How much impact do boycotts and buycotts actually have on brand sales?

Political controversy triggered by Goya CEO’s political statements in 2020 sheds light

Peer-Reviewed Publication

INSTITUTE FOR OPERATIONS RESEARCH AND THE MANAGEMENT SCIENCES

Key Takeaways:

• The buycott generated an increase in sales that lasted for three weeks, especially among first-time buyers and in heavily Republican counties.
• Social media chatter and news media coverage was largely negative about the brand and incorrectly predicted severe negative consequences for the brand.
• Goya’s Democratic-leaning core customer base, largely made up of Latinos, did not decrease their purchases of the brand.

 

BALTIMORE, MD, November 3, 2022 – At a campaign event in the midst of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the chief executive officer of Goya, a large Latin food brand, publicly praised and endorsed then-president Donald Trump. The comments triggered both a boycott and a counter “buycott” movement in support of the brand.

Do such boycotts or “buycotts” have any impact on brand sales in both the short- and long-term? These questions were at the center of a study that found the immediate increase in Goya sales due to the buycott, while significant, was not sustained over time. At the same time, the researchers found that the boycott did generate a small countervailing impact in heavily Democratic counties, but that effect was also temporary.

The researchers’ study, published in the current issue of the INFORMS journal Marketing Science, titled “Frontiers: Spilling the Beans on Political Consumerism: Do Social Media Boycotts and Buycotts Translate to Real Sales Impact?” is authored by Jūra Liaukonytė of Cornell University, Anna Tuchman of Northwestern University and Xinrong Zhu of the Imperial College Business School in London.

“After the CEO made his statements, Goya sales temporarily increased by 22%,” says Jūra Liaukonytė. “But this net sales boost fully dissipated within three weeks.”

Anna Tuchman adds, “There was a lack of empirical evidence on buycotts, and we wanted to know, ‘What was the net effect of the boycott versus the buycott movements on sales? How long did the sales impact last, and how did it vary across local markets based on political affiliations?’”

To get the answers, the researchers analyzed sales data over time and by market, as well as the rates of social media and news media activity on the issue.

“Goya’s sales were historically stronger in more Democratic markets,” says Xinrong Zhu. “Among consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, Goya is one of the most Democratic brands. Consistent with this, we found that the boycott generated 75% more chatter on social media than the buycott. And related media coverage was overwhelmingly dominated by the boycott narrative.”

Still, the researchers found that the actual sales response went in the opposite direction, which suggested that in the case of political consumerism, social media metrics may not be a good proxy for actual demand. In fact, the buycott effect dominated the boycott effect, increasing the company’s sales by around 22% on net in the weeks after the scandal. The effect, however, was short-lived.

“We found that the temporary increase in Goya’s sales came from consumers not traditionally thought of as the brand’s core customers,” says Tuchman. “First-time Goya buyers were from heavily Republican areas who did not continue buying the brand, and thus were not particularly valuable in the longer term.”

In heavily Democratic counties, the researchers found that the buycott effect was outlasted by a modest boycott effect that persisted up to eight weeks after the event. At the same time, the study authors found that the brand’s most valuable customers, Latinos, did not decrease their purchases of Goya products.

Ultimately, neither the boycott nor buycott had a lasting impact on sales.

 

Link to Study

 

About INFORMS and Marketing Science

Marketing Science is a premier peer-reviewed scholarly marketing journal focused on research using quantitative approaches to study all aspects of the interface between consumers and firms. It is published by INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research and analytics professionals. More information is available at www.informs.org or @informs.

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JOURNAL

Marketing Science

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Frontiers: Spilling the Beans on Political Consumerism: Do Social Media Boycotts and Buycotts Translate to Real Sales Impact?

 

New paper provides insight into ‘boycott and buycott’ of Russian goods in China

More than ten per cent of Chinese citizens who took part in a survey say they are willing to boycott Russian goods and most likely disapprove of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, says new research led by Lancaster University. This important finding, say the

Lancaster University

More than ten per cent of Chinese citizens who took part in a survey say they are willing to boycott Russian goods and most likely disapprove of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, says new research led by Lancaster University.

This important finding, say the researchers, indicates that a substantial minority of the Chinese population might not share the official position of the Chinese Communist Party despite widespread propaganda and censorship.

Published this week in the Journal of Contemporary China, the research ‘Willingness to Boycott Russian Goods in China: How Political Ideology Shapes Consumer Preferences in an Authoritarian Context’ is authored by Dr Barbara Yoxon, of Lancaster University, Xue Bai, of Lancaster University and Richard Turcsanyi, of Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, says the article, the government of the People’s Republic of China has refused to condemn the violence and developed stronger economic and diplomatic ties with its authoritarian neighbour.

Recent surveys show that most Chinese people hold a positive view of Russia, despite its war with Ukraine.

Unlike previous research, the article investigates the motives of those Chinese citizens who are likely to oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

It uses original survey data from 3,029 respondents in China collected as part of the ‘Sinophone Borderlands—Interaction at the Edges’ project to better understand the patterns of political engagement in an authoritarian regime.

The paper suggests there is potential for anti-Russian political action in China and suggests that more organised anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian campaigns are possible in the future.

That action, says the paper, would have the scope to disrupt the profit margins of Russian companies hoping to escape Western sanctions.

In 2023, Russian consumer goods made up 5.1% of China’s 2023 imports and are likely to become even more common in China as Russia becomes more isolated from the Western world.

“While this share of the Chinese market might seem like a low figure, it is important to note that China is home to more than 1.5 billion consumers and even small decreases in the Sino-Russian trade volume would be a significant loss to Russian companies as the war with Ukraine continues,” says the article.

By focusing on the interaction between political ideology and political consumerism, the article has identified a group of individuals who are most likely to participate in activities that go against the ideological status quo in China.

This is a new avenue of research which goes beyond previous studies that focus on ethnocentric and nationalist causes of Chinese boycott and buycott practices.

To help determine who is willing to boycott Russian goods, the article delineated three broad political leanings in China: liberals, neo-authoritarians, and the New Left.

The results indicated that liberals, who show higher support for free market policies and lower support for social authoritarianism, are more likely than others to express willingness to boycott Russian goods.

The paper argues that liberal individuals are more supportive of the liberal international order and believe that Russia and China should work with, rather than against, multilateral institutions. This means liberals are more likely to interpret NATO’s actions in Eastern Europe as defensive and see Russian actions against Ukraine as unprovoked, aggressive and disproportional.

The article found that individuals with neo-authoritarian and New Left leanings are less likely to support the boycott of Russian goods.

Neo-authoritarians, who desire free market reform but support the existing sociopolitical structures, were against boycotting Russian goods. They believe that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is an extension of the rivalry between authoritarian China and the liberal United States. They believe that supporting Russia, an allied autocracy, is in China’s national interest.

For the New Left, the belief that NATO and the liberal international order is a form of neocolonial domination by the United States has also led to greater levels of support for Russian goods.

While it is not surprising, adds the paper, that individuals with more liberal leanings are likely to oppose Russian actions, this is the first study to date to clearly demonstrate such a link.

Commenting on the paper Dr Yoxon says: “The surprising level of anti-Russian attitudes in China suggests that an organised campaign to boycott Russian products might already be underway in China. 

“Our findings are important because they show that alternative forms of political participation can be a safe and convenient way for citizens of authoritarian regimes to express their political preferences.”

---

Journal

Journal of Contemporary China

DOI

10.1080/10670564.2024.2427941 

Article Title

Willingness to Boycott Russian Goods in China: How Political Ideology Shapes Consumer Preferences in an Authoritarian Context

Article Publication Date

25-Nov-2024

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE POLITICS OF BOYCOTTS AND BUYCOTTS

Nadeem F. Paracha

 January 12, 2025 

Illustration by Abro

The act of boycotting brands is referred to as “political consumerism.” According to the political scientists Dietlind Stolle and Michele Micheletti, political consumerism refers to the use of the market as an arena for politics, in order to change institutional or market practices found to be ethically, environmentally or politically objectionable.

Political consumerism can also be about people deliberately purchasing brands to reward them. This is referred to as “buycotting”. For example, in 2023, millennials and Gen Z, the core consumers of the American ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s, increased their consumption of the brand due to its overt support for ‘progressive causes.’ Ben & Jerry’s ‘reward’ in this regard was that it became 2023’s leading ice cream brand in the US.

Boycotting or buycotting brands are both political acts. Recently, a once-obscure Pakistani cola brand witnessed a manifold increase in demand at the expense of two established international cola brands. Since late 2023, the established cola brands have increasingly been accused of being ‘pro-Israel.’ Their names have appeared on various ‘boycott lists’ circulated by human rights groups active in highlighting Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza.

There is no conclusive literature/research, though, to determine to what extent boycotts or buycotts really work. And even though Ben & Jerry’s example can be viewed as a buycott success, one does wonder whether the brand could have posted even larger profits had it not just focused on embracing the politics of liberal millennials and Gen Z.

As youth-driven activism links consumption with ethics, many local alternatives are thriving by aligning themselves with progressive causes. However, the long-term impact of this on market dynamics and brand strategies remains unpredictable

But was the brand interested in profits or in just promoting certain causes? All businesses are for profit. Causes in this regard are part of ‘brand positioning.’ Ben & Jerry’s chose to position the brand as an activist brand. The brand’s marketing strategy seemed to be to engage with politically aware cosmopolitan youth who are likely to continue accumulating consumption power in the future more than the ageing ‘boomers’, and the ‘Gen Xers’ who have entered middle age.

Many giant brands did report a fall in sales in various countries due to Israel-related boycott campaigns against them. But this did not succeed in even slightly lessening the intensity of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza.

Yet, one can state that this is not the core intention of the boycott campaign. The intention is to disrupt the market share of the boycotted brands long enough for the disruption to compel major stakeholders of the brand to start exhibiting serious concern.

Interestingly, whereas it is tough for many brands to disprove their association with pro-Israel business/political interests, there are some brands that do not belong on the boycott list but have been put there.

In early 2024, an international fast-food chain (not McDonalds) in Pakistan was shocked to find its name in a boycott list that began to circulate on social media. According to the chain, its name was added in the list by a PR firm of a Pakistani fast-food brand. To this day, the chain is trying to clarify this, but to no avail. It has lost a lot of business to the local brand. Is this cheating or a clever strategy?

Israel-related brand boycotts have opened up the market for local brands. For example, local cola brands in the Muslim world have suddenly witnessed an unprecedented demand. Quality and taste are not considerations as such. Because consuming a local cola makes the consumer feel that they are part of a noble cause.

But who are these consumers? This is important to understand — especially by brands who believe they are being demonised through false information. To rebound, they need to be talking to the most active participants of the boycott campaign.

According to the American journalist Moore Terence, “Political consumers choose products based on the politics of the product than the product as material object.” This is a growing trend across the world, especially among the youth. This is also why, over the years, brands have intensified their claims of being environment-friendly, charitable, gender neutral etc. But how is a brand to address accusations of facilitating a genocide?




Apologising would mean that, indeed, the brand did facilitate the genocide. Saying that the actions of its producers in Israel have nothing to do with the intent of its producers elsewhere has drawn even more criticism. Remaining quiet hasn’t worked either because this boycott campaign has gone on for over a year now.

Brand boycotts cannot succeed if there are no alternative brands for the boycotters to choose as a replacement. Keeping in mind that major brands often buy-out competitive alternatives, and alternatives often allow this because they’re not sure for how long they can sustain the people’s interest, brands facing the boycott for over a year, may try to buy-out all major local brands that have risen.

And most local brands will be willing to sell due the kind of money that will be on offer. This is likely to happen if the boycott continues for yet another year. The Israel-related boycott campaign has witnessed moments of lull. And it is in such moments, the buy-outs may take place. Quietly.

Published in Dawn, EOS, January 12th, 2025

‘Genocide-free’ cola makes a splash in the United Kingdom

Cola Gaza offers its drinkers an ‘apartheid-free’ alternative as they boycott big-name brands.

AKA BUYCOTT

Cans of Cola Gaza are seen for sale during a National March for Gaza protest on September 7, 2024 in London, England, the UK [Leon Neal/Getty]

By Amy Fallon

23 Nov 2024

London, UK – On a sunny autumn day, the Hiba Express – a fast food chain in Holborn, a bustling central London neighbourhood packed with restaurants, bookstores and shops – is full of diners. Above Hiba is Palestine House, a multistorey gathering place for Palestinians and their supporters, built in the style of a traditional Arabic house with stone walls and a central courtyard with a fountain.

Osama Qashoo, a charismatic man who wears his hair pulled back in a bun and a thick beard and moustache ending in impressive curls, runs both establishments in the six-storey building.

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At the Hiba Express, his team serves up Palestinian and Lebanese dishes made from his family recipes. Inside the space, which is decorated in warm colours and with tree branches and placards with slogans such as “From the river to the sea”, patrons move halloumi cheese, chickpeas and falafel around their plates. At the eatery’s entrance, a doll dressed in a black-and-white keffiyeh scarf sits on a table with a sign above written in blood-coloured ink: “Save the children,” referring to the thousands of Palestinian children killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza over the past year.

On several tables sit cherry-red soda cans decorated with the black, white and green stripes of the Palestinian flag and Arabic artwork, and bordered by a pattern from the keffiyeh. “Gaza Cola” is written in Arabic calligraphy – in a script similar to that of a popular brand of cola.

It’s a beverage with a message and a mission.

Qashoo, 43, is quick to point out that the drink, which is made from typical cola ingredients and has a sweet and acidic taste similar to Coca-Cola, “is totally different from the formula that Coke uses”. He will not say how or where the recipe originated, but he will affirm that he created Gaza Cola in November 2023.

Osama Qashoo, creator of Gaza Cola, hands out cans and leaflets in the Holborn area of London, the United Kingdom, as part of the beverage’s soft launch in September [Courtesy of Gaza Cola

‘The real taste of freedom’

Nynke Brett, 53, who lives in Hackney, east London, discovered Gaza Cola while attending a cultural event at Palestine House. “It’s not as fizzy as Coke. It’s smoother, easier on the palate,” she says. “And it tastes even better because you’re supporting Palestine.”

Qashoo created Gaza Cola for several reasons, he says, but “number one was to boycott companies that support and fuel the Israeli army and support the genocide” in Gaza. Another reason: “To find a guilt-free, genocide-free kind of taste. The real taste of freedom.”

That may sound like a marketing tagline, but Palestinian freedom is close to Qashoo’s heart. In 2001, he co-founded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a group that uses nonviolent direct action to challenge and resist the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. This organisation paved the way for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement four years later, explains Qashoo. BDS boycotts companies and products that they say play a direct part in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.

Qashoo was forced to flee Palestine in 2003 after organising peaceful demonstrations against what he calls the “apartheid wall” in the West Bank. He arrived in the UK as a refugee and became a film student, determined to communicate Palestinian stories through filmmaking. His trilogy, A Palestinian Journey, won the 2006 Al Jazeera New Horizon Award.

In 2007, Qashoo co-founded the Free Gaza Movement, which aimed to break the illegal siege on Gaza. Three years later, in 2010, he helped organise the Gaza Freedom Flotilla mission to bring humanitarian aid from Turkey to Gaza by sea. In May 2010, one of the flotilla’s ships, the Mavi Marmara, was attacked, and Qashoo lost his cameraman and filming equipment. He was later arrested and then tortured while detained with nearly 700 others. His family went on a hunger strike until he was safe.
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After resettling in the UK, Qashoo continued his activism but found it challenging to try to earn a living from films. He then became a restaurateur. But he never expected to become a carbonated beverages purveyor. “I wasn’t even thinking about this” until late last year, Qashoo explains. He adds that he also wanted to create a product that was “an example of trade not aid”.

Fifty-three percent of consumers in the Middle East and North Africa are boycotting products from certain brands over recent wars and conflicts, George Shaw, an analyst at GlobalData, tells Al Jazeera.

“These companies that fuel this genocide, when you hit them in the most important place, which is the revenue stream, it definitely makes a lot of difference and makes them think,” Qashoo says. Gaza Cola, he adds, is “going to build a boycott movement” that will hit Coke financially.

Coca-Cola, which operates facilities in the Israeli Atarot industrial settlement in occupied East Jerusalem, faced a fresh boycott starting on October 7 last year.

Family has also been a factor in Qashoo’s drive to launch Gaza Cola. Today he doesn’t know the whereabouts of his adopted 17-year-old son in the West Bank, who was shot in the head in June. “I have family in Gaza who have been decimated,” says Qashoo. “I’ve got friends, I don’t know where they are.”

A banner advertising Gaza Cola hangs on the scaffolding on the front of Palestine House in Holborn, London, UK [Courtesy of Gaza Cola]

Not willing to compromise

Although it was only a year in the making, Qashoo says that creating Gaza Cola has been a challenge. “Gaza Cola was a very hard and painful process because I’m not an expert in the drink industry,” says Qashoo. “Every potential partner was suggesting compromise: compromise the colour, compromise the font, compromise the name, compromise the flag,” he says. “And we said ‘no, we’re not compromising on any of this’.”

Creating the drink’s logo was tricky. “How do you create a brand which is quite clear and doesn’t beat around the bush?” Qashoo says with sparkling eyes and a cheeky grin. “Gaza Cola is straightforward with honest and clear messaging.”

However, finding places to stock the drink, which is produced in Poland and imported to the UK to save money, was a problem. “Obviously we can’t get to the big markets because of the politics behind it,” says Qashoo.

He began by stocking Gaza Cola in his three London restaurants, where, since the beverage was introduced in early August, 500,000 cans have been sold. The cola is also sold by Muslim retailers such as Manchester-based Al Aqsa, which recently sold out, says the store’s manager, Mohammed Hussain.

Gaza Cola is being sold online too, with a six-pack going for 12 British pounds ($15). For comparison, a six-pack of Coke sells for about 4.70 pounds ($6).

Qashoo says that all profits from the drink are being donated towards rebuilding the maternity ward of the al-Karama Hospital, northwest of Gaza City.

A bevy of boycotts

Gaza Cola finds itself among other brands raising awareness of Palestine and the boycott against big-name colas operating in Israel. Palestine Drinks, a Swedish company that launched in February, sells an average of three to four million cans of their beverages (one is a cola) per month, co-founder Mohamed Kiswani tells Al Jazeera. Matrix Cola, created in Jordan in 2008 as a local alternative to Coke and Pepsi, which operates its main SodaStream factory in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, reported in January that production had doubled in recent months. And Spiro Spathis, Egypt’s oldest carbonated drinks company, saw a big spike in sales during their “100% Made in Egypt” campaign last year.

Sales of Spiro Spathis, Egypt’s oldest soda drinks brand, grew as a result of a nationwide boycott campaign targeting Western names [Yasmin Shabana/Al Jazeera]

Jeff Handmaker, an associate professor of legal sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, says that although consumer boycotts seek to hold companies and states accused of atrocity crimes accountable, it’s a tactic to generate awareness of and accountability for corporate or institutional complicity in atrocity crimes, and not an end in itself.

“That’s not even their objective, but rather to raise awareness, and in this regard the campaign to boycott Coke is evidently successful,” Handmaker adds.

Qashoo is now working on the next version of Gaza Cola, one with more fizziness. Meanwhile, he hopes that every sip of Gaza Cola reminds people of Palestine’s plight.

“We need to remind generations after generations of this horrible holocaust,” he says. “It’s happening and it’s been happening for 75 years.”

“It just needs to be a tiny, gentle reminder, like ‘by the way, enjoy your drink, greetings from Palestine’.”


Source: Al Jazeera

Social media boycott of Goya did not harm sales

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

ITHACA, N.Y. – Calls for a boycott of Goya Foods products in 2020 actually caused the company’s nationwide sales to rise for a few weeks before subsiding to previous levels, according to new Cornell University research.

Even in geographic areas where customers did forgo Goya products, which include packaged foods and spice mixes, sales revived after a few weeks, according to a new paper co-authored by by Jūra Liaukonytė, the Dake Family Associate Professor in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management.

“Based on the stories in the press, we saw that the boycott narrative was significant and we expected Goya sales to go down, but the opposite happened,” said Liaukonytė, co-author of “Spilling the Beans on Political Consumerism:  Do Social Media Boycotts and Buycotts Translate to Real Sales Impact?” published in the current issue of the journal Marketing Science.

 

The study was co-authored by Anna Tuchman, associate professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and Xinrong Zhu, assistant professor of marketing at Imperial College Business School in London.

With instances of so-called political consumerism (think recent protests against Disney, Spotify, McDonald’s, and others) continually hitting the headlines in today’s politically polarized environment, Liaukonytė and her colleagues sought to understand the actual sales effect of social media posts targeting specific brands.

In Goya’s case, protests favoring a boycott emerged in the summer of 2020 after company chief executive Robert Unanue publicly praised then-President Donald Trump. Twitter posts favoring a boycott were 75% higher than calls for a “buycott” urging buying more Goya products, the researchers estimate.

Analyzing purchasing data from market research company Numerator, they found that Goya’s net sales rose by about 22% during the two weeks after the controversy erupted. The researchers also examined county-level election results from the 2020 presidential season and saw that sales rose far more in Republican-dominated counties than in Democratic counties.

While the sales jump in Republican areas may have reflected the general publicity surrounding Goya, it more likely showed purchases by politically motivated first-time Goya buyers supporting Unanue’s pro-Republican message, Liaukonytė said.

In Democratic-dominated counties, where the Goya brand has traditionally been more popular than in Republican areas, sales also temporarily increased despite the push to boycott, the researchers found. Boycotters in heavily Democratic counties were overshadowed by buycotters, who drove a slight short-term increase in spending on Goya products.

One possible reason: Because only a relatively small proportion of households nationwide are regular Goya customers in the first place, few households could forgo Goya products compared with the number that could become first-time Goya buyers, the researchers note.

Even the company’s core Latino customers largely continued to buy, perhaps because they felt especially loyal to the brand or couldn’t easily find adequate substitutions. Indeed, data showed that sales of certain Goya items such as canned beans temporarily declined in some Democratic areas, likely reflecting shoppers’ ability to switch easily to any of dozens of competing bean brands. But Goya’s adobo seasoning has far fewer competitors, leading Goya shoppers to stick with the company’s adobo spice mix and keeping sales of that product steady even in the most Democratic areas, the researchers said. 

Sales data showed that about three weeks after the protests began, Goya’s overall sales reverted to pre-boycott levels, likely indicating that the media had moved on or consumers had tired of the controversy.

“Political consumerism campaigns on social media and their portrayal in the press are not always reflected in sales, and the risk of damage to their companies during a boycott may be overblown,” Liaukonytė said. Nevertheless, she said, more research needs to be done to understand these results, and whether executives need to worry about fallout from contentious political statements. A company’s size, profile, market dominance, and other characteristics all affect its fate amid controversy.

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

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JOURNAL

Marketing Science

DOI

10.1287/mksc.2022.1386 

ARTICLE TITLE

Frontiers: Spilling the Beans on Political Consumerism: Do Social Media Boycotts and Buycotts Translate to Real Sales Impact? 

Political agendas and study of Chinese astronomy in eighteenth-century Britain

by University of Chicago

Credit: AI-generated image

In the eighteenth century, from opposite ends of the world, a debate raged between two scholars over a seemingly esoteric question: did Chinese history predate Judeo-Christian antiquity?

Antoine Gaubil, a French Jesuit operating a mission in Beijing, posited that it did, aligning himself with the official Chinese government chronology, and using the state's astronomical records as his evidence. George Costard, meanwhile, a clergyman and academic working in the south of England, attempted to discredit that same astronomical history in order to disprove China's antiquity.

A new paper in Isis, "Oriental Chronology: Chinese Astronomy and the Politics of Antiquity in Eighteenth-Century Britain," articulates the political strategy animating each man's position, and demonstrates how the study of Chinese astronomy was shaped by European political interests.

From the mid-seventeenth century, Jesuit missionaries had supported China's official chronology, based on the nation's long history of astronomical observations. Antoine Gaubil, writes article author Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh, had many diplomatic reasons for doing so: His mission in Beijing, founded in the 1680s by Louis XIV, was faltering after the departure of its lead astronomer, and was facing intensified scrutiny under a new Chinese emperor who was unsympathetic to Catholicism. Aligning with China's sanctioned chronology was necessary for missions in the country to survive.

Gaubil's argument for the accuracy of Chinese chronology was also rendered precarious by a sect of Jesuit missionaries inside of China known as the "figurists," who believed that ancient Chinese narratives and texts did not belong to Chinese history but, rather, anticipated Judeo-Christianity. The figurists eventually shortened their timeline of Chinese history, creating difficulties for fellow Jesuits like Gaubil.

Despite these political pressures, Gaubil's position was also rooted in scientific inquiry. In a collected volume published in 1732, the Jesuit argued that "since the ancient Chinese 'did not know the proper movement of the fixed stars' (i.e., precession), there was no way that they could have retrospectively fabricated ancient observations."

George Costard, writing in England in 1747, disagreed. He dismissed Gaubil's and other Jesuits' Chinese sources as "fictitious and without Foundation." Deeply distrustful of "oriental despotism," Costard argued that under China's "authoritarian" conditions, astronomers would be incentivized to alter their results to please the emperor, and, as such, their records could not be relied upon.

Costard, as a Low Church Anglican and a parliamentarian, was also driven by political and religious interests. His animosity towards Chinese absolutism additionally extended to the similar strain of authoritarianism he perceived in the French government and the Catholic Church.

Giovannetti-Singh writes, "Costard's project to discredit Chinese astronomy cohered with contemporary ethnological efforts to demonstrate an innate, inherited love of liberty among the British people.

"The controversy between Costard and Gaubil highlights the ways in which European analyses of the credibility of 'oriental' astronomical measurements served to promote disparate political projects."

Ultimately, this little-known episode in the history of science illustrates how "British and French scholars' divergent interactions with Chinese astral and historical sciences were conditioned by pressing local concerns and involved sophisticated study of Chinese cultures of knowledge."

More information: Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh, Oriental Chronology: Chinese Astronomy and the Politics of Antiquity in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Isis (2024). DOI: 10.1086/733145

Provided by University of Chicago New paper provides insight into 'boycott and buycott' of Russian goods in China

 

Scholars untangle marketing's complex role in understanding political activities

News from the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing

AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

Research News

 

As 2020 began, many pundits predicted a politically charged year, but few predicted that it would include a global pandemic overtaxing healthcare resources, strained U.S. race relations resulting in mass demonstrations across the globe, devastating fires consuming massive swaths of the United States, and a catastrophic global economic downturn. This month's special issue of the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing acknowledges the role that marketing does and can play in addressing political activities with articles that explore key topics like elections, voting, corporate political advocacy, and consumer political identities. Two commentaries from an industry veteran and an esteemed journal editor offer both applied and scholarly paths for future marketing strategies and research. While the articles were not intended to respond directly to the specific events, they still provide theories explaining firm, consumer, agency, and other stakeholder behaviors along with strategy implications.

"A Vote of Competence: How a Similar Upbringing to Political Candidates Influences Voting Choice," by Matthew D. Meng and Alexander Davidson

The authors explore a commonly used political strategy: showing how similar political candidates are to constituents and voters. The authors confirm this relationship but expand the understanding as it relates to a candidate's competence along with particular audiences for whom the strategy is most effective.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0743915620943181

"Citizen Participation in Political Markets: Extending Service-Dominant Logic to Public Policy," by Mark Peterson and Robert W. Godby

The results of this study suggest that the decisions offered by citizens in a research setting reflect citizens' competence for informing elected representatives and policy makers regarding budgeting. When constituents can be brought into the process of ongoing governance in an effective and manageable fashion that does not require an expensive referendum or election, distortions of democracy will be reduced.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0743915620912287

"To Change the Law, Defy the Law: Hijacking the Cause and Co-Opting Its Advocate," by Bernard Cova

This research examines how the advocates of a cause respond to corporate approaches that integrate marketing and political activities for the cause. The findings reveal that such marketing activities resemble co-optation of the initial advocate of the cause and hijacking of the cause they advocate for.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0743915620943855

"Brands Taking a Stand: Authentic Brand Activism or Woke Washing?" by Jessica Vredenburg, Sommer Kapitan, Amanda Spry, and Joya A. Kemper

The authors draw on theory to determine how and when a brand engaging with a sociopolitical cause can be viewed as authentic, finding that moderate, optimal incongruence between brand and cause acts as a boundary condition. They explore important policy and practice implications for current and aspiring brand activists, from specific brand-level standards in marketing efforts to third-party certifications and public sector partnerships.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0743915620947359

"The Activist Company: Examining a Company's Pursuit of Societal Change Through Corporate Activism Using an Institutional Theoretical Lens," by Meike Eilert and Abigail Nappier Cherup

Using institutional theory, the authors create a framework showing how corporate activism can address these societal problems through influence and change strategies that can target the institutional environment "top-down" or "bottom-up." This framework further investigates how the company's identity orientation facilitates corporate activism.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0743915620947408

"Political Ideology in Consumer Resistance: Analyzing Far-Right Opposition to Multicultural Marketing," by Sofia Ulver and Christofer Laurell

The authors explore the discursive efforts in far-right consumer resistance to advance a political agenda through protests directed at brands' multicultural advertising and analyze how these consumers conceptualize their adversaries in the marketplace. In contrast to previous framings of adversaries identified in consumer research, where resistance is typically anticapitalist and directed toward firms' unethical conduct or the exploitation by the global market economy per se, the authors find that the following discursive themes stand out in the far-right consumer resistance: the emphasis on the state as main antagonist, the indifference to capitalism as a potential adversary, and overt contestation of liberal ethics.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0743915620947083

"Politics at the Mall: The Moral Foundations of Boycotts," by Daniel Fernandes

This article demonstrates that although both liberals and conservatives engage in consumer political actions, they do so for different reasons influenced by their unique moral concerns: Liberals engage in boycotts and buycotts that are associated with the protection of harm and fairness moral values (individualizing moral values), whereas conservatives engage in boycotts and buycotts that are associated with the protection of authority, loyalty, and purity moral values (binding moral values). In addition, the individualizing moral values lead to a generally more positive attitude toward boycotts, which explains why liberals are more likely to boycott and buycott.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0743915620943178

"Commentary: Brand Activism in a Political World," by Christine Moorman

The Editor in Chief of the venerable Journal of Marketing and author of "The CMO Survey" analyzes CMO's changing opinions on firm activism.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0743915620945260

"Commentary: Patagonia and the Business of Activism," by Vincent Stanley

Patagonia's Director of Philosophy discusses the brand's decision to take public stands on critical issues such as climate change.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0743915620943181

For the full issue and contact information, visit https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/ppoa/39/4.

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About the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing

The Journal of Public Policy & Marketing is a forum for understanding the nexus of marketing and public policy, with each issue featuring a wide-range of topics, including, but not limited to, ecology, ethics and social responsibility, nutrition and health, regulation and deregulation, security and privacy.

https://www.ama.org/jppm

About the American Marketing Association (AMA)

As the largest chapter-based marketing association in the world, the AMA is trusted by marketing and sales professionals to help them discover what's coming next in the industry. The AMA has a community of local chapters in more than 70 cities and 350 college campuses throughout North America. The AMA is home to award-winning content, PCM® professional certification, premiere academic journals, and industry-leading training events and conferences.

Support Our PeaceMakers

This post is not about the Canadian Troops now doing 'police' work in Afghanistan for the Americans in their failed War on Terrorism. Supposedly acting as "Peace Makers" instead of Peace Keepers.

This is about the four Christian PeaceMakers who are still held hostage in Iraq. They are the real PeaceMakers. Two of which are Canadian who have been abandoned by the government to their fate. Former hostage Waite offers help to families of abducted Canadians

Outside of a blundered statement made by Foreign Minister MacKay,MacKay apologizes for raising hopes of hostages' families their plight has been kept in the news by their families.Loney's family makes another appeal for his release

Vigils to Mark 100 Days Since Peacemakers’ Abduction

Saturday, Mar. 4, 2006 Posted: 5:20:30PM EST

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) has made a worldwide appeal to churches to hold a candlelight vigil on the first Sunday of Lent with 100 candles marking the days since the four western peace activists were kidnapped in Baghdad.

Is it because they are pacifists, witnesses for the oppressed or because they are anarchists?

James Loney one of the hostages was once a member of the Catholic Workers League, which despite its religious name was anything but Catholic.

In attempting to describe Casa Juan Diego, Mark talked about Catholic Worker values of voluntary poverty and pacifism, but made an egregious error by mentioning that a core value of the Catholic Worker was anarchism. People gasped! The Catholic representative who supported our getting the money fell off his chair!

The founders of the Catholic Worker movement preferred to use the word personalism instead of anarchism because of the confusion of the word anarchy with chaos.

By 1913 Dorothy Day, still a teenager, had read Kropotkin. She and Maurin were twenty years away from their first meeting, and she had no explicit religious faith. Yet, like Maurin, she was drawn to Kropotkin's vision of how society could be reorganized so as to eliminate the injustice of wage slavery. She describes Kropotkin's influence on her in her autobiography, The Long Loneliness:

"Kropotkin especially brought to my mind the plight of the poor, the workers, and though my only experience of the destitute was in books, the very fact that The Jungle (by Upton Sinclair) was about Chicago where I live, whose streets I walked, made me feel that from then on my life was to be linked with theirs, their interests were to be mine; I had received a call, a vocation, a direction to my life." Roots of the Catholic Worker Movement: Peter Kropotkin inspired inspired Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day

The Christian Peacekeppers Movement is non-demoninational, but is supported in Canada by the Mennonite church and the Mennonite movement. The Mennonites are Anabaptists, like the Amish, Hutterites and Dukuhebours. The Anabaptists were perescuted in Europe from the late 19th Century through WWI because of their refusal to fight in the internecine imperialist wars of that time.

The next historical outbreak in which one finds Anarchist theories conspicuous, was that of the Adamites, who appeared in Bohemia and Moravia late in the fifteenth century' and whom Ziska eventually attacked and almost annihilated. A more notable sect, however, was that of the German Anabaptists, who arose early in the sixteenth century. Apart from all religious questions such as that of re-baptism, various political and social matters were prominent features of the programme of the Anabaptist sect. When the peasantry of Franconia and Swabia rose in 1525, Munzer, Carlstadt, and in particular Nicholas Storck, a disciple of Luther's, preached not only the doctrine of absolute equality, but independence of all civil authority as well. Like John Ball, moreover they denounced all laws and all lawyers, whilst with respect to property their doctrine was simply Communism. At Munster, under Bockhold the Dutchman, better known as John of Leyden, they ultimately practiced polygamy and free-love. Virtually the only difference between the modern Anarchist and the German Anabaptist of those times, is that the former (unless he be of the Tolstoyan school) entirely rejects religion.

Ernest Alfred Vizetelly. The Anarchists: Their Faith and Their Record. Turnbull and Spears Printers, Edingurgh, 1911.

Again the anarchist Peter Kropotkin is linked to these movements in that he promoted their immigration to Canada and the United States to avoid further persecution. He reccomened the Canadian prairies for the Slavic Anabaptists and Russian Duhkbours .

All those who hold the idea of a free church and freedom of religion (sometimes called separation of church and state) are greatly indebted to the Anabaptists. When it was introduced by the Anabaptists in the 15th and 16th centuries, religious freedom independent of the state was a radical idea, and unthinkable to both clerical and governmental leaders. Religious liberty was equated with anarchy and Peter Kropotkin traces the birth of anarchist thought in Europe to these early Anabaptist communities. ("Anarchism" from The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910 By Peter Kropotkin)

The Catholic Workers and CPM practice of non-violent Direct Action are rooted in Anarchism. Ghandi and Tolstoy both promoted the idea of non-violent civil disobedience and direct action.

Today Direct Action is mistaken by many to be the idea of dressing in black clothing and smashing windows during demonstrations. This is far from the truth and is a media distortion embraced by some wanna be anarchists.

Direct Action is disobediance to authority, it is taking power and action into your own hands and doing something. It is the sit down strike, the spontaneous protest or picket. It is the refusal to work, the boycott, the buycott, the protest fast, all the weapons in the hands of the people when they face exploitation, opression and repression.

Direct Actions are the mobilizations of people to take action, not to sign petitions or make demands upon the State or its representatives. It is to take action.

To witness the abuse of innocents to be able to testify on their behalf, to intervene on their behalf to halt their punishment by the cops or agents of the State or the bosses.

This is not pacificism as the media would portray it, or those apologists for armed struggle would dismiss out of hand as useless.

It may mean sabotage, or destruction of property in some cases. But those decisions have to be made by the collective, by those directly involved in confronting their oppressors. And it may mean an individual act such as fasting in protest, as Ceaser Chavez did.

It often means putting oneself in the way of danger to protect others. And it could lead to injury or death.

The comrades in the CPM knew this when they took up the challenge in Palestine to defend the people against their Israeli oppressors. They knew it in Iraq. And the people know it which is why there has been such and outpouring of support for them.

And which is why their continued imprisonment and abuse at the hands of their captors is vile act of no political consequence, but to further misdirect attention from the plight of the people of Iraq to the sectarian disputes dominating that nations current political chaos.

Free Our PeaceMakers Now!

Canadian Troops Out Of Afghanistan!

End the Occupation Of Iraq and Palestine!


Join the Anti-War Demonstrations March 18!



Free the Captives Now. www.freethecaptivesnow.org


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