This three-day international conference will examine boycotts in the longue durée, seeking to gain deeper understanding of the development of these movements and their efforts to weaken, ostracize and delegitimize specific institutions, polities and states.
Topics under consideration include: activism against slavery; the bus boycotts of America; marketplace nationalism; anti-Jewish and anti-Nazi boycotts; modern consumer boycotts; anti-apartheid campaigns; localism and global activism; the legal and ethical perspectives on boycotts; as well as the current Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
This wide-ranging conference will explore the history of boycott movements in their own right and at the same time examine the two quite different narratives put forward by proponents and opponents of the BDS movement directed against Israel: one which places the movement within a long history of struggles for ‘human rights’; the other which views BDS as the latest iteration of an antisemitic tradition.
This unique and timely conference brings together over 25 speakers from various disciplines: political scientists, sociologists, historians and legal scholars. In so doing, the conference seeks to create an academic forum to better comprehend the causes and content of boycott movements and to advance understanding of whether and how BDS sits within the debate on contemporary antisemitism.
Conference Co-convenors:
David Feldman, Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck, University of London
Michael L. Miller, Central European University, Budapest
Scott Ury, Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, Tel Aviv University
DOWNLOAD THE CONFERENCE PROGRAMME PDF »
The podcasts for speakers who gave their consent to be recorded are below.
Podcasts & Videos
Play: Welcome & Keynote Panel intro Chair David Feldman, Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck
Play: Frank Trentmann, Consumer Boycotts in Modern History-Keynote 1
Play: Michael Miller, In Defence of the Nation: Protectionism and Boycotts in Central and Eastern Europe, 1844-1933-Keynote 2
Play: Saul Dubow, A South African Perspective-Keynote 3
Play: Molly Perry, There Can Be No Friendship': The Contentious Nature of Non-Importation on the American Road to Revolution
Play: Richard Huzzey, Abolitionists & Abstention: British Consumer Activism Against Slavery
Play: Tim Buchen, A More Efficient Strike Than With Bats: Boycott Practice and Discourse in Galicia Prior to WW1
Play: Grzegorz Krzywiec, ‘Swój Do Swego Po Swoje!’ Anti-Jewish Boycott: Polish and East European Right-Wing Politics in Early 20th Century
Play: Hizky Shoham, 'Buy Only 'Totzeret Ha 'aretz' ( The Land's Products): Separatist Consumption in British Mandate Palestine
Play: Derek Catsam, Tired Feet and Empty Pockets, The Montgomery & Alexandra Bus Boycotts in Comparative Perspective
Play: Lori A. Flores, A Blossoming of Red Flags: Cesar Chávez and the United Farm Workers'Lettuce Boycott in California
Play: Cristophe Kreutzmueller, The Ban of Jewish Owned Businesses in Nazi Germany - Was it a Boycott?
Play: Alexander Sedlmaier, ‘Dirty Export Business with Chile, South Africa, Israel…’: Boycott Campaigns of the Radical Left in Cold-War West Germany
Play: Simon Stevens, ‘Bank of Apartheid’: The Barclays Bank Boycott and the Anti-Apartheid Disinvestment Campaign in Britain, 1969-1986
Play: Lee Jones, Sanctioning Apartheid: Comparing South Africa and Israel BDS Campaigns
Play: Ilka Shroeder, Why BDS-Activists Portray Israel as an Apartheid State
Play: John Chalcraft, The BDS Movement and the Question of Horizontalism
Play: Oliver Leaman, The Ethics of Boycotts
Play: Kenneth L. Marcus, Anti-Israel Boycotts and American Anti-Discrimination Law
Play: Sina Arnold, The BDS Movement and Antisemitism in the United States: A Collision of Frames
Play: Aleksandra Gliszczynska-Grabias, Anti-Israeli Boycotts: An International Human Rights Perspective
Play: Phillip Marfleet, Boycott, Localism and Global Activism
Play: Round Table, Jeremy Krikler, University of Essex
Play: Round Table, Derek Penslar, University of Toronto & University of Oxford
