Palestinian Geographies of Boycott

ABSTRACT

Practices of boycott are central to anti‐colonial liberation movements. Since the 2005 call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions by Palestinian civil society organisations, boycott has had multiple distinct iterations that address the uneven production of space under colonialism. The seriousness that the movement gives to such spatial distinctions makes it generative to think not only about the nature of Zionist settler colonialism but also about its vulnerabilities to Palestinian resistance. Drawing on the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) documents and interviews with Palestinian artists and activists, this paper conceptualises the boycott as a concrete socio‐spatial practice. It theorises boycott as a practice and a process of tactically intervening in the uneven colonial production of space with an eye towards its transformation. In doing so, it draws upon Gramsci's and Fanon's historico‐geographic materialisms and their analysis of the multiply scaled relationships between space and politics.