This September, the Trinity College Students’ Union (TCDSU/AMLCT) finally freed its food spaces of Coca-Cola products. While these red cans have been the subject of boycotts on campus since 2004, it wasn’t until 2018 that this cause came to the forefront. In a referendum that year, students voted in favour of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), which specifically targets Coca-Cola due to its operations in an illegal Israeli settlement. Now, TCDSU/AMLCT is exempt from the college’s exclusivity deal with the company, and Coca-Cola has been temporarily swapped for the more electrolyte-heavy and ethical Lucozade. Huzzah.
But losing the tastier soda isn’t exactly a cause for celebration. While the removal can be perceived as a significant win for the union’s autonomy in the face of Trinity’s persistent contractual ties to the brand, the victory remains insular to the union and students invested in its politics. After all, people apathetic to the boycotts can still grab a Coke at the Buttery or the Spar across the front gates. The removal thus functions symbolically: It’s a statement that the TCDSU/AMLCT refuses to support companies with ties to Israel. Most importantly, though, it affirms the belief that a purchase is an endorsement.
On a campus just walking distance from many brands with Israeli ties like Costa, boycotts are plentiful, and they’re all a work in progress. The newest Dawson Street addition, Joe & the Juice, for example, is facing boycott calls from Trinity BDS due to its majority owner General Atlantic’s significant investments in Israel. In an article for Trinity News last April, current BDS chair Seán Radcliffe asked students if “a little inconvenience, in where you buy your luxury sandwich or juice, truly outweighs the active contribution to the oppression of millions?” And while Radcliffe is correct to note that it won’t wind anyone to walk the extra block to the ethical alternative, Juice Jar, his comment also contains a dubious principle. This, I believe, is an overestimation of individual consumer responsibility.
Individual responsibility, of course, seems naturally conducive to the efficacy of boycotts. There is power in numbers, especially when it comes to rupturing supply chains. But the promise of our individual importance falters under how quixotic these boycotts actually are. BDS claims to follow in the footsteps of other successful campaigns like the South African anti-apartheid movement, whose preferred method was targeted boycotts. In their guide to boycotts, they state that they “strategically focus on a relatively smaller number of carefully selected companies and products for maximum impact”. But when boycotts against fast food giants like McDonald’s are endorsed by the BDS movement, and when monopolistic companies like Amazon and Google are declared pressure targets, the scope is anything but narrow.
Targeting brands that are ubiquitous is bound to foster some impractical illusions. These brands are far too pervasive in everyday life to be meaningfully impacted by these boycotts, especially given their practically endless demand. And if collective action against these companies is a nice fantasy rather than feasible practice, it’s natural that this bleak reality would inflate the hopeful boycotter’s sense of individual responsibility. McDonald’s isn’t going bankrupt anytime soon, but not contributing to Happy Meal profits can feel exonerating, even therapeutic. Who wants to believe that their purchases (or lack thereof) are powerless?
While BDS boycotts don’t realistically have the power to topple market dominators like Amazon or McDonald’s, they clearly have the power to alter consumer perceptions. Yet these perceptions can easily be misguided, and they can thus become a kind of morally urgent hearsay. And when grassroots boycott campaigns begin to entangle themselves with BDS targets in the eyes of the consumer, the boycotts become even more decentralised. We know it’s a moral faux pas to parade your Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte around town, but the brand’s connection to Israeli war crimes is questionable. It isn’t even on the official BDS list, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Brands with dubious or varying degrees of Israeli involvement all evoke equal scrutiny. Under this vague framework, boycotts break from being about political mobilisation and become a person-to-person guilt trip. It is the exact decentralisation that the BDS movement itself warns against.
But if these boycotts are their priority, Trinity BDS does not appear interested in material change. Information on boycotts is readily accessible on Trinity BDS’s Instagram, but apart from the sporadic bake sale or club night, an organised fundraiser is nowhere to be found. If they preach that purchases have political consequences, Trinity BDS should promote crowdfunding efforts to provide emergency aid to Palestinians. This would be a financial commitment with immediate, tangible impact. No Palestinian is better off because we can’t grab a Coke from the SU café.
In a hyper-materialistic society, what you buy becomes your identity. On a more innocuous level, your brand loyalties become personality traits. We know that a Brandy Melville girl probably embodies a carefree, thin, city girl lifestyle, and we know it’s an insult to tell someone they look like they shop at Shein. Where we spend our money is a judgement of character, despite these brands having no distinct personality of their own outside of their impersonal marketing strategies and varying degrees of unethical business practices. But for consumption habits to be a judgement of character, it must be a judgement not only of personality, but also of morality. In the case of modern-day boycotts, this criterion is readily fulfilled. Waiting in line at Joe & the Juice or sipping a Coke is seen as complicit and apathetic at best or morally bankrupt at worst. This inflation of the individual’s responsibility produces a dangerously faulty chain rule: If you purchase from an immoral company, you endorse the immoral company, which means you yourself are immoral. It is an impossible and wildly intolerant standard.
In a globalised market, ethical consumption is virtually impossible and feels increasingly hopeless. When our tax dollars fund objectionable pursuits against our will, it feels good to exercise control over where we put our money. But when we place too much emphasis on our individual responsibility, and therefore our morality, every purchase will inevitably feel hypocritical to our values. The nature of these boycotts encourages this behaviour, and because of this, it does not present itself as an effective political strategy, but rather as a way to make us feel better about our consumption, about ourselves.
You can walk the extra block to get your luxury drink at Juice Jar, and you can check your produce at Dunnes for a sticker signifying Israeli production. But if you find yourself drunk after a late night and stumble into a McDonald’s or Burger King, and you happen to purchase a Happy Meal, know that you haven’t betrayed anyone but yourself and your own standards. To carry so much individual responsibility for systemic issues is to live in ceaseless guilt, not political productivity. We should do our best to be ethical, intentional consumers, but we should also remain realistic about our limitations. Because in practice, the only thing we’re saving is our own conscience.
