify with the U.S. national identity) exhibited sharper boycotts.

Abstract: Are victims of human rights abuses better off with or without economic sanctions targeted at their perpetrators? We study this question in the context of a US human rights policy, the conflict-minerals section of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. By discouraging companies from sourcing tin, tungsten, and tantalum from the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the policy has acted as a de facto boycott on mineral purchases that may finance warlords and armed militias. We estimate the policy’s impact on the mortality of children born before 2013 and find that it increased the probability of infant deaths in villages near the policy-targeted mines by at least 143 percent. We find suggestive evidence that the legislation-induced boycott did so by reducing mothers’ consumption of infant health care goods and services.

Abstract: Antitrust, or competition law, is said to be comprised of two types of offenses exploitative and exclusionary The paradigmatic exploitative offense is a cartel, which raises prices to buyers and ultimately to consumers The paradigmatic exclusionary offense is a boycott to enforce a cartel The cartel members must keep at bay outsiders who would destroy their enterprise This means that such a boycott is also exploitative a use of exclusion to achieve exploitation

Abstract: (ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Rolling into Gaza I had a feeling of homecoming. There is a flavor to the ghetto. To the Bantustan. To the "rez." To the "colored section"... It feels very familiar, I tell them, what is happening here.-Alice Walker (2009)"Welcome to Soweto."-Graffito, Israel's Separation Wall (2007)In Gaza, Alice Walker was gripped by a visceral sense of being in familiar territory. In a poetic and comparative vein, she captured that familiarity, noting its similarities with American ghettoes, Indian reservations, and South African Bantustans. Scholarly and popular comparisons of the over 45-year Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (henceforth OPT, or Occupied Palestinian Territories) with apartheid (the Afrikaans term for "apartness" or "separate") has a genealogy situated at the intersection of intensified global inequalities, political activism, engaged scholarship, and the policies and practices of the occupation. Over the past decade or so, a confluence of factors revived the comparison on several fronts: the demise of the possibility of a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine, and the crystallization of hierarchically stacked sovereignties between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River; the marked shift in the academy to conceptualizing Israel as a settler colonial state; and Israeli policies and practices of separation and closure. Events on the ground in Palestine evoked those of apartheid South Africa in stark visual and experiential terms. On a larger scale, the concept of "global apartheid" took hold as a means of capturing a new world order in which inequality is systemic and pervasive (Harrison 2002:53). In 2005, in the midst of these global and local events, a group of Palestinian civil organizations called for international support for a Boycott, Divestment, and Solidarity (BDS) movement. By this time-with the continuing fragmentation of Palestine, the acceleration of Jewish settlement in the OPTs, and draconian controls over Palestinian mobility-a new vista opened for comparison; separation was literally cemented on the landscape by Israel's mammoth "separation" wall.1 Add to this over 500 checkpoints, a segregated road network, and a permit system and the result has been a spatially concentrated, confined, and immobilized Palestinian population, ruled by a state in which they are not citizens.The comparison between Israel/Palestine and apartheid has been made by political and human rights activists, academics and intellectuals, Palestinian civil society, as well as Western religious organizations. Not surprisingly, the comparison is avidly disavowed by the Israeli state and its supporters, who have long had recourse to a narrative of "exceptionalism" that exempts it from comparison, especially with a once-pariah state such as South Africa. This comparison is grounded in the classificatory schemes, discourses, ideologies, and practices of separation and exclusivism manifest, most significantly, in the tangible experiences of indigenous Palestinians and South Africans.Through the lens of this particular comparison, this article recuperates the comparative method in anthropology by exploring trans-regional parallels between settler colonialism and its regimes of rule. On epistemological grounds, it queries the sort of political and intellectual work comparison can do and what it might illuminate about the organizing principles and governing apparatuses of the modern colonial state. It also explores the politics of comparison. The article is organized in two broad sections. First, I position comparison within the anthropological tradition. I then turn to comparison as a mode of inquiry to examine the convergence of events in Israel/Palestine that led to the revitalization of this comparison in the mid-1990s and 2000s with an eye to weighing its contemporary usefulness. Second, I flesh out various elements of comparison among these two settler societies constructed around classificatory edifices of racialized distinction and privilege. …

Abstract: In the pre-Internet era, commercial publishers, such as Elsevier and Wiley, played an important role in disseminating new scientific ideas and discoveries. The emergence of the Internet has forced publishers to rethink their business model (Cope and Phillips, 2014), partly because scientists could, in principle, easily reach a broad audience and cut out the proverbial middleman. It is fair to say that commercial publishers adapted quite successfully as they arguably remain key players in the scientific publishing landscape (Cope and Kalantzis, 2014; Lariviere et al., 2015). However, academics have been criticizing publishers’ business practices for over a decade now [e.g., Dyer (2004)] and the call for reform has grown even louder in the past couple of years (Corbyn, 2012; Flood, 2012; Cope and Kalantzis, 2014). A prime example of such a reform initiative is the Cost of Knowledge campaign. Launched in response to a blog post by prominent mathematician Gowers (2012), the campaign specifically targets the publishing house Elsevier, denouncing its attempts to restrict the free exchange of information, the exorbitantly high prices for subscriptions, and the practice of selling journals in large bundles featuring many unwanted titles.1 Signatories of the petition pledge to not referee for, publish in, or do editorial work for Elsevier journals. Roughly 4 years after the boycott started, it seems appropriate to evaluate its impact and contemplate its future. As a result of the boycott, several academics resigned from the editorial boards of numerous Elsevier journals. Moreover, the entire editorial board of the Elsevier journal Lingua resigned and started a new, open access journal called Glossa (Greenberg, 2015). The boycott thus changed the publishing landscape to a certain extent but not as drastically as the organizers might have hoped. More importantly, however, over 80% of the nearly 16,000 signatories pledged to not publish in an Elsevier journal. This could gradually reduce the quality and thus the relevance of those journals. However, such a process takes time, and its effects may not be readily discernible. One might, therefore, wonder whether it provides much leverage in persuading Elsevier, or any other publisher for that matter, to change its policies. Moreover, one could question the feasibility of such a (long-term) commitment, especially the “won’t publish” pledge. Given the seemingly ever-growing emphasis in academia on publishing papers in high impact journals, it might put a non-trivial burden on one’s career. From previous studies, and perhaps personal experience, we know that good resolutions sometimes run aground (Norcross et al., 2002). But what about the “won’t publish” commitment? Do signatories stick to their guns and indeed refrain from publishing in Elsevier journals? This is an interesting question because the success of such an initiative largely depends on the persistence of its signatories. Put differently, a petition such as the Cost of Knowledge can influence policy decisions to the extent that its signatories remain committed.

Abstract: Consumer boycotts are triggered by egregious events, but the literature has not distinguished the level of egregiousness from consumers’ preferences or disutility associated with a given level of egregiousness, nor has the literature studied how these two components of egregiousness affect boycott intensity. We provide a model of market-level boycotts that distinguishes the two egregiousness components. Consistent with the predictions of our model, the market-level intensity of consumer boycotting of BP-branded gasoline, which was triggered by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, increased with the spill’s egregiousness level, approximated by the officially reported daily amount of oil leaked into the ocean and by other measures (i.e., the duration of the spill and the intensity of media coverage), and with consumers’ disutility from egregiousness, approximated by an area’s environmentalism and its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico. This paper was accepted by J. Miguel Villas-Boas, marketing.

Abstract: Do political tensions affect economic relations? In particular, does politics significantly affect consumer choices? Firms are often threatened by consumer boycotts that pretend to modify their business strategies and behavior. Sometimes these are caused by general political conflicts. The main objective of the paper is to study the consequences of political conflicts between Spain and Catalonia (a region of Spain) and the subsequent boycott calls on sales of Catalan sparkling wine (cava) in the aggregated Spanish market and also in different regions of the country. We use data from sales of sparkling wine in supermarkets and similar outlets. To determine with precision the boycott period we use data on the number of news about the issue that appeared in the main national Spanish daily newspapers. Although we present some preliminary evidence that the boycott calls affected the market share of Catalan cava in Spain, the results of our main econometric exercise indicate that, once we control for the time trends of the different varieties of sparkling wine, the boycott effects cease to be significant in the aggregate Spanish market. This does not necessarily mean that the boycott calls did not have any significant impact, because we actually find that the effects are very different in each regional market. As a matter of fact, our results indicate that the insignificant impact of the boycott calls at the Spanish aggregate level is a consequence of the combination of a negative impact of the boycott on sales of Catalan cava in some regions and the opposite effect in the Catalan market.

Abstract: Introduction: Polio eradication is now feasible after removal of Nigeria from the list of endemic countries and global reduction of cases of wild polio virus in 2015 by more than 80%. However, all countries must remain focused to achieve eradication. In August 2015, the Catholic bishops in Kenya called for boycott of a polio vaccination campaign citing safety concerns with the polio vaccine. We conducted a survey to establish if the coverage was affected by the boycott. Methods: A cross sectional survey was conducted in all the 32 counties that participated in the campaign. A total of 90,157 children and 37,732 parents/guardians were sampled to determine the vaccination coverage and reasons for missed vaccination. Results: The national vaccination coverage was 93% compared to 94% in the November 2014 campaign. The proportion of parents/guardians that belonged to Catholic Church was 31% compared to 7% of the children who were missed. Reasons for missed vaccination included house not being visited (44%), children not being at home at time of visit (38%), refusal by parents (12%), children being asleep (1%), and various other reasons (5%). Compared to the November 2014 campaign, the proportion of children who were not vaccinated due to parent’s refusal significantly increased from 6% to 12% in August 2015. Conclusion: The call for boycott did not affect the campaign significantly. However, if the call for boycott is repeated in future it could have some significant negative implication to polio eradication. It is therefore important to ensure that any vaccine safety issues are addressed accordingly. Pan African Medical Journal 2016; 24

Abstract: Drawing on empirical evidence from online citizen feedback on the 2012 Egyptian Constitution, we demonstrate that despite normative skepticism about implications of participatory constitution making, citizen participation matters. Using data of more than 650,000 online votes and comments on the constitution, we find that draft provisions with higher public approval are less likely to change and those with lower approval are more likely to change. We also find that Articles related to rights and freedoms are more likely to change based on online public input. Finally, following the boycott of the Constituent Assembly by non-Islamists, changes in draft Articles based on public feedback drop sharply. These findings highlight the conditions under which participatory constitution making becomes more effective. First, consensus among citizens over the most salient issues increases the probability that those issues would be successfully incorporated in the constitution. Second, without ex ante elite agreement ov...

Abstract: However well intentioned, working in detention centres amounts to complicity in torture, says David Berger , but Steven Miles thinks that there are better ways to take action

Abstract: There is not one type of political consumer but several, and citizens seem to make a distinction between them. But why are boycotter not automatically buycotter, and vice-versa? The dissertation investigates to what extent citizens' understanding of how cooperation between government, firms and civil society should look like influences their preferences for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) compared to labelling schemes, and how this together influences the decision to boycott and/or to buycott. Drawing on a cross-country study of 20 European countries and a survey conducted among 1.350 individual citizens living in Germany, the study shows that boycotting and buycotting represent two opposite and yet complementary modes of political consumerism, which together constitute a process that develops in parallel and interacting with the availability of political shopping guidelines. The comparative importance of labelling schemes and CSR for political consumerism in turn varies across countries depending on the prevailing understanding of cooperation.

Abstract: Although new theories of collective action in the contemporary media environment have provided an expanded view of the structure of action, important questions remain. These questions include how action frames flow between advocacy organizations and individuals on social media, especially in cases in which organizations do not initiate collective action. To address this question, we used Granger tests to analyze roughly 800,000 tweets about a competing boycott and buycott campaign that occurred in 2012. We found that the conversation about the campaigns began postbureaucratically (i.e., through citizen networks). Although organizations’ involvement was associated with increased citizen attention to the campaigns, the organizations neither adopted nor influenced citizen frames on the issue. We view this as an illustration of the variable and sometimes unpredictable role of organizations in communication about collective action today.

Abstract: If one disagrees with the actions of a company, an organization, or a country, boycotting that entity is an acceptable form of protest. Campaigns to boycott table grapes because of labor practices and Coors beer because of their antigay policies achieved their desired results. While a boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign can have a measurable and positive impact in certain situations, a successful result is not guaranteed: witness that one can search online the name of just about any company, and the word "boycott," and find campaigns waged against almost every major corporation--and almost none of them have produced any impact. For more than ten years, there has been a global campaign to effect boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israel. This campaign has had little success, in part because, as we argue in this essay, it was born of an ideology hostile to Judaism and Jewish nationalism, and remains steeped in that hostile ideology to this day. The Palestinian people are not united behind this effort. The Jerusalem Media and Communication Center, a Palestinian NGO, shows BDS support down ten percentage points from 59 percent in March 2015 to 49 percent in August 2015 (www.jmcc.org). Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, while supporting the boycott of goods produced in West Bank settlements, has opposed BDS of Israeli products not from those settlements. The BDS movement was informally initiated in late August 2001 at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. An array of anti-Israel groups campaigned for language equating Zionism with racism and opposed the inclusion of language that would define anti-Semitism as a form of racism. Israel, these advocates said, was an "apartheid state" and its defensive security barrier an "apartheid wall." They posited that BDS could impact this protracted conflict in the same way as it had been effective with the South African regime. The final document from Durban accused Israel of genocide and apartheid. This was the opening salvo of what has become known as the "BDS movement," an effort born, in effect, in the shadow of anti-Semitism, and unable to this day to shed intolerance of Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish state from its core values. The Durban Conference's final declaration described Israel as a state that was guilty of "racist crimes including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing." The "Durban Strategy" promoted "a policy of complete and total isolation of Israel, the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes, the full cessation of all links (diplomatic, economic, social, aid, military cooperation and training) between all states and Israel" (1) While it is clearly not true that all proponents of BDS are anti-Semitic, the record of the Durban conference, and the campaign for BDS that has unfolded, have been mired by anti-Semitic tropes and in many instances by outright anti-Semitism (ADL 2015). This essay provides several examples of BDS and its anti-Semitic nature: the cultural case of Matisyahu in Spain; the case of attempts at BDS by academic associations; and the case of the boycott of commercial companies, particularly Caterpillar and SodaStream. CASE STUDIES: BDS IN CULTURAL EVENTS Matisyahu (born Matthew Paul Miller), an American Jewish (but not Israeli) reggae rapper and alternative rock musician, was targeted by members of the BDS Movement simply because he is Jewish when he was scheduled to perform at the Rototom Sunsplash festival in Spain in August 2015. Representatives of the BDS movement demanded that the singer release a public statement stating that he endorses a Palestinian state. He was the only performer of which this demand was made. When he refused, pressure to cancel his performance came from a pro-BDS group in Valencia and the performance was initially cancelled. Spain's government and the European Jewish Congress condemned the BDS group's action and the decision of the concert promoters. …

Abstract: INTRODUCTIONConsumer boycotts have long been regarded as a tool by which consumers can voice their dissatisfaction with an organization's tactics, a government's policies, and with social issues in the hopes of influencing the offending target to change its ways. Both domestic and multinational corporations may be vulnerable to the boycotts of their brands. For example, consumers may oppose a multinational corporation's government policies and may in retaliation escalate the opposition to the boycott of the multinational corporation's products. Such a tactic may negatively impact the multinational corporation's market share and overall performance.Boycotts have become even more powerful than ever because of the advancements in technology, especially with the birth of the Internet where one click of a button can communicate consumer dissatisfaction all over the world. Further, with the unstable political and global environment and with the surge in consumer boycotts in recent years, domestic and multinational corporations need to be equipped with identifying the factors that may set the motion for a boycott and should understand consumer motivation to participate in a boycott.The literature on boycotts has extensively dealt with a target firm's actions that initiate the boycott behavior and the coercive nature of boycott organizers (Klein et al., 2004). Little attention, however, has been given to a consumer's decision to participate in a boycott (Klein et al., 2004) and the process by which they engage in a boycott. This paper focuses on these ignored areas of research and examines the consumer's decision to participate in a boycott using the expectancy theory as an explanatory mechanism.The objectives of this paper, therefore, are threefold: (1) explain the psychological process of the motivation to participate in a consumer boycott using the expectancy theory framework; (2) explain the moderating variables that influence this process; and (3) generate hypotheses for future research.THE IMPORTANCE OF BOYCOTTSBoycotts are important in influencing marketing policy and strategy because of the following factors according to Garrett (1987): (1) The use of boycotts is increasing; (2) Boycott agents are becoming more sophisticated due to the advancements in technology; (3) Recent court decisions have supported boycotts as legal forms of protest; and (4) Marketing strategists have neglected marketing policy boycotts as relevant marketing forces.Boycott organizers expose target firms' misconduct, increase public awareness of such behavior, and cause these firms to change their ways, thereby eventually leading to a better society. Smith (2000) attempts to provide support to the proposition that corporate practices have changed as a result of the pressure of consumer boycotts and concluded that such pressure is imperative in influencing corporations to apply corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices.Target firms should pay particular attention to consumer boycotts, especially since boycotts can be very dangerous and can threaten the existence of these firms. From the study of an actual boycott (Bremmer- a European-based multinational corporation that sells consumer food products-boycott), Klein, Smith, and John (2003), found that boycotting leads to the loss of sales, has an adverse impact on the company brand image due to the fact that the "boycotters tried competitors' products, found they preferred them, and rejected the Bremmer brand as a result" (p. 21). Boycotting can also lead to stock price decline and may damage the firm's competitive advantage.Pruitt and Friedman (1986) applied a time-series research to study the influence of 21 consumer boycott announcements on target firms' stockholders' wealth and found that boycott announcements resulted in a statistically significant reduction in target firms' stock prices and the overall market value of these firms declined by an average greater than $120 million. …

Abstract: This thesis explores the relationship between popular politics and popular music through the context of the international campaign against apartheid South Africa. In particular the thesis focuses on the ways in which the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, arguably the best organised and best established anti-apartheid solidarity organisation, interacted with popular music. This was a relationship that had been well established by the AAM’s attempts to enforce a wide ranging cultural boycott against South Africa. Growing challenges to the status and the logic of the boycott throughout the period, demonstrate well the shifting nature of popular politics. This link between popular music and protest against apartheid would also be embraced by musicians outside of the traditional constituencies of groups such as the AAM. In particular the growing market for reggae and what would later be termed world music demonstrated a wider interest for the subject beyond traditional activist circles. In both these genres the themes of pan-Africanism and anti-apartheid solidarity played an important role in the imagery and packaging of many artists. Yet the distance between these musicians and fans and established campaigning groups could also be a source of conflict. This was an issue that is highlighted best by the controversy surrounding Paul Simon’s 1987 Graceland album. This desire to use popular music as a campaigning tool in and of itself would later also be embraced by campaigns such as the AAM. In particular this manifested itself in a number of increasingly high profile awareness raising concerts including a 1990 concert at Wembley Stadium. Yet the complex negotiations and politics of the event also revealed something of the limitations of the relationship between popular music and popular politics and the extent to which more nuanced messages could be lost in a larger spectacle.

Abstract: Australian immigration detention has received persistent criticism since its introduction almost 25 years ago. With the recent introduction of offshore processing, these criticisms have intensified. Riots, violence, self-harm, abuse and devastating mental health outcomes are all now well documented, along with a number of deaths. Clinicians have played a central role working in these environments, faced with the overarching issue of delivering healthcare while facilitating an abusive and harmful system. Since the re-introduction of offshore processing a number of authors have begun to discuss the possibility of a boycott. While taking such action may lead to change, further discussion is needed, not only in relation to the impact of a boycott, but whether it is possible for clinicians to engage with this system in more productive, ethical ways. This article utilises a framework proposed by Lepora and Goodin (On complicity and compromise, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013) that provides a structured approach to examine complicity and seeks to explore how clinicians have engaged with Australian immigration detention and ultimately whether they should continue to do so.

Abstract: Academic boycotts are, in the view of this author, problematic in almost any context. Moreover, they have failed to achieve any significant political objectives beyond media attention. In the specific case of Israel-Palestine, the media coverage of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement (BDS) proposals is far greater than the limited, almost insignificant, impact on the nature of academic and scientific collaboration between Israeli universities and the broader global academic community. The academic boycott attempts remain, at this stage, little more than proposals to members of a small number of scientific communities and guilds to cease all forms of collaboration with Israeli scientists and scholars, regardless of their political positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict and the status of the Occupation. The boycott cannot be enforced upon the members of these scientific communities and guilds, the majority of whom continue to undertake full scientific collaboration with their Israeli colleagues and research partners. The small number of proboycotters who do not participate in scientific meetings and conferences that take place in Israel, or who do not invite Israeli colleagues to participate in conferences arranged elsewhere, are far outnumbered by the many members of the international scientific community who do participate, and are more than ready to take their vacant place around the conference table or in the lecture theatre. Scientific congresses, in all fields of academic endeavor, have continued to thrive against the background of calls for a boycott and if there have been some absent participants for political reasons, it has not been noticeable. A glance at the long list of academic meetings and seminars that have taken place at Israeli universities during the past two years, or those that are planned for the coming academic year, is clear evidence of this; if there have been individuals who have decided not to participate because of their desire to practice boycott, it has passed without notice or impact upon the conference itself. Unlike the case of South Africa, where there was an almost blanket boycott in all political, economic, and social realms, this is not the case with Israel. In both Western Europe and North America, where most of the boycott proposals emanate, the major universities and, in some cases, the governments themselves, have made it adequately clear that, regardless of their own personal positions concerning the Israel-Palestine impasse, they do not support selective or discriminatory academic boycotts and, in some cases, this has even led to a strengthening of scientific ties where none existed previously. In a letter issued by the European Union Science and Research Authority, in response to a request by some scholars to boycott projects with Israel, the union expressed their views that academic boycotts were discriminatory. Since the EU will not fund any university or research consortium that practices policies of discrimination, the EU letter made it clear that they would have to rethink the funding of any such institutions, or individual scholars, that blatantly practiced boycott. This is perceived, by university principals and provosts, as being much more harmful to their own research and funding objectives than lending support to calls for a boycott, and they constantly make the point that the members of the University and College Union (UCU) speak for themselves as individuals, and do not speak in the name of the universities, who are opposed to any such action. The universities, as such, view the UCU as an organization that should exclusively focus on issues pertaining to employment, tenure, and wages and that should not involve the universities in issues relating to "foreign policy" and insist that any member of faculty who does declare his/her intent to practice boycott, does so on the basis of his individuality and not as a faculty member representing, or speaking on behalf of, the university to which he/she is affiliated. …

Abstract: What happened next is still a matter of dispute. Like the Japanese folk tale "Rashomon," the principal actors recount completely different versions of the incident. The customer claims that she was accused of shoplifting and severely beaten by a store employee; the owner contends that Ms. Felissaint lacked sufficient funds to pay for items she had selected and became enraged, but that there was no physical altercation. The dispute and the subsequent arrest of owner Bong Jae Jang led to a boycott, with daily picketing of the market by African American activists. The boycott spread to include another Korean-owned business across the street from the Family Red Apple store. Some of the picketers carried placards that read, "Don't Buy From People Who Don't Look Like You." Although what actually transpired between Ms. Felissaint and the Jang family may never be known, it is clear that this conflict was being driven by much more than alleged mistreatment of a Black customer by an Asian merchant. Similar clashes between Asian merchants and African-American residents have led to organized protests and occasional violence in a number of other cities, including Washing? ton, Philadelphia, and Oakland. Both these incidents have brought to national attention a drama being played out on a smaller scale in urban neighborhoods across the nation. The rapid growth of immigrant Asian, primarily Korean businesses in predominantly Black neigh? borhoods has created an explosive situation, fraught with misconceptions, preju? dices, and danger on both sides. The merchants are viewed by Black people as

Abstract: Are victims of human rights abuses better off with or without economic sanctions targeted at their perpetrators? We study this question in the context of a US human rights policy, Section 1502 of the 2010 Dodd–Frank Act. By discouraging companies from sourcing ‘conflict minerals’ from the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the policy has acted as a de facto boycott on mineral purchases that may finance warlords and armed militias. We estimate the policy’s impact on mortality outcomes of children born prior to 2013 and find that it increased the probability of infant deaths in villages near the regulated ‘conflict mineral’ deposits by at least 143 per cent. We find suggestive evidence that the legislation-induced boycott did so by stunting mother consumption of infant health care goods and services. The findings demonstrate how sanctions and certification programmes for human rights can unintentionally harm the vulnerable populations they seek to protect.

Abstract: Between 1830 and 1913, the Ottoman Empire was involved in destructive wars with its trading partners. Boycotts were organized against Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary. The effects of wars and boycotts are a topic of debate among historians. This article examines whether wars and boycotts were associated with how the Ottoman Empire traded with its trading partners from 1830 to 1913. The findings indicate a decrease in trade with its adversaries during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, the Crimean War, and the Balkan Wars. In addition, there was a statistically significant reduction in trade with Austria-Hungary due to the boycott.

Abstract: Nowadays, the concept of sustainability is discussed in almost every product category. In this context, companies commit themselves to advancing good social, environmental, and animal-welfare practices in their business operations, including sustainable sourcing practices. Nevertheless, even if many companies in the global beauty care industry have embraced such claims, common practices such as water pollution, the use of pesticides in the production of fibers, poor labor conditions, and animal testing are omnipresent. According to the European Commission, 11.5 million animals were used in the European Union for experimental or scientific purposes in 2011. Worldwide this figure rises to 115 million animals annually (Four Paws International2013). In the rising tension between “greenwashing” and the use of ethical/environmental commitments that are nothing more than “sheer lip service,” the question arises of the role of the consumers with regard to sustainable practices in the cosmetics industry. Are consumers increasingly conscious of the adverse effects of ethical and environmental imbalances? And what effect does this knowledge have on their buying behavior? On the divergent poles of hypocrisy and true commitment, to advance current understanding of sustainability and related links to consumer perception and actual buying behavior related to ethical issues, the aim of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive framework of animal welfare in the personal care industry. Based on existing theoretical and empirical insights it becomes evident that psychological determinants, such as personality traits, empathy, ethical obligation, and self-identity, as well as context-related determinants in terms of one’s ethical value perception of products, the trade-off between ethical and conventional products, and an individual’s involvement, represent antecedents of ethical consumer behavior, which can be expressed through the avoidance of specific products and brands and/or consumer boycott and buycott towards cosmetics using animal-tested ingredients. Our concept provides a useful instrument for both academics and managers as a basis to create and market successfully cosmetics that represent ethical and environmental excellence.

Abstract: This retrospective assessment argues that despite the arrival in office in 2009 of a president who articulated the case for Palestinian rights more strongly and eloquently than any of his predecessors, U.S. official policy in the Obama years skewed heavily in favor of Israel. While a negotiated two-state resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians continued to be the formal goal of the United States, Israel9s defiant refusal to stop settlement expansion, the administration9s determined actions to perpetuate Israeli impunity in international fora, as well as the U.S. taxpayer9s hefty subsidy of the Israeli military machine all ensured that no progress could be made on that score. The author predicts that with all hopes of a negotiated two-state solution now shattered, Obama9s successor will have to contend with an entirely new paradigm, thanks in no small part to the gathering momentum of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Abstract: Purpose In this paper, the authors aim to offer a cross-cultural comparison of the boycott intentions of university students in Canada with those of students in Korea. Design/methodology/approach The data were collected from students at Inje University and York University via self-administered questionnaire. A t-test found that Canadian students’ answers showed significantly greater scores in ethnocentrism, boycott attitudes prior to reading the target article and motivations related to self-enhancement compared to those acquired from Korean students. However, the motivation of counterarguments and the boycott intentions of Korean students’ toward Rogers, the parent company of Maclean’s magazine, showed significantly higher scores than those gained from Canadian students. Findings The boycott case used in the study is Maclean’s magazine, a Canadian news magazine, which published a controversial article called, “Too Asian? Some frosh don’t want to study at an “Asian” University”. A noticeable gap in each group of students’ boycott attitude and intentions toward Rogers, the parent company of Maclean’s magazine was found. Originality/value In the multiple regression analysis, the boycott motivation of self-enhancement was the most influential variable on boycott intentions. The boycott case examined in this paper is a practical case study of cross-national grouping as well as the perceptional difference of the locus of corporate accountability that comes from cross-cultural backgrounds.

Abstract: Since democracy requires the involvement of citizens, the topic of political participation has attracted great attention from both practitioners and scholars. During the current financial and economic crisis, there have been various protest movements in many European countries. In this paper, which employs data from the European Social Survey and analyzes some European countries using a longitudinal study (2002-2012), I measure unconventional political participation considering three types of action - signed a petition, participated in a lawful demonstration and joined a boycott. By linking citizens to government ideology and vote for party government to political action through a multilevel model, this paper argues that both ideology and citizens’ electoral choices have a bearing on unconventional political participation. In times of crisis, government choices do not feed the level of unconventional political participation. However, differences emerge in terms of political behavior when I consider citizens’ ideology, loser status and government ideology.

Abstract: This paper is a back-of-the-envelope attempt to assess the losses that German agri-food exporters encountered due to the Russian import ban that was introduced in August 2014 and recently has been extended for at least one more year. Looking at exports in a time-series perspective it is shown that exporters’ losses due to the boycott itself are not that severe if two earlier episodes of rather drastic export reductions are taken into account: first, due to Russian import restrictions of meat and milk products in 2013 and second, due to an increased uncertainty in European-Russian trade relations as the Ukrainian conflict escalated and sides exchanged the very first sanctions. The results suggest that although the import ban had a negative impact on German agri-food exports to Russia, its extent was not as large as one may guesstimate without considering a broader picture of trade barriers imposed by Russia on German exporters in the recent years.