Why we see injustice but rarely boycott

Yael N

We live in a time when idealism and international cooperation are dimming.

Ceasefires crumble, bombs replace diplomatic efforts, vengeance seeps through state policy and ordinary lives.

We are told that justice relies on us – yet we keep buying, using, scrolling, and consuming, often mindlessly. The call to boycott grows louder, but most of us don’t. Why is that?

At the heart of this paradox lies the communal withholding of support, the refusal to engage, the moral withdrawal of consent. Boycotts have a long history and, at times, real impact.

Yet they remain rare, even when the stakes are existential.

What is a boycott? How does it work and why, despite everything, do we so often choose not to act?

What is a boycott?

A boycott is defined as “to refuse to buy, use or take part in something as a way of protesting,” according to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries.

The Oxford Reference adds that it means “to withdraw from commercial or social relations with a country, organisation, or person as a punishment or protest”.

From a legal view, the Oxford Public International Law defines it as “a technique of economic coercion that involves the refusal to engage in certain economic interactions.”

So, a boycott is more than refusing to buy a product you dislike. It is a purposeful, collective withdrawal – a moral and political act that combines personal refusal with a public signal, where individual action aims to pressure systemic change.

How does a boycott work?

Think of the Cold War: two blocs that avoided direct war but weakened one another through trade bans, cultural exclusion and political isolation.

It was the largest state-level boycott in history, where each side sought to starve the other of connection, credibility and markets.

A boycott functions similarly, but from below. Instead of states, it’s individuals and communities withdrawing from systems that perpetuate harm.

When people stop buying, stop engaging, stop legitimising, they apply small-scale but meaningful pressure. The goal isn’t instant collapse but to slowly erode the target, such as making association costly and depriving power of its fuel.

When have boycotts worked?

The word boycott comes from Charles Boycott, a land agent in Ireland who was socially and economically isolated during the Irish Land War in 1880 after refusing to lower rents amid widespread hardship.

The Irish Land League urged locals to cut all ties. No labour, no trade, no social contact. The tactic worked so completely that no one would sell him food or even speak to him.

A century later, the Montgomery Bus Boycott echoed that spirit.

In 1955, after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat, the black community of Montgomery, Alabama, stopped riding city buses for 381 days.

Since African Americans made up about 75% of passengers, the boycott hit hard. Sustained through carpools and solidarity, it ultimately led the US Supreme Court to rule bus segregation unconstitutional.

In modern times, the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement, founded in 2005 by around 170 Palestinian civil society organisations, calls for global boycotts against Israel until it meets demands for equality, refugee rights and human rights.

Yet unlike past examples, its target is a deeply integrated sovereign state with powerful allies and economic entanglements, making its impact slower and more contested.

Why are boycotts effective?

From an economic and international relations view, boycotts work because they exploit dependency and risk.

In a globalised world, no company or state stands alone. They rely on trade, investment, consumers and reputation. Disrupt those networks, and pressure builds.

As Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye argued in their theory of complex interdependence, power in modern politics lies in connection. A sustained boycott disrupts those very ties.

When brands lose legitimacy, investors pull out, supply chains falter, and reputational damage becomes financial loss. When maintaining a harmful policy costs more than changing it, a boycott becomes a credible threat.

Socially and philosophically, boycotts also reshape meaning. When enough people refuse to participate, the target becomes morally stained and legitimacy erodes.

It’s not just about money – it’s about conscience and meaning.

Joining a boycott means aligning one’s actions with one’s values, refusing to fund what is wrong. It is moral withdrawal turned into practice. It says, “I will not be part of this harm.”

So why don’t we all boycott?

If boycotts can matter, why are they so rarely the default response when the moral stakes are highest?

Partly, it’s psychology. When millions witness suffering, each person feels less responsible: the bystander effect.

Then, there’s compassion fatigue, which dulls empathy. Endless exposure to atrocities exhausts our capacity to care.

And the sense of inefficacy – all leading to the belief that “my act won’t change anything – discourages action.

The costs of boycotting are immediate (money, time, social friction). The benefits feel abstract and distant. Eventually, it all feels unmeaningful.

Then come structural barriers. A boycott only works collectively, but collective action is hard to sustain. Everyone benefits, yet only a few bear the cost – so most free-ride.

In a hyperglobalised economy, power adapts, reroutes and endures. Meanwhile, moral agency has been repackaged as consumer choice: “vote with your dollars,” buy the ethical brand, post the right hashtag. These gestures soothe guilt without demanding rupture.

There’s also risk asymmetry: those who lead boycotts face social, legal or economic backlash, while those who stay passive risk nothing. The path of least resistance is always easier.

Philosophically, the issue cuts deeper. Our moral distance grows as our technological proximity increases.

We can see genocide live streamed, yet the mediation itself turns horror into abstraction. As Hannah Arendt warned of the “banality of evil”, systems of violence persist not just through cruelty, but through ordinary participation – through doing nothing.

Non-boycott becomes normal.

In a world where ethics is sold back to us through branding and lifestyle, moral identity has become performance.

True boycott is genuine withdrawal from complicity. It feels too costly, too radical, too lonely – that is what makes it so powerful.

So we settle for symbolic virtue over meaningful rupture.

So here’s the thing: people often say they care – and many genuinely do. But their caring has to compete with convenience, habit, social approval and the quiet pull of normal life.

The costs of dissent are immediate and visible: we lose comfort, time, even belonging.

The costs of inaction are distant, abstract and easy to ignore.

In the end, most people care, but not deeply enough for them to change much (or anything at all). Not in the way that demands rupture.

What’s missing isn’t empathy but urgency, the kind that transforms feeling into refusal.

Boycotts, at their core, ask us to turn moral awareness into material consequence, to care in a way that costs.

And maybe that’s the real question of our time: not whether we see what’s wrong, but whether we’re still willing to stop being part of it.

Yael N is the pseudonym of a content curator at the Malaysia Philosophy Society.

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