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My name is Boje, and I want to Boycott Nike, Adidas, Reebok, and New Balance sneakers. In Swedish, the word BOYCOTT, is BOJKOTT, which seems to beckon me to engage in some form of pacifist "Bojkott. " There is a precedent with Adbusters (2001).

There is a research methodology called Détournement and an inquiry approach called, Dérive, that puts some theory behind my action.

MIMETIC REDESIGN in Détournement - One critical postmodern act of protest is the methodology, called Détournement. We take a corporate slogan, ad, or logo and mess with it artistically in order to draw attention to a critical problem (e.g. sweatshop labor), and to resituate the status quo in a more positive direction (Situationist Internationale, 1959 #3). Détournement is a combination of parody and critical postmodern serious critique to initiate cultural change.

The method involves taking a familiar territory (ad, slogan, situation) and artistically defamilarizing it (adding or juxtaposing something hidden into the familiar). For example, take JUST DO IT, and transform to, DO IT JUST (Adbusters). SweatGear has a catalogue on line where you can order sweatshop clothes and know the sweaty working conditions (SweatGear). The Situationist Internationale movement (SI), led by Guy-Ernest Debord sought to use artistic critique to challenge problems with the capitalist economy (See Society of the Spectacle). Baudrillard uses Debord's Détournement , to combat the corporate tendency toward simulation, as for example in the virtual tour. Basic and action-oriented academic research, independent of corporate hegemony, is a way to combat simulacra research, that covers over working women's voices with expert testimony.

Carnival Détournement is a form of resistance using theater. In ancient times, the peasantariat protested excessive power, greed, and abuse by staging acts of street theater, in the hopes that the Crown and the Clergy, might see new meaning in the players acts of parody and satire. Bakhtin looked at carnival as more than just irreverent fun. I see the carnivalesque artistic theater as a way to parody power, to make them answerable to the fakery of corporate advertising, and the junk science, they are able to contract. In carnivalesque street theater from the protest over WTO, Quebec City, to G-8, street carnival is a way to appropriate corporate logos and images from their usual advertising contexts and resituate them as disturbing fashion in order to confront and challenge the bias and stereotype of late modern global capitalism, our postmodern consumer culture, where we buy corporate logos and slogans to place on our feet (See Rogers, 1993). In this street theater, and my proposed classroom theater, we can resituate the conflict of transnational corporation and women's factory work, in order to discover alternatives that allow for capitalist productivity, but also guarantee basic human rights (living wage, no physical or sexual abuse, no child labor, total disclosure of ALL subcontract factory locations, and freedom of working women to associate, to talk, to take bathroom breaks, and to ask for a raise without fear).

THE ISSUE of NAKED FEET: We seek a new social experiment that will compare sweatshop efficiency and humanity to viable alternatives. The dominant logic of global capitalism which says "only sweatshops are efficient" must be proven to be an out-dated prejudice. I would like to do comparative research on the sneak corporation's globally subcontracted factories. I do not want their money to finance the research. I only want access to factories and the guarantee that workers interviewed will not be fired or otherwise punished for their participation in our research project.

To date the sneaker industry has refused to allow our team of experienced researchers to set foot in their subcontract factories. We began over a year ago by approaching Nike for permission to research and they asked that we expand our study to a comparative one that included their competitors. We did and still we are denied access. It is time for Bojkott.

Dérive - My protest, in Situationist jargon, is called "Dérive," a playful-constructive behavior to make us awareness of psychogeographical effects, as we walk and drift into our classrooms with Naked Feet; we feel new sensations, with the our heels and toes touching our mind and we are grounded into new awareness (For more on Dérive, see Bureau of Public Secrets). "La Dérive" is a French Situationist Internationale research methodology of walking while tuning into the aesthetics of our natural and artificial environment. This Dérive stroll into a classroom is quite different than the classic dress code for the Business College classroom. We walk our talk. Dérive allows us to let go of our fashion-slavery, and provoke an emotional reaction in the minds of our students and colleagues. The randomness of a dérive, means we do not know what new encounters our stroll attract. It is an intervention that is improvisational. If more then one, but say seven or twelve students walk into a lecture hall in Naked Feet, what reaction will be provoked? Let us propose that the duration of our dérive is at least one month. As we take our shoes and socks off at the door, and reverently line our shoes up outside the classroom, what will passers by, think about the line up of shoes, along the hallways of the Business College? Or, the Business College, "hallway theater," of students and faculty politely and quietly, removing their shoes, before entering their classroom, and after class, putting on shoes and socks? One would witness a network of dérives, as students and faculty, take shoes on and off, to the rhythm of the college day. Perhaps, some will think they are witness to the ritual of a Maori classroom, where those down under, do this practice, as a sign of respect to the temple of learning, and tribal (indigenous) knowledge. Here too, we are interested in drawing awareness to indigenous knowledge, to the voiceless working women, in sneak (and garment) factories. Some may wish to shed clothing; as I said, "the dérive is very improv." Imagine all 1st world universities, paying tribute to Third World working women that make their sneakers and clothing. Soon it will be more "cool" not to wear shoes to class, than to wear instruments of corporate domination and exploitation.

The Naked Feet Dérive is an important research methodology that challenges the complicity of normal science with corporatism. As my colleagues put it, instead of "one foot" normal research, I proposed two feet, two Naked Feet:

First, there is a closeness and vulnerability the researcher experiences while in Naked Feet. Second, the carnivalesque theatrics of Naked Feet in the University as Cathedral, calls our attention to the possibilities of tranformative changes to global capitalism, as it is now performed. Third, our clothing choices are symbolic truth claims about a closer relational solidarity between globally divided worker and consumer. And fourth, Naked Feet is illegal in many Business Colleges and Malls; Naked Feet in the classroom is not normal in the Western World of consumer foot fetishism. I therefore call into question the validity and reliability of research (and teaching) done while wearing shoes and socks. I call for the Naked Feet Dérive, where our naked feet are our research instruments, a way to stroll through systems of power, knowledge, icon-culture, and walkways of resistance. There is a social science of Naked Feet, and it is called, "The Dérive Stroll." Strolling on Naked Feet is a special research method. Here are ten summary points:

In sum, Naked Feet Dérive is a research methodology that by peaceful resistance enacts a critical trigger event chain that can create strolling-perturbations and walking-vibrations that exceed threshold-tolerance levels in the global commodity and distribution supply/consumption chain. This global work/supply/distribution/consumer supply chain is poised on a fragile threshold point, where a thousand Naked Feet could turn into a million Naked Feet, and the industry will transform itself before such a loss of sales would be allowed to happen. For those who care about theory, there is a "butterfly" chaos effect that is world tranformative:

Facticity - In 1998, point number 6 in Phil Knight's promised reforms was to allow university-based researchers access to their factories. When I approached them, since August 2000, about keeping this promise, I was told that Nike had already provided so much access that it was taking time away from the labor Practices Department's staff members time to get in the field improving working conditions around the world. We therefore recruited researchers to combine their efforts into four study teams, so as to minimize worker and staff member time away from their jobs. Still we are denied access.

Tim Connor's (2001) comprehensive review of Phil Knight's promised lists ("Still Waiting for Nike to Do It") our proposed research as a way to fulfill the promises made to the Press Club in Washington D.C. in 1998.

Consumers are uncertain about their footwear - They want to know that footwear and all their garments are NOT being made in sweatshop working conditions, by people earning less than poverty wages and suffering the continued exploitation reported widely in the media and in activist reporting. After a decade of code of conduct drafting, and super-expensive monitor reports by consulting and accounting firms, we do not know that it is not sweatshops as usual in Asia and Latin America. To reassure consumers Nike offers us a Virtual Tour of a footwear factory in Vietnam (See www.nikebiz.com or go direct to the virtual tour. I do not want a virtual tour conducted by Dusty Kidd, the head of the (PRO Labor Practices Department. Better to be barefoot than to trust the truth claims of the virtual tour. I want access to factories, and the scientist' right to hear the stories of working women, and be guaranteed they are not retaliated against.

Nguyen Thi Lap was forced to quit her sneaker factory job, after Roberta Baskins of 48 hours aired her interview with Lap (October 17, 1996), then former Ambassador Andrew Young (March, April, 1997), and finally ESPN aired their interview with her (February and April, 1998; December, 2000). The interviews were to investigate allegations that a Korean supervisor, Ms. Beck, did whack and slap Lap, about her face and shoulders, with a Nike sneaker (To read the story in her own words; for the timeline of the effect of journalistic and academic research on working women punishment, for telling their story, see Vietnam, Exhibit D).

That whack and slap incident occurred on March 8, 1996 International Women's Day. After repeated interviews by researchers and journalists, the Korean Nike subcontract managers, took steps (repeated acts of humiliation and insult) to see that Lap would quit. Please note the parts of her personal experience story where it says "Lap is crying." Nike responds by saying, the case went to the Vietnam labor court, and the forced resignation of Lap will stand. I often think about this story whenever I see a student in my class, wearing a Nike Swoosh on some part of their body.

RESEARCH SCOREBOARD: What is the research record? Responding to pressure from a growing list of over 101 academic research and theory articles (see Academics Studying Athletic Apparel with annotated bibliography of research), Nike has come up with 4 academic studies, to defend and reinsinuate its reputation and credibility against the onslaught of academic critique. Since Nike, Reebok, Adidas, and New Balance, like scoreboards, here is the current finish line score, in the battle of the researchers:

In August, 2001, Nike had respond to the 101 critical studies. Nike scraped the bottom of the empirical dustbowl in order to reinstall to its web site, the completely discredited Amos Tuck Wage studies of Vietnam and Indonesia (See http://nikebiz.com/labor/research.shtml for a list of the following research reports that are a small fraction of the overwhelming research (OVER 101) that is skeptical of this apologist research in Table 1, that contends that living wages are paid, that ethical standards are being met, and there is nothing for our naked feet consumers to worry about (following are direct quotes from Nike web site).

Comprehensive Factory Evaluation Report Prepared on Kukdong International Mexico. (pdf format, 67kb)
Verité – March 2001

Verité was commissioned by Nike and Reebok to conduct an independent compliance audit of the Kukdong factory. This is an assessment of information and evidence gathered by Verité auditors and contains recommendations of remediation strategies. Read Nike's Remediation Plan in response to Verite's report.

Memo: My Factory Visits in Southeast Asia and UM Code and Monitoring. (pdf format)
Linda Lim – September 6, 2000

Linda Lim, associate professor of Business Administration at the University of Michigan summarizes her visits to Nike contract factories in Southeast Asia in a memo to UM's Chair of the Standing Committee on Labor Standards and Human Rights. Her study focuses on wages, factory working conditions, hours of work, labor organization and action, impact of textile quotas, termination of suppliers and implications for the codes of conduct of University of Michigan and Nike.

NIKE, Inc.: Survey of Vietnamese and Indonesian Domestic Expenditure Levels. (pdf format, 249kb)
The Amos Tuck School – November 3, 1997

This report is a a field study conducted by graduate students at Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School. They find that Nike contract factories offer an economically attractive alternative for entry-level workers.

Good Morning, Vietnam: an Ethical Analysis of Nike Activities in Southeast Asia. (pdf format, 44kb)
Lynn R. Kahle, David M. Boush, and Mark Phelps, University of Oregon – Sport Marketing Quarterly, 2000 (Vol. 9, No. 1)

This study examines the criticism Nike received regarding the ethics of its operations in Vietnam. It concludes that some of the criticisms of Nike have been unfair but have benefited Asian workers and have promoted the principle that firms are responsible for the actions of their subcontractors, thus raising the sense of responsibility for the subcontractors to provide good working conditions for contracted factory their workers.

CRITICAL ACADEMIC RESEARCHERS' Result is over 101 studies and counting, See annotated list at Academics Studying Athletic Apparel

I would quote from Adidas, Reebok, and New Balance, but they do stay in Nike's shadow, and keep relatively silent about the academic research record.

Compare Table 1 to http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/AA/academicsstudyingwriting.htm which lists over 101 academic research, theory journal articles, book chapters, and academic conference presentations that challenge the methodology, hypotheses, and conclusions rendered in the four studies in Table 1.

Set the Research Record Straight - If you look carefully at the list of Nike's apologetic research, you find one is a consulting firm (Verité), another is the sports marketing department at University of Oregon where Phil Knight withdrew his $30 million to protest the contract with the WRC), The Amos Tuck business school study is led by professors Gene Mihaly and Joseph Massey (1997) who also did the wage study to clear Disney Inc. of allegations that Haitian workers were paid less than a living wages (See Academics Studying Athletic Apparel for reference). Finally there is the factory tour by Professor Linda Lim, with an analysis of secondary data claiming that Nike wages exceed any reasonable standard and calculation of a living wage. Put these claims along side 101 other studies and presentations that claim just the opposite, and you have a a situation that cries out for basic, rigor, team-based academic research. It is time to set the research record straight, by taking it out of the PR and marketing department hands.

By the way the academic research teams we propose in the Athletic Apparel project have researchers on each team that take a pro-corporate view and those that are more critical and skeptical of transnational corporate claims (http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/AA).

Enough Staged Factory Tours - It is time that we get past the virtual and PR guided, model factory tours. The naked truth is, Reebok, Nike, Adidas, and New Balance do not disclose the actual location of the majority of their factories in Asia and Latin America. We know where 40 of the 730 Nike factories are located, about 20% of the Adidas and Reebok factories, and none of the New Balance Asian factories where over 80% of their (so called 'Made in America') sneakers are made.

Where do our sneakers and clothes come from? It is not possible to know for sure, based upon the state of current academic scientific research all the origins of manufacture. The point of the Naked Feet campaign is for academics to begin questioning and begin to make students and administration aware of the need for reliable and valid research. Scientists, students, and customers every where want to know who makes our garments and under what conditions?

Absent Referent - There is a voice, that is an absent referent, to the research being done thus far. There is a wide spread misperception that the women who work in thousands of sweatshops making our clothes and footwear are so darn grateful for a starvation wage, they they are just speechless with pleasure. I contend that it is the women in the sweatshops (as in the photos above), those 14 to 22 year old young ladies are trying to voice there concerns (at 23 they are typically fired in this industry, to hire more docile females), It is the women with their voice who take the huge risks, in the sweatshops that take the risk of being fired or jailed in Indonesia, beaten by dragoons in Kukdong in Mexico, or face the fear of death in Central and South America (See Country by Country research and media coverage). I think this Adbusters, spoof ad, expresses the point:

Adbusters express purpose is "To bring down Nike with anti-corporate cool" with a "The blackspot sneaker" (press here for photo).

This Woman in Naked Feet, spoof ad narrates, "You're running, because you want that raise. To be all you can be, But it's not easy when you work 60 hours a week making sneakers in an Indonesian factory and your friends disappear when they ask for a raise. So think globally before you decide it's so cool to wear Nike (Swoosh)." Nike spent $7.6 million on two Global Alliance research studies, additional money on Amos Tuck business school wage study, and sponsors factory tours to any academic who will write favorable Nike publicity, to counter this Adbusters' thesis.

Non-Violent Protest - Mine is a symbolic, pacifist, non-violent action of the feet. I want the sneaker industry, and then the garment industry, to open their factory doors to rigorous, systematic, comparative research. I say 'teach barefoot" and give 'public lectures barefoot" until such time as critical management researchers are allowed access to the secret factory locations of Nike, Reebok, Adidas, and new Balance. If and when it can be established that the universe of sneak factories makes its product in humane, living wage, and open organizing conditions -- then I will be the first to line up to salute the code of conduct. Until then, I seek non-sweatshop apparel purchases. I think it is important that teachers demonstrate that non-violent, peaceful resistance, done in the model of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King is a viable way to arouse public opinion and debate. Naked Feet is a way to draw student attention and awareness to the negative consequences of globalization conducted by transnational corporations unwilling to allow democratic input.

Independent Research - Independent Research, is by definition, not funded by the apparel industry. Besides basic research, we are asking for "Action Research." In action research the stakeholders, which in this case would include workers, NGOs and the corporate managers, would jointly design research experiments, such as changing the wage rate to a living one, and giving rest breaks to workers, and then measuring the impact upon productivity and morale. Until there is believable and verifiable academic research, we do not know for sure if the virtual and arranged factory tours are not on the most model and extraordinary working conditions. Independent scientific research that is not funded by the apparel industry is a step in the right direction.

My Challenge to Academics Around the World - I will teach barefoot and draw attention to the sneaker industry refusal to allow 50 expert scholars to enter the factories and do empirical and ethnographic basic research and design action research demonstrations that more humane conditions can also be profitable. When the athletic apparel industry grants only the most affirming and pro-corporate minded researchers into their domain, then we must be duly skeptical of the academic research output. I call upon academics (faculty as well as students) to stop wearing shoes, and go in Naked Feet to class, until we can be absolutely certain each of our garments are not being made under sweatshop conditions. It is time to move beyond paid consulting, apologist and mercenary-academic research, and staged PR factory tour research and give critical scientists the opportunity to assess the validity of advertised claims.

Foot Fetishism - Karl Marx (1867, Vol. 1, Chapter 3 of Das Kapital) went to the "mist-enveloped regions of the religious world" to find the metaphor of "Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labor." With the social separations of workers from consumers in the global commodity supply and distribution chain, that is being mediated by virtual corporations doing marketing instead of production, we do now know the conditions under which our clothing (and other consumables) are made. A fetish relation to sports stars, celebrities, and heroic figures becomes a form of mist-enveloped religious worship, so we can ignore the working women in our inner cities and the Third World. Our sneakers, for example, seem to magically appear at the NikeTown cathedral, as if Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan, had made them just for us. Is this process of attaching a logo and a celebrity image to a sneaker magical? Fetish is a term that has come to mean more than religious mystification, it is now tied to the sexual connotations and seduction of the age of advertising. Naked Feet is a way of questioning and exploring our fetish relationship to our clothing and to the image of what sneakers makes for a sexy male or female. Sneakers have become fetish objects fo culture-hero-worship, rather than living stories (and intertextuality) of the plight of young women workers in far away lands. Fetishism is fundamental to the Society of the Spectacle (Debord, 1967), giving the cult of hero worship a sign to affix to our bodies, to show we are part of contemporary culture. In short, fetish is being "cool" and "hip" in consumer culture. If Naked Feet becomes more cool than corporate-branded feet, then "cool" gets redefined. It becomes more cool to look at the shadow beneath our feet.

Shadow Claims As one management scholar, Benyamin Lichtenstein (1997: 395) put it, there is a shadow that "involves the acknowledged or hidden issues that show up as a loss of meaning, dispirited morale, sabotage, cynicism and gaps between what is espoused in the organization's mission statement and what is actually enacted." In mission statements, annual reports, and codes of conduct, the athletic apparel industry leaders' espoused actions does not seem to match their enacted work process. We do not want to wear garments made in the organizational shadow. We seek to study the issues that are hidden and engage corporations, workers, unions, governments, distributors, subcontractors, and the consuming public in what is called "second order change processes of transformation." We have had enough first order, shallow promises of reforms, that never seem to be realized in action throughout the global supply chain.

1st Order Change - The logic of linear, first order change processes is not going to transform a situation where thousands of subcontract factory owners and transnational corporate firms believe deep down that sweatshops are more profitable for them then humane forms of factory production. Non-linear change processes that unleash total tranformative change processes, is called for. We have seen a decade of piece-meal, linear, change strategies unable to contain the proliferation of sweatshops. More codes of conduct, more standards setting, and more monitors of standards and codes has been unable to make any measurable difference in the working conditions of young working women (the principal target of sweatshop employment).

2nd Order Change - Second order change is a "critical transformation: of people of different logics and perspectives who will study the factory and employment situation of each country. I think that people with different perspectives (some skeptical, others affirmations, and many cynical) can work together to study the postindustrial global supply and distribution chains.

Answerability - Only when the consumers, producers, and social scientists act to jointly study the situation, will the suspicions of the public be put to rest. The shadow work of millions of young working women in this industry is worth a bit of foot fetish embarrassment; go to class in Naked Feet. As one consumer put it, "If you hand $100 to Nike, you have to take responsibility for what Nike does with that money" (Jason Muxlow , Adbusters). If we listen to the stories of the working women in the sneaker industry, according to the critical postmodern ethicists, we have what is called "narrative answerability." The stories told by the women workers, are compelling, and we consumers and academic researchers, have answerability.

Around the globe we are witness to constant protests, clashes, crying, denials, tension and apprehension. It became manifest in Seattle with the WTO protests, moved to Quebec City, Genoa-8, and on to D.C. this September. Millions of people world wide do not tryst the corporate-sponsored research and consultant reports.

Please join me in acts of Détournement and Dérive; Take off your shoes and socks and put them neatly and politely in the hallway, before you walk in to your Business College classroom; do this stroll for a month, and see if Nike, Adidas, Reebok, or New Balance notices. Leave your Naked Footprint in your classroom.

Boje, D. M. (2001b) "Global Theatrics of Capitalism." More info on culture jamming and critical postmodern acts of (peaceful) resistance to predatory capitalism.

Bradbury, Hillary & Benyamin M. Bergmann Lichtenstein (2000). Relationality in Organizational Research: Exploring The Space Between. Organization Science. Vol. 11 (5): 551-564.

Debord Guy 1967. Society of the Spectacle. La Société du Spectacle was first published in 1967 by Editions, Buchet-Chastel (Paris); it was reprinted in 1971 by Champ Libre (Paris). The full text is available in English at http://www.nothingness.org/SI/debord/index.html , Retrieved September 7, 2000 from the World Wide Web:

Détournement, for more on this topic, please see A User's Guide to Détournement by Guy Debord & Gil J. Wolman, Les Lèvres Nues #8 (May 1956)

Lichtenstein, Benyamin (1997). Grace, magic and miracles: A "chaotic logic" of organizational transformation. Journal of Organiztional Change Management, Vol. 10 (5): 393-411.

Marx, Karl (1867). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1. The Process of Capitalist Production. Trans. S. Moore and E. Averling. F. Engles (ed.). NY: International Publishers. First published 1867, English 1967.

NAKED FEET 'BOJKOTT' by University Business College Professor