Consumer Boycotts, Monroe Friedman; Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 1999, pages xi +284, ISBN 0 415 92457 – X (paper), £13.99

Book review Consumer Boycotts, Monroe Friedman; Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 1999, pages xi +284, ISBN 0 415 92457 ± X paper), £13.99 Drawing on more than 30 years of experience, Monroe Friedman certainly knows a great deal about American Consumer Boycotts. The author presents a useful taxonomy of boycotts and then describes among other things) in separate chapters, labour, consumer economic, minority group, religious, and ecological boycotts. The penultimate chapter discusses `buycotts' and the ®nal chapter places what has come before in historical perspective. The volume is written in an accessible style and there are even tips on how to make your boycott a success. And there certainly have been some successes, especially among those spurred on by Afro-American and religious leaders: the retelling of the Montgomery bus boycott and the rise of Martin Luther King is an example of the ®rst; the sophistication of contemporary religious groupings such as the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility and their use of shareholder action an example of the second. This book is a very useful resource. It is strong on description but perhaps not so strong on analysis. For this reviewer at least I liked it best when the author started to grapple with the big questions, e.g. What has all of this got to tell us about political systems and social change? Why do boycotts occur? There is a historical perspective in this volume but it is not a true social history. Professor Friedman speculates that there may be a `crowding-in' eect although he does not use this term) where the rolling back of consumer protection legislation since the 1980s has encouraged consumers to take more action themselves. This sounds like some kind of top-down macro-analysis, yet one is struck throughout the book by the in¯uence of highly motivated individual consumer activists. So how does government intervention, social movements and activism interrelate? The book does a great job getting you thinking, it is aable beyond doubt but one wants to take the next step forward. Many readers will want to know which boycotts have failed, which have succeeded and why. The author rightly points out that success, in particular, Journal of Economic Psychology 22 2001) 559±560 www.elsevier.com/locate/joep 0167-4870/01/$ - see front matter Ó 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 1 6 7 - 4 8 7 0 0 1 ) 0 0 0 5 1 - 4

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Consumer Boycotts, Monroe Friedman; Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 1999, pages xi +284, ISBN 0 415 92457 – X (paper), £13.99