A boycott is a form of consumer activism Consumer activism is activism undertaken on behalf of consumers, to assert consumer rights involving the act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons.

Etymology

The word boycott entered the English language during the Irish Ireland (pronounced [ˈaɾlənd],; Irish: Éire, pronounced [ˈeːɾʲə] ( listen); Ulster Scots: Airlann) is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the northwest of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland is Great Britain, separated from "Land War The Land War in Irish history was a period of agrarian agitation in rural Ireland in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s. The agitation was led by the Irish National Land League and was dedicated to bettering the position of tenant farmers and ultimately to a redistribution of land to tenants from landlords, especially absentee landlords. While there were" and is derived from the name of Captain Charles Boycott Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott was a British land agent whose ostracism by his local community in Ireland as part of a campaign for agrarian tenants' rights in 1880 gave the English language the verb to boycott, meaning "to ostracise", the estate agent of an absentee landlord, Lord Erne, who lived in Lough Mask House, in County Mayo County Mayo is one of the traditional counties of Ireland and is located within the province of Connacht. It was named after the village of Mayo (Irish: Maigh Eo), but the county seat is Castlebar. Mayo is the third largest of Ireland’s 32 counties in area and 15th largest in terms of population. It is the second largest of Connacht’s five, Ireland Ireland (pronounced [ˈaɾlənd],; Irish: Éire, pronounced [ˈeːɾʲə] ( listen); Ulster Scots: Airlann) is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the northwest of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland is Great Britain, separated from, who was subject to social ostracism Ostracism- (Greek: έξω-οστρακισμός - exo (out)-ostrakismos) was a procedure under the Athenian democracy in which any citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for ten years. While some instances clearly expressed popular anger at the victim, ostracism was often used preemptively. It was used as a way of defusing major organized by the Irish Land League The Irish Land League was an Irish political organization of the late 19th century which sought to help poor tenant farmers. Its primary aim was to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. The period of the Land League's agitation is known as the Land War in 1880. As harvests had been poor that year, Lord Erne offered his tenants a ten percent abatement in their rents, in September of that year, protesting tenants demanded a twenty five percent decrease, which Lord Erne refused. Boycott then attempted to evict eleven tenants from the land. Charles Stewart Parnell Charles Stewart Parnell was an Irish Protestant landowner, nationalist political leader, land reform agitator, and the founder and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. He was one of the most important figures in 19th century Ireland and Great Britain and described by Prime Minister William Gladstone as the most remarkable person he had ever, in a speech in Ennis Ennis is the county town of Clare in Ireland. Situated on the River Fergus, it lies north of Limerick and south of Galway. Its name is a shortening of the original Inis Cluain Ramh Fhada ("long rowing meadow island") prior to the evictions, proposed that when dealing with land-grabbing tenants, rather than resorting to violence, everyone in the locality should ostracise them. This policy was first applied to Boycott. Despite the short-term economic hardship to those undertaking this action, Boycott soon found himself isolated — his workers stopped work in the fields and stables, as well as in his house. Local businessmen stopped trading with him, and the local postman refused to deliver mail.^[1]

The concerted action taken against him meant that Boycott was unable to hire anyone to harvest In agriculture, the harvest is the process of gathering mature crops from the fields. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulse for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, or reaper. The harvest marks the end of the growing season, or the growing cycle for a particular crop, and this is the focus of seasonal celebrations of many religions. On the crops in his charge. Eventually 50 Orangemen The Orange Institution is a Protestant fraternal organisation based mainly in Northern Ireland and Scotland, though it has lodges throughout the Commonwealth and the United States. The Institution was founded during 1796 near the village of Loughgall in County Armagh, Ireland. It is strongly linked to unionism. Its name is a tribute to Dutch-born from Cavan County Cavan is one of the traditional counties of Ireland, and is known far and wide as " The county that never sleeps". It is located within the province of Ulster. It was named after the town of Cavan (Irish: an Cabhán). It is one of three counties situated in the province of Ulster without being part of Northern Ireland. The county and Monaghan County Monaghan is one of the traditional counties of Ireland. It is located within the Province of Ulster and is part of the Republic of Ireland. It was named after the town of Monaghan (Irish: Muineachán) volunteered to harvest his crops. They were escorted to and from Claremorris Claremorris , is a town in County Mayo in the west of the Ireland, at the junction of the N17 and the N60 national routes. It has a population of approximately 3,180 by one thousand policemen The armed Royal Irish Constabulary was Ireland's major police force for most of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. A separate civic police force, the unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police controlled the capital. The cities of Derry and Belfast had special divisions within the RIC. The RIC was disbanded in 1922. It was replaced by two and soldiers, despite the fact that the local Land League leaders had said that there would be no violence from them, and in fact no violence materialized.^[2] Moreover, this protection ended up costing far more than the harvest was worth. After the harvest, the "boycott" was successfully continued. Within weeks Boycott's name was everywhere. It was used by The Times The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of News International. News International is entirely owned by the News Corporation group, headed by Rupert Murdoch. Though traditionally a moderately centre-right newspaper and a supporter of the Conservatives, it supported the Labour Party in in November 1880 as a term for organized isolation. According to an account in the book “The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland” by Michael Davitt, the term was coined by Fr. John O'Malley of County Mayo to "signify ostracism applied to a landlord or agent like Boycott". The Times first reported on November 20, 1880: “The people of New Pallas have resolved to 'boycott' them and refused to supply them with food or drink.” The Daily News wrote on December 13, 1880: “Already the stoutest-hearted are yielding on every side to the dread of being 'Boycotted'.” By January of the following year, the word was being used figuratively: "Dame Nature arose.... She 'Boycotted' London from Kew to Mile End" (The Spectator, January 22, 1881).

Notable boycotts

Although the term itself was not coined until 1880, the practice dates back to at least 1830, when the National Negro Convention encouraged a boycott of slave-produced goods. Other instances of boycotts are their use by African Americans African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry during the US civil rights movement (notably the Montgomery Bus Boycott The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. Many historically significant figures of the civil rights movement were involved in the boycott, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph); the United Farm Workers union grape and lettuce boycotts; the American boycott of British goods at the time of the American Revolution The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America. They first rejected the authority of the Parliament of Great Britain to govern them from overseas without; the Indian boycott of British goods The Swadeshi movement, part of the Indian independence movement, was a successful economic strategy to remove the British Empire from power and improve economic conditions in India through following principles of swadeshi (self-sufficiency). Strategies of the swadeshi movement involved boycotting British products and the revival of domestic-made organized by Mohandas Gandhi; the successful Jewish boycott organised against Henry Ford in the USA, in the 1920s; the boycott of Japanese products The first boycott of Japanese products in China was started 1915 as a result of public indignation at the Twenty-One Demands which Japan threatened China to accept. In 1919, the students and intellectuals involved in the May Fourth Movement called for another boycott of Japanese products, to which the public responded enthusiastically. Local in China after the May Fourth Movement The May Fourth Movement was an anti-imperialist, cultural, and political movement growing out of student demonstrations in Beijing on May 4, 1919 protesting the Chinese government's weak response to the Treaty of Versailles, especially the Shandong Problem. These demonstrations sparked national protests and marked the upsurge of Chinese; the Jewish anti-Nazi boycott of German goods in Lithuania, the USA, Britain and Poland during 1933; the antisemitic Antisemitism is prejudice against or hostility towards Jews, often rooted in hatred of their ethnic background, culture, and/or religion. In its extreme form, it "attributes to the Jews an exceptional position among all other civilizations, defames them as an inferior group and denies their being part of the nation[s]" in which they boycott of Jewish The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation. Converts to Judaism, whose status as Jews within the Jewish ethnos-owned businesses in Nazi Germany Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany under the government of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party , from 1933 to 1945. Third Reich (German: Drittes Reich) denotes the Nazi state as the historical successor to the mediæval Holy Roman Empire (962–1806) and to the modern German Empire (1 during the 1930s and the Arab League boycott of Israel and companies trading with Israel. In 1973, the Arab Arab people or Arabs (العرب al-ʿarab) are an ethnic group whose members identify as such on one or more of linguistic, cultural, political, or genealogical grounds. Those self-identifying as Arab, however, rarely do so with it as their sole identity. Most hold multiple identities, with a more localized prioritized national identity — such countries enacted a crude oil Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights, and other organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the earth's surface embargo against the West, see 1973 oil crisis The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC proclaimed an oil embargo "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war; it lasted until March 1974. . With the US actions seen as initiating the oil embargo and. Other examples include the US-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow The 1980 Summer Olympics boycott of the Moscow Olympics was a part of a package of actions to protest the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Soviet-led boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and the movement that advocated "disinvestment Disinvestment, sometimes referred to as divestment, refers to the use of a concerted economic boycott, with specific emphasis on liquidating stock, to pressure a government, industry, or company towards a change in policy, or in the case of governments, even regime change. The term was first used in the 1980s, most commonly in the United States," in South Africa Coordinates: 29°02′46″S 25°03′47″E / 29.046°S 25.063°E The Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of Africa, with a 2,798 kilometres coastline on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. To the north lie Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe; to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland; while Lesotho is an independent during the 1980s in opposition to that country's apartheid Bantustan · District Six · Robben Island regime. The first Olympic boycott was in the 1956 Summer Olympics The 1956 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVI Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was held in Melbourne, Australia, in 1956, with the exception of the equestrian events, which could not be held in Australia due to quarantine regulations. Instead, those events were held five months earlier in Stockholm, with several countries boycotting the games for different reasons. Iran also has an informal Olympic boycott against participating against Israel, and Iranian athletes typically bow out or claim injuries when pitted against Israelis (see Arash Miresmaeili).

American track star Lacey O'Neal coined the term girlcott in the context of the protests The 1968 Olympics Black Power salute was a noted black civil rights protest and one of the most overtly political statements in the 110 year history of the modern Olympic Games. African American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos performed the Power to the People salute at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City by male African American African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry athletes during the 1968 Summer Olympics The 1968 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XIX Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Mexico City in October 1968. The 1968 Games were the first Olympic Games hosted by a developing country, and the first Games hosted by a Spanish-speaking country . It is the only Games ever held in Latin America (until Rio in Mexico City Mexico City is the capital and largest city in the country of Mexico. Mexico City is also the Federal District (Distrito Federal), seat of the federal government. The Federal District is considered a federal entity within Mexico and is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole. It is the most important. Speaking for Black women athletes, she advised that the group would not "girlcott" the Olympic Games as they were still focused on being recognized. "Girlcott" appeared in Time magazine Time is an American news magazine. A European edition (Time Europe, formerly known as Time Atlantic) is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition (Time Asia) is based in Hong Kong. As of 2009, Time no longer publishes a Canadian advertiser edition. The South Pacific edition, in 1970, and then later was used by retired tennis Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each (doubles). Each player uses a racquet that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court player Billie Jean King Billie Jean King is a former professional tennis player from the United States. She won 12 Grand Slam singles titles, 16 Grand Slam women's doubles titles, and 11 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. King has been an advocate against sexism in sports and society. She is known for "The Battle of the Sexes" in 1973, in which she defeated 55- in The Times in reference to Wimbledon Wimbledon is a district of South London, England, located in the London Borough of Merton. It is situated 7 miles south-west of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. For most of the past one hundred years, Wimbledon has been internationally known as the home of the Wimbledon Tennis to emphasize her argument regarding equal pay for women players.

Application and uses

A boycott is normally considered a one-time affair designed to correct an outstanding single wrong. When extended for a long period of time, or as part of an overall program of awareness-raising or reforms to laws or regimes, a boycott is part of moral purchasing Ethical consumerism is the intentional purchase of products and services that the customer considers to be made ethically. This may mean with minimal harm to or exploitation of humans, animals and/or the natural environment. Ethical consumerism is practiced through 'positive buying' in that ethical products are favoured, or 'moral boycott', that, and those economic or political terms are to be preferred.

Most organized consumer boycotts today are focused on long-term change of buying habits, and so fit into part of a larger political program, with many techniques that require a longer structural commitment, e.g. reform to commodity markets Commodity markets are markets where raw or primary products are exchanged. These raw commodities are traded on regulated commodities exchanges, in which they are bought and sold in standardized contracts, or government commitment to moral purchasing Ethical consumerism is the intentional purchase of products and services that the customer considers to be made ethically. This may mean with minimal harm to or exploitation of humans, animals and/or the natural environment. Ethical consumerism is practiced through 'positive buying' in that ethical products are favoured, or 'moral boycott', that, e.g. the longstanding boycott of South African Coordinates: 29°02′46″S 25°03′47″E / 29.046°S 25.063°E The Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of Africa, with a 2,798 kilometres coastline on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. To the north lie Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe; to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland; while Lesotho is an independent businesses to protest apartheid Bantustan · District Six · Robben Island already alluded to. These stretch the meaning of a "boycott."

Boycotts are now much easier to successfully initiate due to the Internet. Examples include the gay and lesbian boycott of advertisers of the "Dr. Laura" talk show, gun owners' similar boycott of advertisers of Rosie O'Donnell's talk show and (later) magazine, and gun owners' boycott of Smith & Wesson following that company's March 2000 settlement with the Clinton administration. They may be initiated very easily using either Web sites (the Dr. Laura boycott), newsgroups (the Rosie O'Donnell boycotts), or even mailing lists. Internet-initiated boycotts "snowball" very quickly compared to other forms of organization.

Viral Labeling is a new boycott method using the new digital technology proposed by the Multitude Project and applied for the first time against Walt Disney around Christmas time in 2009. ^[3]

Another form of consumer boycotting is substitution for an equivalent product; for example, Mecca Cola and Qibla Cola have been marketed as substitutes for Coca-Cola among Muslim populations.

Academic boycotts have been organized against countries. For example, the mid and late 20th century academic boycotts of South Africa in protest of apartheid practices and the less successful but more recent academic boycotts of Israel.

Some boycotts center on particular businesses, such as recent protests regarding Costco, Walmart, Ford Motor Company, or the diverse products of Philip Morris. Another form of boycott identifies a number of different companies involved in a particular issue, such as the Sudan Divestment campaign, the Boycott Bush campaign. The Boycott Bush website was set up by Ethical Consumer after U.S. President George W. Bush failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol - the website identifies Bush's corporate funders and the brands and products they produce. Today a prime target of boycotts is consumerism itself, e.g. "International Buy Nothing Day" celebrated globally on the Friday after Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

Another version of the boycott is targeted divestment, or disinvestment. Targeted divestment involves campaigning for withdrawal of investment, for example the Sudan Divestment campaign involves putting pressure on companies, often through shareholder activism, to withdraw investment that helps the Sudanese government perpetuate genocide in Darfur. Only if a company refuses to change its behavior in response to shareholder engagement does the targeted divestment model call for divestment from that company. Such targeted divestment implicitly excludes companies involved in agriculture, the production and distribution of consumer goods, or the provision of goods and services intended to relieve human suffering or to promote health, religious and spiritual activities, or education.

As a response to consumer boycotts of large-scale and multinational businesses, some companies have begun marketing brands which, though formally owned by the parent corporation, do not bear the company's name on the packaging or in advertising. Activists such as Ethical Consumer produce information on which companies own which brands and products to enable consumers to practice boycotts or moral purchasing more effectively.

"Boycotts" may be formally organized by governments as well. In reality, government "boycotts" are just a type of embargo. It is notable that the first formal, nationwide act of the Nazi government against German Jews was a national embargo of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933.^[4]

Where the target of a boycott derives all or part of its revenues from other businesses, as a newspaper does, boycott organizers may address the target's commercial customers.

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