tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/john-lewis-22405/articlesJohn Lewis – The Conversation2024-03-20T17:15:40Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2261622024-03-20T17:15:40Z2024-03-20T17:15:40ZJohn Lewis relies too heavily on its heritage – here’s what it could do instead<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582852/original/file-20240319-9954-z24f7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C27%2C6016%2C3980&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Road to recovery?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/northampton-uk-may-10th-2019-scania-1413220934">Jevanto Productions/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a tricky economic climate, the British department store John Lewis has managed to deliver some good news. The retail partnership – owned by its 80,000 employees – <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/john-lewis-returns-to-profit-but-partners-miss-out-on-bonus-again-13094304">posted pre-tax profits</a> of £56 million after a £234 million loss the year before.</p>
<p>The positive announcement was somewhat tarnished by the fact that those employees (known as partners) would <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/09/john-lewis-is-back-in-the-black-but-the-glory-days-of-big-bonuses-seem-far-away">not receive a bonus</a> for the second year in a row. There were also hints of job cuts. </p>
<p>But what more could this giant of UK retail, which also owns Waitrose supermarkets, do to endure its survival? Does its increasing reliance on grocery sales mean its own brand has become less valuable?</p>
<p>For over 160 years on the high street, John Lewis has worked hard on that brand.
Its slogan (<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60522421">scrapped in 2022</a>) about being “never knowingly undersold” was well known, it remains a <a href="https://www.marketingweek.com/john-lewis-ikea-ms-top-brand-health-rankings/">trusted supplier</a> of an extensive range of household hoods, rates highly for <a href="https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-11679259/Top-10-UK-companies-customer-service-revealed.html">customer service</a>, and runs Christmas TV adverts which have became a <a href="https://theconversation.com/christmas-tv-ads-underscore-how-generosity-compassion-and-empathy-still-matter-to-people-217482">media event</a> in themselves.</p>
<p>In doing all of those things, John Lewis seemed to be in a much better place than its rivals. BHS (founded in 1928) and Debenhams (1778) have disappeared from the high street. House of Fraser (1849) was <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/how-did-house-of-fraser-get-into-this-mess-11468409">taken over</a> and has a much-reduced physical presence. </p>
<p>John Lewis’s nearest rival, Marks & Spencer (1884), is now <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67353897">doing well</a>, but only after it underwent a fairly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2023/aug/30/after-years-on-the-ropes-is-ms-finally-turning-around">brutal restructuring</a> which involved cutting thousands of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/18/coronavirus-marks-spencer-to-cut-7000-jobs-over-three-months">jobs during the pandemic</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63224269">closing 67</a> stores, and <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/m-s-blames-brexit-as-it-axes-11-french-high-street-stores-12409373">slashing its operations</a> in France.</p>
<p>So John Lewis’s “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/IJRDM-10-2020-0412">brand heritage</a>” – its history, tradition and pedigree – has worked pretty well for a pretty long time. But its recent return to profit was the combined effort of reinvesting and streamlining, according to <a href="https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2024/03/john-lewis-refresh-turnaround/">some reports</a>. </p>
<p>Also known as <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/11/22/14-smart-ways-to-trim-the-fat-from-your-business-tech-budget/">“trimming the fat”</a> in the business world, the retailer’s streamlining endeavours consisted of cutting more than 1,500 jobs, and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56511374">closing underperforming stores</a>, such as the branch in Sheffield, which had served residents for nearly 80 years and was <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-56512370">much mourned</a>, including by my own mother-in-law.</p>
<p>It has also been reported that more job cuts are imminent, with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/27/john-lewis-waitrose-jobs-cuts-redundancy-pay">up to 11,000 jobs to go</a> in the next five years.</p>
<p>And perhaps these measures highlight some of the harsh realities of running a department store in the always-open and effortless world of online shopping. Maybe employees (even those considered partners, as under John Lewis’s employee-ownership model) have become expendable. </p>
<p>Maybe physical stores, where consumers go to explore and seek advice, have become expendable. Maybe all traditions are expendable when they are not commercially viable.</p>
<h2>People first</h2>
<p>Yet the world of <a href="https://retailnext.net/blog/retail-reinvention-how-3-legacy-brands-stay-relevant-today">retail</a> is filled with examples of heritage brands reinventing themselves to stay relevant, buoyant and competitive.</p>
<p>John Lewis will need to do the same if it wants to retain its legacy on the British high street. And it could do worse than taking a leaf out of Waitrose’s playbook. </p>
<p>For the company’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/09/john-lewis-is-back-in-the-black-but-the-glory-days-of-big-bonuses-seem-far-away">return to profit</a> was largely due to the buoyant sales generated by Waitrose supermarkets, which increased by 4%. The department store business meanwhile, suffered a 2% fall. </p>
<p>Part of Waitrose’s success comes from providing a sense of indulgence and enjoyment – including healthy food – through carefully curated and often locally sourced products. It works closely with <a href="https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/content/sustainability/responsible-sourcing/waitrose-farmers">local farmers</a>, supports regional suppliers (an approach that has also contributed to M&S’s success), and reinvests in <a href="https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2024/03/john-lewis-refresh-turnaround/">stores</a> and product offers. </p>
<p>Essentially, as part of UK’s grocery sector, Waitrose extended its partnership ethos to include people and groups beyond the shop walls – to build a <a href="https://eurocities.eu/latest/local-retail-the-backbone-of-our-cities/">“local retail ecosystem”</a> that promotes and leverages a community spirit around their stores.</p>
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<img alt="M&S shop front." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583101/original/file-20240320-16-zoul2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583101/original/file-20240320-16-zoul2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583101/original/file-20240320-16-zoul2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583101/original/file-20240320-16-zoul2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583101/original/file-20240320-16-zoul2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583101/original/file-20240320-16-zoul2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583101/original/file-20240320-16-zoul2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Appealing to appetites.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/manchester-city-centre-manchesteruk-july-6-1445264891">Simon Vayro/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>John Lewis department stores could try and do something similar. They could focus more on products that help customers live healthier and more active lives, and which are relevant to their interests. They could sell products created by local small businesses, and make a determined approach to be a supportive presence in the regions they serve. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2023.103697">Research suggests</a> that heritage brands benefit from having a moral standing – when they show they care about the people they make money from, the local communities they operate in, and the people they employ.</p>
<p>So perhaps John Lewis should make moral values a part of its evolving heritage. It needs to show it cares not just for the people who work for the company directly, but also the people on whom it relies for success – the customers – and people it can build new relationships with. All of them could prove critical to its future success.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226162/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kokho Jason Sit is affiliated with the Chartered Institute of Marketing.</span></em></p>The company has returned to profit by making cuts, but there are things it could do to reinvent itself.Kokho Jason Sit, Senior Lecturer in Marketing; Associate Head (Global), University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2174822023-11-17T14:12:41Z2023-11-17T14:12:41ZChristmas TV ads underscore how generosity, compassion and empathy still matter to people<p>Christmas ad campaigns have become headline-worthy moments in the British national calendar, hailed by pundits and awaited by an eager public. The fact that they are now <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-12719901/John-Lewis-teases-Christmas-advert-2023.html">teased</a>, like big-screen cinema releases, is proof enough that, in calendar terms, the major-retailer Christmas ad is a seasonal event in itself. </p>
<p>This year, two ads so far have garnered much attention. John Lewis’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/nov/09/john-lewis-christmas-advert-a-terrifying-dog-eating-plant-that-vomits-presents-yes-please">Snapper the Perfect Tree</a> features a young boy who plants what he is told is a Christmas tree seed, only to watch it grow into a giant, sentient Venus flytrap. With operatic flair, the plant sings and dances its way into the family’s hearts. </p>
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<p>In contrast to this, <a href="https://corporate.marksandspencer.com/media/press-releases/love-thismas-not-thatmas-ms-reveals-its-christmas-clothing-home-campaign">M&S’s Love Thismas (Not Thatmas) campaign</a> has celebrities sabotaging traditional Christmas rites and activities. Actors Hannah Waddingham and Zawe Ashton respectively shred party hats and bat tree decorations. Queer Eye star Tan France sends board game pieces flying into a fish tank. And the pop star, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, takes a culinary blow torch to the cards she’s meant to be writing. </p>
<p>There is, of course, much to dislike about Christmas. It has long been associated with <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2117564">destructive consumption</a>, <a href="https://www.businessleader.co.uk/the-dark-environmental-impacts-of-our-christmas-season/">environmental harm</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-your-christmas-list-supporting-modern-slavery-the-dilemma-of-shopping-ethically-this-festive-season-173111">workplace exploitation including modern slavery</a> and even increasingly divisive <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14775700.2023.2273078">culture wars</a>. Nonetheless, Christmas ad producers seem to have become adept at combining commerce with the heartwarming message that this is a time of year when everyone shares responsibility for each other’s happiness and wellbeing. </p>
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<p>In my recent book, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Organizing-Christmas/Hancock/p/book/9781032552705">Organizing Christmas</a>, I show that, whatever misgivings people might have, there remains good cause to welcome the festive season. The excesses it promotes are still underpinned by the idea that generosity, compassion and empathy are values that matter. </p>
<h2>Christmas controversy</h2>
<p>John Lewis’s Snapper has been hailed as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/nov/09/john-lewis-christmas-advert-a-terrifying-dog-eating-plant-that-vomits-presents-yes-please">something of a departure</a> from their past Christmas offerings. The message nonetheless remains that openness to and inclusion of others is the true meaning of the season – even if they happen to be a giant carnivorous plant</p>
<p>Somewhat in contrast, the takeaway of the M&S ad is that we should prioritise more “me time” at yuletide. Moreover, unlike the John Lewis offering, the M&S ad, with its emphasis on glitzy celebrities and adult-only fun, appears to be targeting – relatively narrowly – the much-maligned metropolitan elite, albeit one slightly shorter on cash than usual. The ad therefore encourages its viewers to self-indulge while they can get away with it, the festive dreams and traditions of others be damned.</p>
<p>This has provoked a backlash from more conservative commentators. </p>
<p>The vocal headteacher and former chair of the Department for Education’s social mobility commission, Katharine Birbalsingh, wrote a <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/katharine-birbalsingh-marks-spencer-christmas-advert-b1118005.html">letter of complaint</a> to M&S. She accused the retailer of ignoring “the spirit of Christmas self-sacrifice, gratitude, giving of one’s time and finances to help one’s fellow man”.</p>
<p>This sentiment has found an echo in the media. GB News presenter Mark Dolan <a href="https://youtu.be/v1S5Hx05pf0?si=tQ13f0K2Z1cGQ08F">described</a> the advert as “wokery at its finest” and a “denigration of a national tradition”. </p>
<p>By contrast, others, including <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/marks-spencer-ms-christmas-ad-katharine-birbalsingh-b2442177.html">radio presenter James O’Brien and broadcaster James May</a>, have derided Birbalsingh’s comments. To <a href="https://twitter.com/writehandmedia/status/1720463231876026829">journalist Sonya Thomas’s mind</a>, Birbalsingh has simply “lost the plot”. </p>
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<h2>Hope at Christmas</h2>
<p>My <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Organizing-Christmas/Hancock/p/book/9781032552705">research</a> suggests, however, that Birbalsingh might have a point. The consumer juggernaut that Christmas has become still relies not on what we can get out of the season but on what we can give to and share with others for much of its legitimacy. And that generosity, as a value, does remain integral to understanding the season’s continued popularity. </p>
<p>This is what German philosopher Ernst Bloch <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2013/apr/29/frankfurt-school-ernst-bloch-principle-of-hope">might have called</a> the season’s “cultural surplus”. This is a set of ideas that, despite the worst excess of Christmas, stubbornly legitimises the season for the better, sustaining a sense of hope for a more compassionate and generous world. </p>
<p>From a purely commercial point of view, while provoking discussion can enhance a brand’s seasonal presence, the last thing any retailer wants is <a href="https://theconversation.com/glittering-penguins-the-power-of-the-christmas-ad-to-win-over-and-lose-customers-34025">negative publicity</a>. This is particularly true of flagship Christmas ads, given their ability to contribute to the <a href="https://www.mediaperformance.co.uk/2022/04/01/the-importance-of-christmas-advertising/">seasonal uplift in retail</a>. More importantly, though, the ad could have more widespread impact than to tarnish M&S’s reputation. </p>
<p>The problem is that the M&S ad does not just hold these values up to closer scrutiny. Unlike the John Lewis ad, it visibly celebrates the more narcissistic side of Christmas, thereby undermining the credibility of those ideas that have long served to sell us the annual Christmas dream. </p>
<p>On a more progressive note, it might also rightly prompt viewers to critically question just what this Christmas is that we are being sold. This could, in turn, nurture a more open and less self-serving way of embracing the season – and our lives together.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217482/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Hancock received funding from the British Academy (SG54347).</span></em></p>The excesses Christmas promotes are still underpinned by the idea that generosity, compassion and empathy are values that matter.Philip Hancock, Professor of Work and Organisation, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1961772022-12-22T06:56:13Z2022-12-22T06:56:13ZFoster children can easily lose their first language – but giving it a place in daily life can make a big difference<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501884/original/file-20221219-18-gu2pjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C0%2C4787%2C3554&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/brunette-hispanic-girl-looking-stressed-nervous-1158435247">Krakenimages.com/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine a ten-year-old girl who has been through things no child should ever have to endure. She is told that there is a nice couple who will take care of her, but she’s heard that before, and has learned not to trust it. </p>
<p>She arrives at her new home, clutching her beloved skateboard like a security blanket. The chap who opens the door smiles and says, “I skate a bit, too.” (In case you missed it, this is a scene from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z0jfP2gCIs">this year’s much-discussed John Lewis Christmas ad</a>.)</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The 2022 John Lewis Christmas advert.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Now imagine that English isn’t the mother tongue of the child in this scenario. She may have been going to school in the UK since she was four and speak English fluently. But she has another language, too, the one her parents spoke and that she said her first words in. </p>
<p>This language likely serves a similar function for that child as the skateboard in the John Lewis ad. It is both her security blanket and her superpower. </p>
<p>It is part of her identity, <a href="https://foreignish.net/the-shame-of-forgetting-my-mother-tongue/">representing who she is and where she comes from</a>. But it is also the particular gift that may have allowed her to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/chso.12485">facilitate daily life for her birth parents</a> by acting as their translator – at the bank, at the doctor, with the teacher. </p>
<p>However, her new foster parents speak only English.</p>
<p>Children in this situation will almost certainly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jan/21/welsh-language-part-me-slipping-away">lose their first language</a>. This loss may not occur not slowly and imperceptibly, a few words at a time, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/34745/chapter-abstract/296584500?redirectedFrom=fulltext">but with frightening speed and finality</a>. </p>
<h2>Language loss</h2>
<p>Within a couple of months, they may struggle to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bilingualism-language-and-cognition/article/abs/deserted-island-or-a-childs-first-language-forgetting/20ABECB1BB396C4E30F02FFB92BB0DF3">recall basic words</a>. Shortly after that, they are likely to need an interpreter to talk to family members. This fundamentally changes the already difficult child-parent relationship, threatening any sense of closeness and familiarity with birth parents or grandparents. </p>
<p>We frequently see such developments in our <a href="https://languageattrition.org/multilingual-children-in-the-british-foster-care-system/">ongoing research project</a> at the University of York, in which we investigate the language experience of <a href="https://york.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4IXpo3LNPhVajiu">current</a> and <a href="https://york.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eeteEcRGCr5DcvY">former foster children</a> from homes where a language other than English was spoken, their caregivers, and their birth parents. Those involved with multilingual children in foster care often speak about how helpless they feel in the face of this deterioration, such <a href="https://l1attrition.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/cojocaruc-ma-thesis.pdf">an interpreter</a> who was brought in to facilitate communication between a mother and her young son:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was quite heartbreaking watching this child … going from a very loving little boy with his mom, to the point where he just kept saying, I don’t understand you. … The mother couldn’t understand the child, the child couldn’t understand the mother. And after a while … I think that child then became really, really confused. It was a very sort of artificial conversation.</p>
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<p>Research demonstrates the vulnerability of birth language knowledge. Ten-year-old children may be proficient and fluent speakers of their home language, but <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-child-language/article/abs/losing-a-language-in-childhood-a-longitudinal-case-study-on-language-attrition/A4FD969ACE6E955DF5C1CDB924A9E872">they forget it within months</a> if they don’t use it daily. </p>
<p>Some studies have found that if they try to re-learn it later, they have virtually <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2390909/">no advantage</a> over adults who have no experience with that language, and who are learning it from scratch. This loss <a href="https://nautil.us/the-strange-persistence-of-first-languages-235672/">can have deep psychological consequences</a> and cause a lasting sense of non-belonging, dislocation and shame. </p>
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<img alt="Sad girl looking out of window" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501882/original/file-20221219-22-1srmrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501882/original/file-20221219-22-1srmrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501882/original/file-20221219-22-1srmrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501882/original/file-20221219-22-1srmrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501882/original/file-20221219-22-1srmrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501882/original/file-20221219-22-1srmrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501882/original/file-20221219-22-1srmrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Losing a language can be very psychologically difficult.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/6-years-old-asian-girl-sad-1161468844">Mama Belle and the kids/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Given the scarcity of resources, it is understandable that the British foster care system cannot easily accommodate the linguistic needs of the nearly <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/language/bulletins/languageenglandandwales/census2021#language-england-and-wales-data">10% of the population</a> using one of more than 100 languages other than English as a main language. Protecting children from immediate physical or psychological harm by placing them in care understandably takes priority. </p>
<p>While local authorities may have guidance for foster carers looking after a child whose first language is not English, there is currently <a href="https://l1attrition.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/cojocaruc-ma-thesis.pdf">no national policy</a> outlining if or what kind of support should be given to children who speak a minority home language.</p>
<h2>Making a difference</h2>
<p>When the language background of the child is taken into account and <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiXx9HJwIX8AhUwSUEAHdq7Cw4QFnoECAoQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fl1attrition.files.wordpress.com%2F2017%2F11%2Fmy-languages-matter-the-multilingual-outlook-for-children-in-care.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2UDf5JdAu5UF2Sso5kaQaU">some sort of provision</a> is made in the fostering environment, this may have enormous benefits for the relation between carer and child. It can also help the continued relationship between the child and their birth family. </p>
<p>Even carers who are themselves not familiar with the language can do small things that mean a lot: reading books or watching films together, or giving the language a small place in daily life. Adopting some words for everyday household or food items, for instance, could serve to keep the door to the language open, and later facilitate re-learning.</p>
<p>In terms of a “long-term commitment to the future of children in care”, as the John Lewis ad puts it, this is an effort that is <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19313152.2014.911052">very much worthwhile</a>. A simple thing such as saying the first words to the child in their own language as they arrives at the carer’s house can show that the foster parents understand its double role as their security blanket and superpower.</p>
<p>Plus, learning words in a new language is much less physically dangerous than taking up skateboarding.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196177/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Monika Schmid receives funding from ESRC and AHRC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beverley Costa is affiliated with The Pásalo Project <a href="https://www.pasaloproject.org/about.html">https://www.pasaloproject.org/about.html</a>.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claudia Cojocaru does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Children may struggle to recall basic words in their first language within a couple of months of stopping using it.Monika Schmid, Professor of Linguistics, University of YorkBeverley Costa, Senior Practitioner Fellow in the Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication, Birkbeck, University of LondonClaudia Cojocaru, Postgraduate Researcher in Psycholinguistics, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1953392022-12-08T11:39:27Z2022-12-08T11:39:27ZHow this year’s Christmas ads are navigating the cost of living crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498683/original/file-20221202-19-z2bf2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=28%2C11%2C1876%2C1031&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Lewis</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Christmas adverts have become a festive and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-festive-psychology-behind-christmas-tv-advertising-70011">highly competitive tradition</a>. They are critiqued and compared, enjoyed and endured, and (retailers hope) viewed by millions of potential customers. </p>
<p>The amount retailers spend on Christmas marketing campaigns is significant, but not surprising. The season is a pivotal time in the retail calendar, with November and December accounting for more than <a href="https://brc.org.uk/media/678841/brc-festive-faqs-2021_final.pdf">20% of the year’s revenue</a>. </p>
<p>This means that every year, advertisers are under huge pressure to deliver something new and eye-catching that will pull on consumers’ heart strings – and make them spend money. </p>
<p>A key element of this is one of the classic goals of advertising: creating an emotional response. <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/advertising-during-world-cup-benefits-emotion#:%7E:text=Context%20does%20make%20a%20difference,or%20a%20specific%20patriotic%20tone.">Research shows</a> that advertising created around emotional appeals, especially during holidays and on special occasions, is considered more likeable and more memorable. And crucially, it drives consumer decision making.</p>
<p>During the seasonal period retailers often move away from the usual, year-round focus on cost savings in favour of generating a “Christmassy” feeling to encourage shoppers. But doing all of this in a cost of living crisis is perhaps an even greater challenge, when energy bills and food prices are putting a serious squeeze on household spending. So how are the UK’s big companies faring so far in 2022? </p>
<p>One <a href="https://www.timeout.com/uk/news/a-definitive-ranking-of-2022s-christmas-adverts-112122">media ranking</a> this season places the <a href="https://www.boots.com/christmas/boots-christmas-tv-advert">advert from Boots</a> in first place with its glitzy modern fairy tale, aimed at rejuvenating their beauty and personal care range. A woman finds a magical pair of glasses which, when worn, have the power to transform everyday wintry scenes into dazzling moments – and reveal what people are secretly wishing for.</p>
<p>On Christmas Day though, the glasses no longer work, because (spoiler alert) she has managed to supply everything her friends and family need by buying them presents from the high street chemist.</p>
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<p>Ranked second is supermarket Waitrose, which tells the story of a year in the lives of British farmers, and feels reminiscent of key workers keeping the country going through the pandemic. It uses the popular advertising device of featuring real people to create resonance with the audience. At the same time it is attempting to create appeal by boasting of the quality and provenance of the food it sells.</p>
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<p>The ad getting my vote though, is placed third: department store John Lewis’s tale of a man trying, failing and trying again to learn to skateboard as he prepares to become a foster parent. </p>
<p>The familiar moral trope of persistence unfolds over 90 seconds as consumers’ responses of <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article/29/4/566/1791056">sympathy and empathy</a> are deployed to stimulate a positive response. At the end of the story, there’s an even bigger feel-good moment, when it is revealed that John Lewis has developed a partnership with charities working with young people in care.</p>
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<p>This kind of emotional engagement – even at the expense of showcasing products altogether – is at the heart of most advertising campaigns this Christmas. Businesses seem acutely aware that at a time of global emergencies and economic uncertainty, they must work even harder to remain relevant and trustworthy to advertising-savvy consumers. </p>
<p>After all, <a href="https://myscp.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/jcpy.1324?casa_token=hR8PT3XuBOYAAAAA:3zOLpPkURpj2TYP351EBApRMSwN-x6RVieo_gZjEeMY1bruG3zo3aRUsmXExKj4fjSOROUwAg8AY53nh8w">research suggests</a> that consumers are more likely be drawn to brands that share, or are aligned with, their own values and goals. John Lewis’ Christmas campaign gets the tone right by using the investment in expensive media space to raise awareness of the societal problem of children in care. </p>
<p>When we buy products, or even enjoy an advertising campaign, we develop a sense of meaning about our place in the world. So when we engage and connect (spend money) with brands that we trust, it gives us a sense of wellbeing. </p>
<h2>Socially responsible shopping</h2>
<p>Beyond Christmas, this kind of relationship can be useful where consumers respond to broader issues, such as how we treat the environment. For although the <a href="https://cpblondon.com/download/other-climate-gender-gap/">majority of consumers</a> describe themselves as being worried about climate change, they do not always feel able to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/mar.21709">act on such concerns</a> when they buy things. </p>
<p>There are many factors which may prevent people from buying sustainable products, from quality concerns to peer perceptions, and value for money. There are also hidden social stereotypes that characterise <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/EJM-09-2016-0538/full/html">social-consciousness and environmentalism as “unmanly”</a>, stopping men from seeking out eco-friendly products.</p>
<p>But evidence suggests that one solution is for brands to normalise sustainability and social inclusion by putting relevant, meaningful issues front and centre of their <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/14705931211035163">advertising campaigns</a>. Having a “brand purpose” related to social responsibility is no longer just for the likes of well established eco brands like Patagonia or Tom’s Shoes. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-john-lewis-christmas-advert-makes-me-angry-194668">Why the John Lewis Christmas advert makes me angry</a>
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<p>Budweiser for example, has recently established a partnership with a <a href="https://www.brightnetwork.co.uk/employer-advice/budweiser-brewing-group-uki/budweiser-x-walk-safe-helping-people-plan-a-safer-journey-home/">personal safety app</a> designed to help people get home safely after a night out. Ikea has made moves towards greater sustainability with an <a href="https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/customer-service/terms-conditions/ikea-buy-back-terms-and-conditions-pub9e989950">initiative</a> which allows customers to sell their old furniture back to the company to be resold. </p>
<p>These companies, like John Lewis with its charity partnership, have understood the moral argument for brands to do social good. But they have also understood the solid business case which goes with it. </p>
<p>Consumers want to trust companies to make a positive difference, as well as giving them products they desire and value. Providing an authentic brand purpose allows customers to feel socially responsible while they tick off the items on their shopping list.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195339/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen Middleton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Companies need to show that they are socially aware.Karen Middleton, Senior Lecturer in Marketing and Advertising, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1613342021-07-14T12:23:16Z2021-07-14T12:23:16ZFrom the labor struggles of the 1930s to the racial reckoning of the 2020s, the Highlander school has sought to make America more equitable<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407988/original/file-20210623-19-holujg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=56%2C50%2C3713%2C2255&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Highlander founder Myles Horton (right) with civil rights leader Rosa Parks and labor leader Ralph Helstein in 1957.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.library.nashville.org/research/collections/civil-rights-collection">Nashville Banner Collection, Special Collections Division, Nashville Public Library</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>During this <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/americas-racial-reckoning">period of racial reckoning</a>, many Americans are seeking to make the United States more equitable and just. Many new organizations and coalitions are arising out of a new wave of engagement, but they don’t need to start from scratch. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41674667">Highlander Research and Education Center</a>, a training ground for civil rights activists founded nearly 90 years ago, offers a useful model. As a <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469661445/shelter-in-a-time-of-storm/">social movement historian</a>, I am intimately familiar with how this school and similar engines of grassroots engagement have transformed America’s social and political landscape by inspiring generations of leaders seeking to end institutional racism.</p>
<p>Located outside of Knoxville in the eastern Tennessee mountains, Highlander is among the hundreds of organizations that the billionaire philanthropist and author <a href="https://mackenzie-scott.medium.com/116-organizations-driving-change-67354c6d733d">MacKenzie Scott</a> has funded to combat systemic inequity. It’s also playing a critical role in attracting and distributing philanthropic support to lesser-known Southern grassroots organizations.</p>
<p>Together with <a href="https://archives.lib.duke.edu/catalog/song">Southerners on New Ground</a>, another activist training group, it helped launch the <a href="https://www.laughinggull.org/southern-power-fund">Southern Power Fund</a> in 2020. The initiative had <a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/article/how-a-14-million-fund-for-black-led-grassroots-groups-in-the-south-is-upending-traditional-grant-making">raised US$14 million by mid-2021</a> to make it easier for grassroots organizations to address local needs with <a href="https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/unrestricted-grant">no-strings-attached</a> grants.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Myles Horton created the Highlander school to help poor people find solutions to their ‘common problems.’</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Myles Horton vs. the color line</h2>
<p>Highlander was the brainchild of <a href="https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/myles-horton">Myles Horton</a>, a white Southerner who grew up under the crushing weight of poverty in rural Tennessee in the early 20th century. As his parents scratched out a living doing odd jobs, Horton grew increasingly bitter regarding the social and economic system that produced such stark contrasts between the privileged few and the struggling masses. He also became an avid reader.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407981/original/file-20210623-19-1mc2v9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A clean-cut man in a white shirt smiles at the camera" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407981/original/file-20210623-19-1mc2v9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407981/original/file-20210623-19-1mc2v9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407981/original/file-20210623-19-1mc2v9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407981/original/file-20210623-19-1mc2v9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407981/original/file-20210623-19-1mc2v9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407981/original/file-20210623-19-1mc2v9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407981/original/file-20210623-19-1mc2v9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Myles Horton in 1957.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.library.nashville.org/research/collections/civil-rights-collection">Nashville Banner Collection, Special Collections Division, Nashville Public Library</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>During the Great Depression, Horton went to graduate school at <a href="https://thesocietypages.org/monte/2014/08/24/remembering-myles-horton-a-man-who-left-academic-sociology-behind-in-order-to-change-society/">Union Theological Seminary in New York and the University of Chicago</a>.</p>
<p>There, he was <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520302051/education-in-black-and-white">mentored by John Dewey</a>, a philosopher who believed in the need for education aimed at “correcting unfair privilege and unfair deprivation.” American social movements at that time, when the nation’s economic and racial divisions were becoming deeper, were intensifying their critiques concerning the wealth gap and the color line that violently threatened and undermined the lives of millions of African Americans.</p>
<p>Subsequently, Horton founded the <a href="https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/alliances-relationships/highlander/">Highlander Folk School</a> in 1932. Nestled in the tiny backwoods town of Monteagle, Tennessee, it aimed “to educate rural and industrial leaders for a new social order.”</p>
<p>For Horton, the economic crisis was the perfect moment to achieve the unthinkable: bridging the color line to create synergy between Black and white Southerners.
Within Highlander’s welcoming walls and in its outdoor classes, segregation or any pretense of hierarchy was nonexistent. </p>
<p>Groups of Southern labor organizers and civil rights activists would gather at Highlander to read and discuss. Its library was stocked with books by progressive intellectuals, including not just Dewey but the theologian <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-comey-learned-from-theologian-reinhold-niebuhr-about-ethical-leadership-95330">Reinhold Niebuhr</a> and the educator and activist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-S-Counts">George S. Counts</a>.</p>
<p>Participants would learn even more from their community-building. Horton sought to create a space where people of all backgrounds could be exposed to history and literature that enlightened them about their common struggles. Highlander also fostered the creation of music and art that built communion and solidarity, while inculcating the radical notion among trainees that they could transcend racial and class divisions.</p>
<p>In sharing a common space for an extended period, participants in Highlander’s training program could begin to build a truly democratic society as a “<a href="https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/996/">circle of learners</a>.” </p>
<h2>Empowering civil rights leaders</h2>
<p>Today’s training center is the successor to Horton’s original civil rights movement incubator. In 1957, <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/highlander-folk-school">Martin Luther King Jr. praised Highlander’s “noble purpose and creative work”</a> with having “given the South some of its most responsible leaders.”</p>
<p>Four months before her historic act of dissent against Montgomery’s segregated buses, for example, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/rosa-parks-in-her-own-words/about-this-exhibition/the-bus-boycott/highlander-folk-school/">Rosa Parks</a> attended a Highlander workshop on one of several trips she would make there. </p>
<p>And as student sit-ins rocked America’s social and political foundations in the spring of 1960, it was Highlander that served as a retreat for many of the Nashville students, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/john-lewis-traded-the-typical-college-experience-for-activism-arrests-and-jail-cells-143219">John Lewis</a>, the future congressman. </p>
<p>Because of unrelenting attacks by prejudiced politicians who <a href="https://www.gale.com/c/fbi-file-on-the-highlander-folk-school">alleged that Highlander was spreading communism</a>, Tennessee authorities <a href="https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2018/01/school-for-subversives-and-communists.html">forced the school’s closure and revoked its charter in 1961</a>. The staff then reincorporated as the Highlander Research and Education Center and moved, first to Knoxville and then to New Market, a small town about 25 miles away.</p>
<p>Under its barely changed name, the nonprofit school would keep forging some of the most unlikely coalitions at the height of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/lynching-preachers-how-black-pastors-resisted-jim-crow-and-white-pastors-incited-racial-violence-129963">Jim Crow South</a> and beyond.</p>
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<span class="caption">Highlander’s workshops brought Black and white people together, even at the height of U.S. segregation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.library.nashville.org/research/collections/civil-rights-collection">Nashville Banner Collection, Special Collections Division, Nashville Public Library</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<h2>Septima Clark</h2>
<p>One of Horton’s most influential hires was a South Carolina schoolteacher named <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/clark-septima-poinsette">Septima Clark</a>. A graduate of two historically Black colleges, she first arrived in 1954 out of curiosity because she wanted to see for herself the one place she had heard of where “<a href="https://africaworldpressbooks.com/ready-from-within-septima-clark-and-the-civil-right-movement-a-first-person-narrative-edited-by-cynthia-stokes-brown/">blacks and whites could meet together and talk over the problems</a>” that defined the Jim Crow South.</p>
<p>She returned a year later after being fired from her teaching job in Charleston for belonging to the NAACP. At Highlander, Clark developed and led workshops on leadership. Parks was among her first students, six months before an <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/montgomery-bus-boycott">eventful act of dissent aboard a bus in Montgomery</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407992/original/file-20210623-13-1opsvsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An elderly woman holds an award" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407992/original/file-20210623-13-1opsvsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407992/original/file-20210623-13-1opsvsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407992/original/file-20210623-13-1opsvsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407992/original/file-20210623-13-1opsvsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407992/original/file-20210623-13-1opsvsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407992/original/file-20210623-13-1opsvsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407992/original/file-20210623-13-1opsvsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Septima Clark in 1974.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CivilRightsPioneerClark/dea21193332348258743b1133d5dae6a/photo">AP Photo</a></span>
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<p>Clark became a full-time staffer in 1956. She later implemented her Highlander lesson plans in what she referred to as <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/septima-clark-was-the-teacher-of-the-civil-rights-movement/CZSM4IT56RC4FFMMLD7L53YLPA/">Citizenship Schools</a> in Johns Island, South Carolina.</p>
<p>Horton’s and Clark’s methods of empowering and training local folks in political literacy became staples of organizations such as the <a href="https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/the-story-of-sncc/">Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee</a>, or SNCC.</p>
<p>SNCC later emulated the concept of Clark’s Citizenship Schools during the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/freedom-summer">Freedom Summer campaign of 1964</a>, which sought to register scores of Black voters who had been barred from registering in Mississippi – under the threat of white terrorism as well as Jim Crow laws.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>SNCC activists also created Freedom Schools throughout the Mississippi Delta region that exposed <a href="https://www.civilrightsteaching.org/exploring-history-freedom-schools">Black residents to an education that most had been deprived of</a> as <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/sharecropping">impoverished sharecroppers</a>.</p>
<h2>Building new coalitions</h2>
<p>After the school’s organizers relocated, twice under its new name, Highlander redoubled its efforts to address systemic poverty. In recent years, <a href="https://highlandercenter.org/our-story/mission/">while upholding its original mission</a>, Highlander has begun to tackle issues such as environmental racism, xenophobia and human rights abuses while advocating for intergenerational and multicultural coalition-building.</p>
<p>Tragically, there are those who still regard such efforts as a threat.</p>
<p>The Highlander Research and Education Center’s main office building in New Market, Tennessee, burned down in 2019. The subsequent identification of a white power symbol raised <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/highlander-attack-arson-racism/">suspicions of arson</a>, but <a href="https://www.wbir.com/article/news/community/we-are-survivors-one-year-after-the-highlander-center-fire/51-7fdf920b-929f-4ee4-b8e5-da0dba4f308f">the case</a> apparently remains under investigation.</p>
<p>Although the blaze engulfed the building, it didn’t raze the spirit and mission of the center that in my view has served as a citadel for democracy and justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161334/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jelani M. Favors does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The training center, which welcomed Rosa Parks and John Lewis before they became famous, still empowers and inspires marginalized Americans to use their own voices and talents.Jelani M. Favors, Associate Professor of History, Clayton State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1611302021-05-28T14:24:21Z2021-05-28T14:24:21ZHigh street brands cannot rely on history and familiarity to survive — new research<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403363/original/file-20210528-14-ngio4g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=156%2C91%2C8388%2C5605&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/worthing-west-sussex-uk-april-23-1962813244">Shutterstock/J Woodhouse</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At a precarious time for the high street, a sense of <a href="https://www.globalblue.com/destinations/uk/london/london-top-10-heritage-brands/">brand heritage</a> might be considered a great strength. The theory is that well known stores are able to boast – and attract customers with – a proud history of originality and quality. </p>
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<p>In reality though, heritage appears to have become something of a blind spot for some retailers. <a href="https://www.retailresearch.org/whos-gone-bust-retail.html">Last year</a> Debenhams (aged 243), Jaeger (aged 137) and Laura Ashley (aged 68), all went into administration before reemerging as online only brands. Similarly familiar rivals including <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/marks-and-spencer-sales-results-loss-b1854047.html">Marks & Spencer</a> and John Lewis <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/john-lewis-store-closures-jobs-b1821655.html">are struggling</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJRDM-10-2020-0412/full/html">My research</a> indicates that one reason for this is retailers continuing to over value their status as heritage brands. As a result, they fail to keep up with <a href="https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2019/08/department-stores-in-2019/">changes in shopper behaviour</a> and risk becoming dated, sluggish and digitally inept – unwilling to try new ideas in case they risk the loyalty of their <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53478403">established customer base</a>.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-businesses-need-to-get-creative-if-they-want-to-survive-coronavirus-and-any-other-crisis-in-future-146125">innovation and agility</a> have never been more important. The threat of digital disruption and evolving shopper behaviour mean retailers need to always look afresh at what they do. </p>
<p>Yet to established high street names, protecting their own heritage means not making mistakes, sticking to old ways and minimising costs for shareholders. It is the complete opposite of innovation, of trying out new and possibly risky ideas. </p>
<p>Take Amazon for example, arguably the most successful retailer on the planet. It evolved from a bookseller into a dominant and ever expanding retail marketplace. It recently opened its first UK <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-amazon-do-to-the-grocery-industry-what-it-did-to-ecommerce-96874">checkout-free grocery store </a> and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2021/04/25/why-amazon-is-opening-a-hair-salon-and-other-small-business-tech-news/?sh=1f9091c89fb1">a hair salon</a> to expand its move into the bricks-and-mortar landscape (surely proof that physical shops still matter despite high street woes). </p>
<p>Of course, one might argue that it is easier for a businesses like Amazon to be innovative and agile because of its strong financial backing and technical expertise. But while technology can help to implement innovation, it does not produce it. </p>
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<p>For instance, having <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_wcptfTD2c">“smart fitting rooms”</a>, or an interactive touch screen mirror does not instantly make a retail store innovative and attract large numbers of customers. </p>
<p>Consumers’ needs have become more complex. They do not simply go to a physical store to buy something, as they easily do that online. They go to explore, to be inspired and entertained, as part of the “<a href="https://hbr.org/1998/07/welcome-to-the-experience-economy">experience economy</a>”. </p>
<p>At the same time, efforts to address these needs should avoid being perceived as sales gimmicks like the “<a href="https://www.drapersonline.com/news/john-lewis-unveils-services-for-new-experiential-store">experience desk</a>” at John Lewis, a concierge-style service that tell shoppers about the store and can book them into other services. </p>
<h2>Lifestyle changes</h2>
<p>One example of a shop successfully <a href="https://www.crfashionbook.com/culture/a25470880/historical-look-at-liberty-london/">mixing heritage with innovation</a> is Liberty London, which regularly refreshes its range of products and services (and even its physical spaces) to encourage shopping. As a customer there, I do not feel I am always being “sold to”, but instead am inspired by the surroundings. As I admire the displays and check out the merchandise, the buying follows on naturally, but the process is subtle and enjoyable. I cannot say I have the same experiences when visiting House of Fraser or John Lewis. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJRDM-10-2020-0412/full/html">Our research</a> on perceived authenticity shows that brand survival can by no means be taken for granted. It requires a sophisticated strategy which combines convenience and continuity with the ability to survive new trends and look forward. </p>
<p>To survive and prosper in the long term, high street retailers cannot rely on quality, consistency and nostalgia (the known attributes of brand heritage). They need to be innovative, agile and responsive (or better still, pre-emptive) to change. </p>
<p>This is not about asking high street retailers to ditch or dismiss their hard won heritage. But it does mean critically rethinking the meanings of heritage in the retail landscape, both current and future. Failing to do this can have <a href="https://theconversation.com/topshop-how-the-once-trendsetting-brand-fell-behind-the-times-151135">catastrophic consequences</a>. </p>
<p>For heritage has very little commercial value when a retailer is unwilling or unable to break some of the old fashioned rules. Otherwise, heritage would simply mean history – the place where so many established brands have been consigned to after disappearing from the high street.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161130/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kokho Jason Sit does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Well known retailers are too often stifled by risk averse corporate culture.Kokho Jason Sit, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1591842021-04-26T16:25:21Z2021-04-26T16:25:21ZDepartment store closures: the case for a national programme to fill empty space<p>Debenhams, one of the UK’s leading department stores chains, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9499409/Debenhams-confirms-final-closing-date-27-stores.html">is set to</a> permanently close its 97 remaining outlets in England and Wales during the first two weeks in May. Having already closed its Scottish stores and the flagship on London’s Oxford Street, it will mark the end of Debenhams as a bricks and mortar operator. The brand alone will survive, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/25/boohoo-buying-debenhams-a-changing-of-the-guard-in-retail">having been bought</a> by online retailer Boohoo earlier in the year. </p>
<p>Department stores have not fared well under COVID-19. Thanks to changing government restrictions, stores have veered from near-normal trading to click-and-collect to complete closure apart from online offerings. This has been confusing for customers. They have <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/retailindustry/timeseries/j4mc/drsi">turned to</a> online shopping, both through department-store sites and internet-only rivals like Amazon and ASOS. </p>
<p>The timing could not have been worse for physical stores, since they were already struggling to compete with online retail. As well as the Debenhams collapse, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/05/frasers-group-warns-of-store-closures-after-near-worthless-budget-support">House of Fraser continues</a> to axe or repurpose stores as part of an ongoing pre-pandemic programme, and John Lewis has <a href="https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2021/04/john-lewis-boss-halts-store-closure-programme/">permanently closed</a> 17 of 51 stores – including the likes of Birmingham Grand Central, which only opened in 2015.</p>
<p>A couple of years ago, I wrote <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-this-the-last-john-lewis-christmas-ad-127084">in The Conversation</a> that things had become so bad for UK department stores that John Lewis might even have put out the last of its famous Christmas adverts. John Lewis may not quite have stopped making festive ads, but more generally events have turned out worse than I anticipated. Closures are creating huge empty spaces in our high streets and shopping centres. The big question now is, what to do about it?</p>
<h2>An overreaction?</h2>
<p>First off, we shouldn’t actually assume the whole sector will die off. <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/retailindustry/timeseries/j4mc/drsi">Online retail’s share</a> of the overall UK market had climbed to 22% by the start of the pandemic, and has since risen as high as 36%. But we don’t need to assume that trend will continue indefinitely. For example, online stores may have killed off many book shops but <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/business/waterstones-profits-sales-living-wage-394777">Waterstones was thriving</a> before the pandemic.</p>
<p>Surviving department stores could similarly benefit from being the last man standing. After all, nearly one in five people over 65 in the UK <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/householdcharacteristics/homeinternetandsocialmediausage/bulletins/internetaccesshouseholdsandindividuals/2020">never use</a> the internet and many also have more spare cash than debt-laden under-40s.</p>
<p>For those that do shop online, there is still <a href="https://www.theengineer.co.uk/last-mile-delivery-challenge-logistics/">a perception</a> that it involves something of a gamble. Online delivery has improved over the years, partly thanks to better customer information through apps, texts and so on, but many of us regularly play a game of “hunt the parcel” with our neighbours.</p>
<p>During the pandemic, consumers’ experiences of online delivery have been mixed. Supermarket services have been plagued by timeslot shortages, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55540485">for instance</a>. Deliveries to home will also become less convenient once people are not always working or studying there. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/397066/original/file-20210426-23-yso1q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Victorians out shopping" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/397066/original/file-20210426-23-yso1q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/397066/original/file-20210426-23-yso1q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397066/original/file-20210426-23-yso1q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397066/original/file-20210426-23-yso1q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397066/original/file-20210426-23-yso1q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397066/original/file-20210426-23-yso1q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397066/original/file-20210426-23-yso1q2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Shopping circa 1880.</span>
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<p>Meanwhile, department stores have never simply been about purchasing. Since Victorian times, they have been “cathedrals of consumption” – places to spend leisure time, where being seen was as important as what you bought. </p>
<p>It is no coincidence that they invariably contain a cafe, and usually various eating and drinking places. Lockdown probably hasn’t permanently killed off the inherent human desire to socialise and display social status. </p>
<h2>Pulling up anchors</h2>
<p>Nonetheless, the demise of the department store presents a significant challenge for cities, <a href="https://theconversation.com/future-of-high-streets-how-to-prevent-our-city-centres-from-turning-into-ghost-towns-154108">particularly when</a> high streets and shopping centres are declining more generally. Department stores are often the destination outlets around which retail locations are “anchored”. </p>
<p>They drive consumers to a location. Once these anchors depart, the whole shopping centre is “holed”. Nobody is likely to choose to spend their leisure time or demonstrate their status in a decaying retail centre, with boarded up shops and a despondent air. Many retailers will switch to healthier locations as a result. </p>
<p>The question is how to turn this into an opportunity to change use. It is not the first time that cities have had to manage empty, unproductive space. Two relatively recent examples are the many bomb sites after the second world war, and the brownfield sites following <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/06/the-legacy-of-leaving-old-industrial-britain-to-rot-is-becoming-clear">the deindustrialisation</a> of the 1980s. </p>
<p>This time around, the UK housing crisis, with an <a href="https://pure.hw.ac.uk/ws/files/24741931/HousingSupplyMay2019.pdf">estimated requirement</a> of 380,000 new homes a year, points to a way forward. There are already examples, with planned housing use on a former House of Fraser site as part of the multi-billion-pound <a href="https://www.wirral.gov.uk/sites/default/files/all/planning%20and%20building/Local%20plans%20and%20planning%20policy/Local%20Planning%20Evidence%20Base%20and%20Research/Wirral%20Documents/Reg%2018%20Issues%20and%20Options%202020/Birkenhead%20Regeneration/Birkenhead%202040%20Framework.pdf">Birkenhead 2040</a> regeneration project in north-west England. </p>
<p>Such conversions will be made easier by the UK government <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-freedoms-to-support-high-streets-and-fast-track-delivery-of-schools-and-hospitals-across-england-introduced-today">changing the rules</a> so that retail sites in England can be converted into housing without planning permission. Of course, this could simply create an environment that is neither fish nor fowl – too little retail density to attract enough shoppers, but offputting to homebuyers and tenants because of noise and potential lack of privacy. </p>
<p>In any event, the planning changes are unlikely to fill all the empty footage on their own. Many leading recent housing and leisure schemes originated from repurposed urban space, such as <a href="https://www.visitmanchester.com/things-to-see-and-do/explore/the-quays">Salford Quays</a> in Greater Manchester and the <a href="https://albertdock.com/">Albert Dock</a> in Liverpool. But they took years, indeed decades, to come to fruition because there are always serious obstacles, not least fragmented site ownership, financing and lack of shared vision.</p>
<p>But rather than despair, perhaps we can learn something from the UK’s approach to COVID-19. Instead of the orthodoxy of the past 40 years where we rely on the market, the government could take the driving seat. </p>
<p>Vast <a href="https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/hospital/building-the-nightingale-hospitals-engineering-on-the-fast-track-23-06-2020/">Nightingale hospitals</a> were created seemingly overnight to handle COVID. Students and the retired <a href="https://www.gov.scot/news/coronavirus-support-from-returning-staff-and-students/">were re-employed</a> in frontline healthcare roles, and a seemingly effective <a href="https://www.gponline.com/uk-covid-19-vaccination-programme-tracker/article/1704726">vaccination programme</a> has been enacted. </p>
<p>Maybe a similarly bold approach could address the millions of unwanted square feet on high streets and shopping centres. The government could use compulsory purchase orders to take control of many sites and repurpose them into the best uses for each area. This would obviously not be cheap, but this is a national crisis. Better to grasp the nettle than to allow city centres and shopping centres to slide into ruin, with all the potential for deprivation and crime that would emerge along the way.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159184/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Griff Round does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This doesn’t have to be the end for empty retail space.Griff Round, Lecturer in Marketing, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1570712021-03-17T13:45:58Z2021-03-17T13:45:58ZHow retail giants could thrive on the post-pandemic high street<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389841/original/file-20210316-21-gctjhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=60%2C30%2C6683%2C3811&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk0613-pedestrians-walking-pass-flagship-1755767099">Shutterstock/Yau Ming Low</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Even before COVID-19, the British high street was undergoing <a href="https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-7866275/High-Streets-worst-year-record-Sales-fall-time-2019.html">slow and painful decline</a>. Independent shops were struggling, department stores were <a href="https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2019/04/debenhams-falls-into-administration-lenders-take-control/">fighting for survival</a>, and well known chains were scrapping over market share. </p>
<p>A year on from March 2020, and shopping habits have changed drastically. “Non-essential” stores have been closed for months at a time, and <a href="https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2020/09/18/how-the-covid-19-pandemic-has-accelerated-the-shift-to-online-spending/">online spending has soared</a>. In 2020, e-commerce accounted for more than 30% of retail sales in the UK for the first time, up from 20% in 2019. Such a large increase in <a href="https://www.emarketer.com/content/pandemic-pushes-uk-retail-ecommerce-past-30-of-total-retail-sales-2020">one year is unparalleled</a>.</p>
<p>So has COVID-19 changed everything? Or did the pandemic just rapidly accelerate changes that were already being planned?</p>
<p>Take the <a href="https://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/">John Lewis Partnership</a> for example, the employee-owned company often seen as a reliable indicator of the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/2c0659c8-0083-4071-baa5-0d6bcce93c0c">state of UK retail</a>. It recently <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/2021-03-11/john-lewis-warns-over-more-shop-closures-after-tumbling-to-517m-loss">announced a £517 million</a> annual loss (the <a href="https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-9352451/John-Lewis-shut-department-stores-suffering-loss.html">first in its history</a>) and plans to close more stores. </p>
<p>Its CEO, Sharon White, has certainly had a challenging time since <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jun/06/sharon-white-leaves-ofcom-to-join-john-lewis-partnership">taking over in 2019</a>, responding to a massive increase in online demand, and an economy battered by uncertainty.</p>
<p>Her plans to <a href="https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2020/08/what-does-john-lewis-partnerships-proposed-retail-to-residential-shift-entail/">“re-purpose” company-owned premises</a> and develop small-format John Lewis <a href="https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2021/03/john-lewis-plots-hundreds-of-shop-in-shops-in-waitrose/">stores within Waitrose supermarkets</a> may appear a brave response to changes brought about by the pandemic.</p>
<p>Yet earlier in 2019, John Lewis <a href="https://www.facilitatemagazine.com/news/2019/01/29/cbre-appointed-provide-services-john-lewis">had hired a specialist company</a> with expertise in “repurposing retail real estate” to oversee its “facilities management”. In other words, it was already thinking about new ways to use the property it owns. So perhaps such changes were not unplanned. </p>
<p>Another British stalwart, Marks & Spencer, has also announced a major change in its operations – by creating a one-stop shop for fickle customers and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2021/mar/11/marks-spencer-plan-sell-rival-clothing-customers">stocking competitor brands</a>. These will include Jaeger (which the <a href="https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2021/01/ms-rescues-jaeger-from-administration-but-stores-set-to-close/">company has bought</a>), Hobbs, Joules and Sloggi, which will all be sold alongside its own label items. </p>
<p>This strategy is a smart move, creating a single destination where shoppers can browse different designers, styles and prices. Offering branded and own label goods enables them to better compete with e-commerce specialists and win back lost market share. </p>
<p>It is a necessary departure from the inefficient and outdated notion of chasing an M&S “core customer”. Instead, the company has accepted that it needs to appeal to consumers who defy strict categorisation. And <a href="https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2020/08/how-will-ocado-deal-pan-out-ms-waitrose-online-grocery-partnership/">after a deal</a> to supply the online grocer Ocado, M&S gains the huge benefit of access to that company’s <a href="https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/i-play-long-term-ocados-tim-steiner-m-s-vertical-farming-making-brexit-work/leadership-lessons/article/1596252">informative data base</a> which will be instrumental in their understanding of customer behaviour. </p>
<p>This behaviour, known in the industry as consumers’ “<a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/activities-interests-and-opinions.asp">activities, interests and opinions</a>” (or AIOs) is extremely important, with or without a pandemic. As <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/marketing-fashion-footwear-9781472579317/">my own research has shown</a>, to be successful, retailers need to constantly think about brand identity, consumer behaviour and the impact of globalisation and regional trends.</p>
<h2>Following trends</h2>
<p>This can be seen in the changes announced by John Lewis and M&S, which echo a broader trend in the US, where retail giants like <a href="https://www.nordstrom.com/browse/services/nordstrom-local">Nordstrom</a> and <a href="https://www.retaildive.com/news/macys-opens-second-market-by-macys-strip-center-location/593397/">Macy’s</a> have been experimenting with the way they sell. Significant changes include the establishment of small scale and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/05/take-a-peek-inside-nordstroms-first-tiny-store-without-inventory.html">“inventory-less” stores</a> – shops which do not carry full ranges or stock and operate more like showrooms, where purchases are followed by home delivery or collection. </p>
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<p>These stores also offer services such as styling, alterations, tailoring and regionally specific product lines. They can also offer exclusivity and expertise, as was the case with the award-winning <a href="https://www.sneakerboy.com/stores.php">Sneakerboy</a>, which opened in 2013 in Melbourne, Australia, selling rare and limited edition products without stocking inventory. </p>
<p>The fashion for inventory-less stores and localised flexible retail solutions was influenced by the success of the 2011 opening in New York of Story, a store which regularly changed its product theme.</p>
<p>Founder Rachel Shechtman (who went on to become “brand experience officer” at Macy’s, and shape its <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2021/01/18/macys-opens-second-market-by-macys-in-texas/?sh=610af1804858">small-format strategy</a>) <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/business/a-store-with-media-in-mind.html">explained</a>: “Story has the point of view of a magazine, everything changes every four to eight weeks like a gallery, and it sells things like a store.” She added: “A magazine tells stories between pictures and written words, and we do it through merchandising and events.”</p>
<p>A shift to this small-format shopping is also being driven by the popularity of “direct-to-consumer” brands, which sell online, via their own stores and pop-up stores. </p>
<p>Department stores are also now competing with <a href="https://www.bloomsburyfashioncentral.com/products/fashion-business-cases/article/allbirds">direct-to-consumer brands</a> who sell online and via their own flagship stores without employing a more traditional wholesale approach. They are free to operate in a far more agile manner, using social media as a rapid feedback loop with customers.</p>
<p>This kind of agility is now being forced on languishing UK department stores, where development strategies planned for years are now having to be achieved in months. Dramatic shifts in consumer behaviour due to lockdowns expedited these changes <a href="https://www.retail-week.com/customer/analysis-seven-consumer-trends-for-2021-that-retailers-need-to-know/7036431.article?authent=1">at a dizzying pace</a>. </p>
<p>But these changes do not necessarily mean the future is gloomy for traditional well known retailers. It does mean though, that they need to be open to a variety of solutions.</p>
<p>Online shopping is not the only option. Small formats which focus on products and services for their customers’ varied lifestyles allow greater flexibility to market test solutions that work, at regional and local level. To survive post-pandemic, businesses must consider which elements of “retail theatre” they wish to provide to remain relevant.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157071/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tamsin McLaren does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Small-scale stores and flexibility could be key to future shopping habits.Tamsin McLaren, Lecturer in Marketing, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1496882020-11-20T21:17:30Z2020-11-20T21:17:30ZHow Joe Biden did so well in Georgia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370422/original/file-20201119-21-nw40rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5991%2C3988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In Atlanta, people gather to dance and celebrate the election of Joe Biden as the next president.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Election2020Georgia/a99526d8f6cf49fea18a05c09b04e969/photo">AP Photo/Brynn Anderson</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For nearly 30 years, the state of Georgia has voted reliably Republican in presidential elections. Not since 1992 has the state backed a Democrat for president. Now, the hand recount of 2020 election ballots has <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/13/politics/joe-biden-wins-georgia/index.html">confirmed Joe Biden won the state</a>.</p>
<p>The initial returns from Georgia on election night leaned Republican, but in the days that followed, the balance of the count shifted steadily, as ballots from in and around Atlanta were counted. These votes were largely from communities of color, mostly African American – and they represent much of the state’s rich history of civil rights advocacy. </p>
<p>Atlanta, often called the “<a href="https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/november-2006/the-origins-of-the-civil-rights-movement-in-atlanta-1880-1910">cradle of the civil rights movement</a>,” was the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr. and made up much of the <a href="https://www.ajc.com/politics/politics-blog/heart-of-john-lewis-district-deals-blow-to-trump/BCMMSU4ZJFD73AL6MPJCCRPQQM/">congressional district</a> represented by the late <a href="https://theconversation.com/john-lewis-traded-the-typical-college-experience-for-activism-arrests-and-jail-cells-143219">John Lewis</a>. </p>
<p>I am a <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/bjackson.cfm">political scientist and race scholar</a>, with specific emphasis on examining social justice movement strategy and the impact of collective action. To me, the story behind how those Biden-Harris voters were mobilized – with others across the state – is the latest chapter in the state’s history of community organizing for peaceful democratic political change. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370424/original/file-20201119-23-1mngzxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Martin Luther King Jr. speaks to a gathering" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370424/original/file-20201119-23-1mngzxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370424/original/file-20201119-23-1mngzxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370424/original/file-20201119-23-1mngzxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370424/original/file-20201119-23-1mngzxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370424/original/file-20201119-23-1mngzxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370424/original/file-20201119-23-1mngzxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370424/original/file-20201119-23-1mngzxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Martin Luther King Jr. speaks to a church gathering in Albany, Ga., about desegregation efforts and civil rights, in July 1962.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/DrMartinLutherKing1962/66b12ed1a08a454ca8c980f295d96922/photo">AP Photo</a></span>
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<h2>A long history</h2>
<p>Social justice movements and civil rights activism have always been important in Georgia. Even during Reconstruction, in the wake of the Civil War, the organizers worked to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40583803">teach Georgians about voting rights</a> and the rules for qualifying to vote in a state that had long denied them that right.</p>
<p>Efforts continued through the years, including <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/gallery/2020/nov/01/georgia-voter-suppression-in-pictures">rule changes that added more than 100,000 Black voters</a> to the state’s rolls between 1940 and 1947. In the 1950s and 1960s, <a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/voter-registration-expands-southwest-georgia/">voting rights campaigns across the South</a> sought to remove the vestiges of a Jim Crow system that suppressed Black voters with literacy tests, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/grandfather-clause">grandfather clauses</a> and physical intimidation.</p>
<p>One major effort was the 1961-1962 <a href="https://www.crmvet.org/info/sking.htm">Albany Movement</a>, based in the Georgia town of that name. The effort was led initially by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, with later help from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, two of the nation’s leading civil rights organizations at the time. At the outset, Albany’s population was 40% Black, but many of them were not registered to vote.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/albany-movement-formed/">Albany Movement</a> was the first attempt to completely desegregate a community, including through teaching nonviolence for people to engage in civil disobedience. The tactics and strategies pioneered there were successful in Albany and, as King and his movement shifted to Birmingham, Alabama, formed the basis for their work as well.</p>
<p>Between 1960 and 1964, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/gallery/2020/nov/01/georgia-voter-suppression-in-pictures">half a million Black voters</a> were registered in Georgia, as part of a larger Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee voter registration drive across the South.</p>
<p>Those decades of activism built strong networks for grassroots organizing and taught many people how to effectively fight segregation and racism with boycotts, sit-ins and other nonviolent methods of direct action resistance. After King’s assassination in 1968, the movement slowed significantly, showing how important it was to decentralize future civil rights efforts, rather than focusing them on one specific person or place.</p>
<p>Decades later, the Movement for Black Lives arose in response to police brutality against Black Americans, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-are-many-leaders-of-todays-protest-movement-just-like-the-civil-rights-movement-140906">built on the lessons learned</a> through the 1960s. </p>
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<span class="caption">Georgia politician and activist Stacey Abrams speaks to a crowd in advance of the 2020 election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/GeorgiaStaceyAbrams/b35b1a19542e4e72a262c67e319b7db8/photo">AP Photo/Brynn Anderson</a></span>
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<h2>A new movement</h2>
<p>The latest push for Black voters in Georgia came in 2018, after former State Representative <a href="https://www.ajc.com/politics/politics-blog/stacey-abrams-georgia-turning-blue/CN4QYWABYZDLDOBKVY5TMQMT5I/">Stacey Abrams</a>, a Black Democratic woman, narrowly lost the race for governor to Brian Kemp, a white Republican man.</p>
<p>Her loss was largely attributed to the efforts of Kemp, who had been the state’s top elections official, to <a href="https://theconversation.com/georgias-election-disaster-shows-how-bad-voting-in-2020-can-be-141678">suppress Black votes</a>. Those efforts included throwing more than half a million voters off the rolls – most of them Black – and tightening other voting rules.</p>
<p>In the wake of that election, Abrams committed herself to fight voter suppression in Georgia. She created an organization called Fair Fight to get the purged voters back on the rolls and to register others who were eligible to vote as well.</p>
<p>She began these efforts when Black Georgians’ attention had turned strongly to politics after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/george-floyd-and-ahmaud-arbery-deaths-racism-causes-life-threatening-conditions-for-black-men-every-day-120541">killing of Ahmaud Arbery</a>. The 2020 death of civil rights icon and longtime Congressman <a href="https://theconversation.com/john-lewis-traded-the-typical-college-experience-for-activism-arrests-and-jail-cells-143219">John Lewis</a> brought more attention to racial inequality. Many people realized they had been disenfranchised and were suffering from “<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-intolerance-fatigue-and-how-is-it-fueling-black-lives-matter-protests-143786">intolerance fatigue</a>,” the feeling of being “sick and tired of being sick and tired.”</p>
<p>Abrams and Fair Fight benefited from the state’s <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/georgia-boosts-eligible-voters-in-groups-leaning-democratic-1538991000">2016 implementation</a> of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, sometimes called the “motor voter” law, which gives people the opportunity to register to vote at the same time that they apply for or renew a driver’s license. </p>
<p>Altogether, that collective effort <a href="https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/diversity-inclusion/525387-how-stacey-abrams-helped-get-out-the-black-vote">registered 800,000 new voters</a> in Georgia since Abrams’ 2018 loss. Some of those were likely among the many that Secretary of State Kemp had forced off the rolls, but many were also people who had never before been registered to vote in Georgia.</p>
<p>In addition to getting people’s names on the voting rolls, these groups pushed the importance of actually voting and taught people how to vote safely, including by mail or in-person before Election Day. Their efforts resulted in a <a href="https://www.news4jax.com/news/georgia/2020/10/31/georgia-voters-crush-all-time-turnout-record-before-election-day/">63% increase over the 2016 statistics</a> for mail-in and early in-person voting ballots cast. </p>
<p>Overall, Georgia’s 2020 turnout was <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-elections/georgia-results">roughly 800,000 more</a> than in the <a href="https://www.news4jax.com/news/georgia/2020/10/31/georgia-voters-crush-all-time-turnout-record-before-election-day/">2016 presidential election</a>.</p>
<p>An additional factor in the Georgia election result may have been President Donald Trump’s own <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/11/18/gop-secretary-of-state-trump-would-have-won-georgia-but-he-suppressed-republican-mail-in-votes/">statements discouraging his supporters from voting</a>, but the real key was the grassroots organization, the modern echo of the Albany Movement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and other efforts, that brought new voters into the fold.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149688/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bev-Freda Jackson has in the past volunteered occasionally for the National Council of Negro Women and the NAACP.</span></em></p>A set of efforts that registered 800,000 new voters since 2018 may have been the key to Georgia turning blue in a presidential election for the first time since 1992.Bev-Freda Jackson, Adjunct Professorial Lecturer, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1409092020-08-12T11:59:33Z2020-08-12T11:59:33ZJohn Lewis and the masks Black preachers wear on the public stage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352053/original/file-20200810-18-d2q94p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C13%2C4520%2C2990&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rep. John Lewis attends church services at Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rep-john-lewis-attends-church-services-at-brown-chapel-ame-news-photo/534816898?adppopup=true">Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>U.S. Congressman <a href="https://www.pbs.org/show/john-lewis-get-in-the-way/">John Robert Lewis</a> was a Black preacher, inescapably so.</p>
<p>Like his spiritual mentor, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/john-lewis-martin-luther-king-jr/552581/">the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.</a>, the long-standing congressman was an ordained Black Baptist minister. It meant that he not only knew how to parse legislative briefs but also ancient biblical texts and extrapolate wisdom from them to address social issues of great urgency.</p>
<p>For Christians like Lewis, preaching, though not an end in itself, is a means by which God reminds a society of God’s concern for community wellness, life, human dignity and freedom in a less-than-perfect world. </p>
<p>Preaching, in their understanding, tells the truth about suffering in the contexts of fear and death. Ultimately it declares that evil and despair have an appointed end. Because of this, as John Lewis said in his posthumously penned op-ed: “Each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up, and speak out.”</p>
<p>This is why Black preaching and Black preachers matter. </p>
<p>But understanding Lewis as a preacher requires far more unpacking than one might imagine. As an ordained Baptist minister and a scholar who studies <a href="https://open.bu.edu/ds2/stream/?#/documents/374050/page/1">the art of preaching sermons and the evolution of the Black preacher in the U.S.</a>, I understand firsthand why suspicion has long accompanied African American preachers into America’s pulpits and often extended into the halls of Congress and even newsrooms.</p>
<h2>Clerical personas</h2>
<p>Preachers wear performative masks. Who ministers understand themselves to be has major implications for how they prepare and perform sermons. If they see their role as social justice advocate, they will speak and act in ways that condemn oppressive systems. But if they see themselves more as offering pastoral care, they will focus on therapeutic matters requiring counseling and other means of congregational support. </p>
<p>A preacher’s persona or “prosopon” – meaning “face” in Greek – is not simply a mask behind which she or he performs a role in a socioreligious drama but is part of their being. The role and speaker are one. </p>
<p>Preachers fall broadly under different personas. Alongside the preacher as “social activist,” there is the “clerico-politician” skilled in the art and science of government politics. Then there is the “evangelical-moralist,” who typically has an encyclopedic knowledge of scripture and is skilled in teaching Christian doctrine.</p>
<p>Finally, there is the “entrepreneurial agent” who focuses on building financial and social capital for themselves and their congregations.</p>
<p>Yet, many outside the Black Church community remain badly informed about the complex roles performed by Black preachers in our society. </p>
<p>Take for example <a href="https://tonyevans.org/">Tony Evans</a>, who is both a pastor and broadcaster. As an evangelical-moralist, he places strong emphasis on the believer’s need for a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through spiritual conversion, behavior modification, evangelism and soul regeneration. Proselytizing is paramount.</p>
<p>Megachurch preacher <a href="https://standardnews.com/meet-richest-pastors-world/18/">Bishop T.D. Jakes</a>, as an entrepreneurial agent, is a highly pragmatic church growth strategist largely interested in enterprising pursuits and works. </p>
<p>Those wearing activist-oriented masks such as Reverends <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/sundaynights/the-interview-black-lives-matter/7737968">Traci Blackmon</a>, <a href="https://cathedral.org/sermons/sermon-the-rev-dr-william-j-barber-ii-2/">William J. Barber II</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/l6985UG0Z3k">Otis Moss III</a> and <a href="https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/controversy-erupts-after-back-the-blue-cruise-makes-uninvited-stop-at-friendship-west-baptist-church/287-90dbfa00-efaf-4319-b160-292006e22dc3">Frederick D. Haynes III</a> disrupt convention, unmask deceit and level criticism against established power. </p>
<p>MSNBC host <a href="https://www.biography.com/activist/al-sharpton">Rev. Al Sharpton</a> straddles the clerico-politician and social activist identities when stirring public discontent to shame the cruel in signal moments.</p>
<p>Following George Floyd’s killing at the hands of a white police officer, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/04/869721514/hundreds-expected-at-memorial-for-george-floyd-after-days-of-nationwide-protests">Sharpton preached</a> two eulogies – one in Minneapolis and the other in Houston, Floyd’s city of birth. Both of Sharpton’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giIS5f_yF9k">sermons</a> elicited exuberant “Amens” of celebration from face-masked mourners. More significantly, his messages <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-52930373/rev-al-sharpton-delivers-eulogy-at-floyd-memorial">had a global effect</a>, bringing together a broad a cross-section of culturally diverse listeners. </p>
<h2>Preachings’ heritage</h2>
<p>No matter what persona they chose to adopt, Black clerics have long been encouraged to mute their voices in front of white audiences or adopt preaching methods not native to their cultural habitats. </p>
<p>There have been some very vocal black scholars in the majority-white Presbyterian Church USA who have raised their voice against racism and sexism. These include its first ordained African American woman preacher <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/obituaries/katie-cannon-68-dies-lifted-black-womens-perspective-in-theology.html">Katie Geneva Cannon</a> and <a href="https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/reverend-gayraud-wilmore">Gayraud Wilmore</a>, author of “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Black-Religion-Radicalism-Interpretation-Religious/dp/157075182X">Black Religion and Black Radicalism</a>,” both of whom died recently.</p>
<p>Yet these are not theological scholars the majority of white Christian preachers consult when preparing sermons.</p>
<p>America’s white preachers regularly tie their style and practice to rhetorical methods devised by New England’s Puritan and Congregationalist ministers and Great Awakening revivalists, such as <a href="https://www.thecolorofcompromise.com/">Jonathan Edwards, who owned enslaved Africans</a>, and British revivalist <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/godinamerica/people/george-whitefield.html">George Whitefield</a>.</p>
<p>Moreover, since its first publication in 1870, “<a href="https://www.heritagebooks.org/products/on-the-preparation-and-delivery-of-sermons-broadus.html">A Treatise on the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons</a>,” written by Baptist pastor and former president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/06/10/southern-baptist-gavel-greear/">John A. Broadus, a slaveholder and supporter of the Confederacy</a>, remained the most influential preaching textbook in the field of homiletics for more than a century. </p>
<h2>Preaching among the Disinherited</h2>
<p>Without these pioneering white clerics’ preaching influence on American culture there would be no <a href="https://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/Billy-Graham-1918-2018-The-most-influential-evangelist-of-our-time">Rev. Billy Graham</a>. Graham was dubbed “America’s Pastor” and the most celebrated preaching evangelist of our time. </p>
<p>Many Black preachers have modeled their preaching methods after these clerics without questioning their ideological origins and philosophical heritage. </p>
<p>In contrast, Black preachers like John Lewis, son of Alabama sharecroppers, embraced a preaching style focused on Jesus as a disinherited figure and grounded in a philosophy of nonviolence.</p>
<p>Preachers with sermons of this sort prize words that speak to distressing problems affecting society’s most vulnerable populations over rhetorical methods placing logic and Western philosophy at the center. </p>
<p>Sermons preached in rural or urban settings that helped African Americans make sense of their plight were far more uplifting than sermons rooted in the <a href="https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Celtic_Christianity">Celtic</a>,<a href="https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-viking-age/religion-magic-death-and-rituals/christianity-comes-to-denmark/"> Nordic</a>, and <a href="https://www.patheos.com/library/christianity/origins/influences">Roman</a> cultures of Europe.</p>
<h2>Politics and the pulpit</h2>
<p>The political and religious stakes are always higher for Black preachers than their racial counterparts because Black communities expect their preachers will do more than preach Sunday sermons. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Georgia U.S. Senate candidate and pastor of Dr King’s <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/john-lewis-funeral/h_c6caabaddfbb33922f7af54f03b6df35">Ebenezer Baptist Church, Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock</a>, who officiated at Lewis’ funeral, believes as did Lewis that communities are best served when preachers work within the system. By doing so they can exercise their influence through crafting legislation, political antagonism and forming alliances deemed advantageous for the communities they serve.</p>
<p>A certain moral gravitas accompanies such work. </p>
<p>This is why the recent deaths of John Lewis and fellow preachers <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb2UJ6r1A3E">Joseph Lowery</a>, and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/07/17/892223763/c-t-vivian-civil-rights-leader-and-champion-of-nonviolent-action-dies-at-95">C.T. Vivian</a> are cause for communal mourning. These religious voices are irreplaceable in the culture.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kenyatta R. Gilbert does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A professor of homiletics explores the different personas Black preachers wear in the public sphere and how this has often been misunderstood.Kenyatta R. Gilbert, Professor of Homiletics, Howard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1432192020-07-24T12:26:52Z2020-07-24T12:26:52ZJohn Lewis traded the typical college experience for activism, arrests and jail cells<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348950/original/file-20200722-36-ebuv5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Lewis, right, marched with Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to fight for equality. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/martin-luther-king-leading-a-march-from-selma-to-montgomery-news-photo/525580854">Steve Schapiro / Contributor/GettyImages</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As an 18-year-old student attending a training session for activists at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, John Lewis stuttered and struggled to read. A visiting professor mocked his stammered speech and “poor reading skills” and dismissed Lewis’ potential as a “suitable leader” for the burgeoning movement.</p>
<p>Famed activist and organizer <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/septima-clark/">Septima Clark</a> rose to his defense and her support of Lewis paid off.</p>
<p>The unassuming teenager from the backwoods of Troy, Alabama, became a giant of the Black freedom struggle and, ultimately, would go on to serve more than three decades in Congress. He died on July 17.</p>
<h2>Enthralled by ‘Social Gospel’</h2>
<p>Lewis enrolled in American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, mainly because it charged no tuition, but also due to the profound moral calling that he felt in his life. It was in Nashville where Lewis grew fascinated with the potential of the <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/social-gospel">Social Gospel</a> – a theoretical movement that applied Christian principles to addressing social problems such as poverty and white supremacy.</p>
<p>He soon came under the tutelage of <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/james-lawson/">James Lawson</a>, a graduate student at Vanderbilt who was fully immersed in the doctrines of non-violence. Lawson trained other notable activists such as Diane Nash, James Bevel and Bernard Lafayette – all friends and contemporaries of Lewis.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348955/original/file-20200722-34-ex9ib3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348955/original/file-20200722-34-ex9ib3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348955/original/file-20200722-34-ex9ib3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348955/original/file-20200722-34-ex9ib3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348955/original/file-20200722-34-ex9ib3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348955/original/file-20200722-34-ex9ib3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348955/original/file-20200722-34-ex9ib3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">John Lewis participated in student activism in Montgomery, Ala.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/civil-rights-leaders-including-future-congressman-john-news-photo/51756565">Francis Miller / Contributor/GettyImages</a></span>
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<p>The student activism that emerged from southern Black colleges beginning in February of 1960 was the catalyst that the modern civil rights movement desperately needed to confront segregation. The thrust of direct-action protests, such as sit-ins and Freedom Rides, provided the dramatic confrontation that the earlier bus boycotts did not. </p>
<p>However, it was Lawson’s young pacifist disciples from Nashville that heavily influenced the ideology of the early student movement. It also aided in the creation of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, better known as SNCC.</p>
<p>In dedicating his life to the movement as a young student, Lewis willingly gave up the comforts, experiences and accoutrements of a typical college student. Instead of gaining traditional work experience, Lewis got an insider’s look at numerous southern jails and prisons. His activism led to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/us/john-lewis-dead.html">40 arrests between 1960 and 1966</a>.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348951/original/file-20200722-34-yx8q4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348951/original/file-20200722-34-yx8q4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348951/original/file-20200722-34-yx8q4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348951/original/file-20200722-34-yx8q4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348951/original/file-20200722-34-yx8q4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348951/original/file-20200722-34-yx8q4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348951/original/file-20200722-34-yx8q4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">John Lewis (left) and James Zwerg (right) stand in bloodshed after being beaten by pro-segregationist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/two-blood-splattered-freedom-riders-john-lewis-and-james-news-photo/514694748">Bettmann / Contributor/GettyImages</a></span>
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<p>Late-night bull sessions with his fellow SNCC activists who debated the proper path towards freedom became his laboratory. Sit-ins and Freedom Rides served as his examinations. They often resulted in beatings and bloodshed.</p>
<h2>SNCC leadership</h2>
<p>By 1963 Lewis had assumed the chairmanship of SNCC, a position he would hold for the next three years. The formidable organization would undergo its most drastic changes during this period as they wrangled with more <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674447271">moderate and traditional organizations</a>, concerns about <a href="https://www.crmvet.org/docs/6604_sncc_atlanta_race.pdf">white liberalism</a> and the <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814743317/bloody-lowndes/">intractable nature of white supremacy</a>.</p>
<p>Lewis and other SNCC organizers were forced to swallow a bitter pill during the 1963 <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/march-washington-jobs-and-freedom">March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom</a>. Although Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech became a focal point, it was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/07/18/john-lewis-was-last-living-speaker-march-washington-civil-rights-leaders-asked-him-tone-it-down/">Lewis’ speech</a> that drew the most controversy.</p>
<p>Archbishop Patrick O'Boyle, along with march organizer Bayard Rustin, forced Lewis to change his original draft that placed a heavy critique on the slow response of the Kennedy administration in protecting the civil and human rights of activists in the Deep South. The edit prompted Malcolm X to <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Parting-the-Waters/Taylor-Branch/9780671687427">derisively refer to the event as “The Farce on Washington.”</a> It was not the last ideological scrum SNCC would have with liberals and moderates.</p>
<p>During the Democratic National Convention in 1964, the <a href="https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/alliances-relationships/mfdp/">Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party</a>, or MFDP, arrived in Atlantic City, New Jersey, expecting to be the duly recognized delegation from the Magnolia State in place of the all-white delegation of the party that had used violence and intimidation in an attempt to keep Blacks from the polls.</p>
<p>Famed activist <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/fannie-lou-hamer/">Fannie Lou Hamer</a> declared that “if the MFDP is not seated now, I question America.” The party was not seated. A <a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/mfdp-challenge-at-democratic-national-convention/">backroom compromise</a> – orchestrated between traditional Black moderates such as NAACP head Roy Wilkins, SCLC organizer Bayard Rustin and Dr. King – left many younger activists bitter and broken. “This was the turning point of the civil rights movement,” <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Walking-with-the-Wind/John-Lewis/9781476797717">Lewis declared</a>. “We had played by the rules, done everything we were supposed to do, had played the game exactly as requested, had arrived at the doorstep, and found the door slammed in our face.”</p>
<p>A year after the disappointment of Atlantic City, the learning curve would continue for Lewis.</p>
<p>As bitter as he and other SNCC activists were about the fallout from the 1964 Democratic Convention, Lewis was still a committed ideologue who held fast to his belief in non-violence as a way of life. That position grew increasingly unpopular with younger activists who championed their constitutional right to armed self-defense in the face of tyranny.</p>
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<p>Many SNCC activists grew wearisome of the practical politics, moderation and compromise that some (including Lewis) argued produced setbacks within the movement. This frustration was on full display during Lewis’ most famous moment - the Selma to Montgomery March of 1965. SNCC’s executive committee had voted against the organization’s involvement because they saw such protest marches as largely ineffective. Lewis participated anyway. The result was “<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-images-of-john-lewis-being-beaten-during-bloody-sunday-went-viral-143080">Bloody Sunday</a>,” a horrific display of white terrorism that served as a springboard for the passage of the Voting Rights Act later that year. The world watched in horror as television cameras captured the moment that Lewis and hundreds of other peaceful protesters were teargassed, beaten and trampled by state troopers. </p>
<p>Like many committed activists, the social and political education of John Lewis had numerous twists and turns - from a wide-eyed and eager disciple of nonviolence (a commitment that never wavered) to a seasoned activist and organizer whose heroics and courage made him an icon of the movement. That journey came with bumps and bruises – both literally and figuratively – and he would later employ some of those lessons as a United States congressman representing the 5th Congressional District of Georgia for 33 years. In this role, Lewis would champion legislation that upheld the ideals that made him an icon of the movement. He sponsored or co-sponsored thousands of bills targeting poverty, gun violence, civil rights, health care and reform of America’s justice system, just to name a few. He became an award-winning author, and he was lionized as “<a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2020/07/21/remembering-john-lewis-the-conscience-of-congress-a-life-in-photos/">the conscience of Congress</a>.”</p>
<p>While Lewis learned the fine art of negotiating during his years as a movement leader, he never compromised in his insistence for justice and equality for all. In a <a href="https://twitter.com/repjohnlewis/status/1011991303599607808">tweet</a> from 2018, Lewis implored young idealists and activists to “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.” Lewis remained a noise maker and a “drum major for peace” until his final days, and his courage and sacrifice should be an inspiration for us all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143219/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jelani M. Favors does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Though he had a speech impediment and came from humble beginnings, John Lewis went on to become a giant of the civil rights movement.Jelani M. Favors, Associate Professor of History, Clayton State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1430802020-07-23T12:19:37Z2020-07-23T12:19:37ZHow the images of John Lewis being beaten during ‘Bloody Sunday’ went viral<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348956/original/file-20200722-36-sql8fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C5%2C3868%2C2579&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Lewis, in the foreground, is beaten by a state trooper during a civil rights voting march in Selma, Ala., on March 7, 1965.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-AL-USA-APHS012559-Selma-Civil-Right-/ed93e73935e942bf9583cbe7512c1689/1/0">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On March 7, 1965, Alabama state troopers beat and gassed John Lewis and hundreds of marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. </p>
<p>TV reporters and photographers were there, cameras ready, and the violence captured during “Bloody Sunday” would go on to define the legacy of Lewis, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/us/john-lewis-dead.html">who died on July 17</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_y0Sp9kAAAAJ&hl=en">I’m a media historian</a> who has written <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Equal_Time/wME0DVUFIrsC?hl=en&gbpv=0">about television and the civil rights movement</a>. One of the remarkable features of the era’s media environment, dominated by the relatively new medium of television news, is how quickly certain events could roil the conscience of the nation. </p>
<p>Confrontations between police and protesters happened frequently during the 1960s. But a particular set of circumstances ensured that the images coming out of Selma galvanized politicians and citizens with remarkable speed and intensity. </p>
<h2>A prime-time event</h2>
<p>Most Americans didn’t see the footage on the 6:30 nightly news. Instead, they saw it later Sunday night, which, like today, drew the biggest audiences of the week. That evening, ABC was premiering the first TV airing of “<a href="https://www.pastposters.com/cw3/assets/product_expanded/JamieF-BON/judgment-at-nuremberg-cinema-quad-movie-poster-(1).jpg">Judgment at Nuremberg</a>.” An estimated 48 million people tuned in to watch the Academy Award-winning film, which dealt with the moral culpability of those who had participated in the Holocaust. </p>
<p>News programs never got those kinds of ratings. But shortly after the movie started, ABC’s news division decided to interrupt the movie with a special report from Selma. </p>
<p>Viewers may have been peripherally aware of the marches that had been going on in the small city 50 miles from Alabama’s capital, Montgomery. Martin Luther King Jr. had kicked off a voting rights campaign there in January, and the media had been regularly reporting on the standoffs between Blacks who wanted to register to vote and Selma’s racist, volatile sheriff, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/us/07clark.html">Jim Clark</a>. </p>
<p>Two years earlier, footage and photographs of Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor loosing police dogs and high-powered fire hoses on nonviolent marchers so alarmed the Kennedy administration that the president felt compelled <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58O2De-iPOk">to finally put forth</a> a robust civil rights bill to dismantle Jim Crow segregation in the South. </p>
<p>But until Bloody Sunday, nothing had emerged out of Selma that gripped the nation’s attention. Even the Birmingham images didn’t have quite the immediate impact of those from Selma. </p>
<p>That’s largely because the special report interrupted a prime-time broadcast. But there was also the fact that the footage from Selma thematically complemented “Judgment at Nuremberg.” </p>
<p>In the days after the news film aired, <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/83agb8cf9780252036682.html">a dozen legislators spoke on the floor of Congress</a> linking Alabama Gov. George Wallace to Hitler and its state troopers to Nazi storm troopers. Ordinary citizens made the same connections.</p>
<p>“I have just witnessed on television the new sequel to Adolf Hitler’s brown shirts,” one anguished young Alabamian from Auburn wrote to The Birmingham News. “They were George Wallace’s blue shirts. The scene in Alabama looked like scenes on old newsreels of Germany in the 1930s.” </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tVymzWrBTww?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The footage of protesters in Selma being beaten shocked the country.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In the ensuing days, hundreds of Americans jumped into planes, buses and automobiles to get to Selma and stand with the brutalized marchers. The landmark Voting Rights Act <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/bending-toward-justice">passed with remarkable speed</a>, just five months after Bloody Sunday.</p>
<h2>The spotlight finally shines on Lewis</h2>
<p>John Lewis, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was at the head of the line of 600 protesters. Their plan was to march 50 miles, from Selma to Montgomery, to protest <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/jimmie-lee-jackson?gclid=CjwKCAjwx9_4BRAHEiwApAt0zvTzfw36EjSA3vkh0YFfBQ5zc0HtQhvpQrHpLLDdXZWe5mZqT_5brBoCtUgQAvD_BwE">the recent police killing of activist Jimmie Lee Jackson</a> and to press Gov. Wallace for Black voting rights. Next to him, representing King’s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/williams-hosea">Hosea Williams</a>. King was back in Atlanta that day. </p>
<p>Lewis, in particular, is quite visible in the news footage, with the camera zooming in on his tan coat and backpack as the troopers advance and then plow over him and the marchers behind him. </p>
<p>However, when CBS ran its story about the march Monday morning, Lewis wasn’t mentioned at all. In fact, CBS’ Charles Kuralt framed the story as a clash between “two determined men” who weren’t there: Wallace and King. “Their determination,” Kuralt continued, “turned the streets of Alabama into a battleground as Wallace’s state troopers broke up a march ordered by King.”</p>
<p>Other national news outlets also tended to focus on King, who was often the only Black voice given a platform to speak on civil rights matters. The marchers, including Lewis, were little more than stand-ins for the important political players. </p>
<p>In recent decades, that’s changed. John Lewis has come to occupy a privileged place in the media once reserved for King.</p>
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<span class="caption">Rep. John Lewis speaks at the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the 55th anniversary of Selma’s ‘Bloody Sunday.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rep-john-lewis-speaks-to-the-crowd-at-the-edmund-pettus-news-photo/1209749585?adppopup=true">Joe Raedle/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>But even the recent focus on Lewis – while much deserved – has the tendency to neglect the foot soldiers and activists who made the Selma campaign a success. Lewis’ organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807859599/many-minds-one-heart/">valued and cultivated grassroots movements and the empowering of ordinary people</a> rather than organizing campaigns around a charismatic leader, which was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference model.</p>
<p>The Black Lives Matter movement, which also eschews the “great leader” approach, is very much in the spirit of John Lewis and his civil rights group.</p>
<p>The current waves of protests against police brutality and systemic racism have garnered massive media coverage and widespread public support, similar to what happened in the wake of Bloody Sunday. <a href="https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/lewis-speech-at-the-march-on-washington-speech-text/">As Lewis once said</a>, “I appeal to all of you to get into this great revolution that is sweeping this nation. Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes.” </p>
<p>He uttered those words in 1963 during the March on Washington. But they apply just as much to protesters today.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1284615049756028928"}"></div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143080/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aniko Bodroghkozy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Thanks to some serendipity and fortuitous timing, the images emerging out of Selma had a uniquely powerful effect on the nation.Aniko Bodroghkozy, Professor of Media Studies, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1429672020-07-18T19:03:29Z2020-07-18T19:03:29ZJohn Lewis and C.T. Vivian belonged to a long tradition of religious leaders in the civil rights struggle<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348217/original/file-20200718-37-dja6yu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6131%2C4010&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Lewis linked arms with religious leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, while marching from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-arm-in-arm-with-reverend-ralph-news-photo/1165336634?adppopup=true">William Lovelace/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With the deaths of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/us/john-lewis-dead.html">Rep. John Lewis</a> and the Rev. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/17/us/ct-vivian-death/index.html">Cordy Tindell “C.T.” Vivian</a>, the U.S. has lost two civil rights greats who drew upon their faith as they pushed for equality for Black Americans.</p>
<p>Vivian, an early adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., died July 17 at the age of 95. News of his passing was followed just hours later by that of Lewis, 80, an ordained Baptist minister and towering figure in the civil rights struggle.</p>
<p>That both men were people of the cloth is no coincidence.</p>
<p>From the earliest times in U.S. history, religious leaders have led the struggle for liberation and racial justice for Black Americans. As an <a href="https://udayton.edu/directory/diversity-inclusion/lawrence-burnley.php">ordained minister and a historian</a>, I see a common thread running from Black resistance in the earliest periods of slavery in the antebellum South, through the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s – in which Lewis and Vivian played important roles – and up to today’s Black Lives Matter movement.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://patrissecullors.com/about/">Patrisse Cullors</a>, a founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, <a href="https://crcc.usc.edu/the-role-of-the-spirit-in-blacklivesmatter-movement/">says</a>: “The fight to save your life is a spiritual fight.”</p>
<h2>Spiritual calling</h2>
<p>Vivian <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/2019/10/10/american-baptist-college-continues-civil-rights-leader/3927202002/">studied theology alongside Lewis</a> at the American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348215/original/file-20200718-33-158nirx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348215/original/file-20200718-33-158nirx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348215/original/file-20200718-33-158nirx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348215/original/file-20200718-33-158nirx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348215/original/file-20200718-33-158nirx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348215/original/file-20200718-33-158nirx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348215/original/file-20200718-33-158nirx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Obama awarded Rev. C.T. Vivian the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Obit-Rev-C-T-Vivian/935d5a1573d342058e6783f614a54b0e/11/0">AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For both men, activism was an extension of their faith. Speaking to PBS in 2004, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2004/01/16/january-16-2004-john-lewis-extended-interview/2897/">Lewis explained</a>: “In my estimation, the civil rights movement was a religious phenomenon. When we’d go out to sit in or go out to march, I felt, and I really believe, there was a force in front of us and a force behind us, ’cause sometimes you didn’t know what to do. You didn’t know what to say, you didn’t know how you were going to make it through the day or through the night. But somehow and some way, you believed – you had faith – that it all was going to be all right.”</p>
<p>Fellow civil rights activists knew Vivian as the “resident theologian” in King’s inner circle due to “how profound he is in both his political and biblical exegesis,” <a href="https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/civil-rights-icon-rev-ct-vivian-dead-95/BHE6G2VW7RGGZHFNHMI3P6HXLE/">fellow campaigner Rev. Jesse Jackson recalled</a>.</p>
<h2>Rejecting ‘other world’ theology</h2>
<p>Faith traditions inform the civil rights and social justice work of many Black religious leaders. They interpret religious teachings through the prism of the injustice in the here and now.</p>
<p>Speaking of King’s influence, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/07/18/us/ap-us-john-lewis-faith.html?searchResultPosition=7">Lewis explained</a>: “He was not concerned about the streets of heaven and the pearly gates and the streets paved with milk and honey. He was more concerned about the streets of Montgomery and the way that Black people and poor people were being treated in Montgomery.”</p>
<p>This focus on real-world struggles as part of the role of spiritual leaders was present in the earliest Black civil rights and anti-slavery leaders. Nat Turner, a leader in the revolt against slavery, for example, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/understanding-gospel-nat-turner-180960714/">saw rebellion as the work of God</a>, and drew upon biblical texts to inspire his actions. Likewise fellow anti-slavery campaigners <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/activists/sojourner-truth.html">Sojourner Truth</a> and <a href="http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n85030107/">Jarena Lee</a> rejected the “otherworld” theology taught to enslaved Africans by their white captors, which sought to deflect attention away from their condition in “this world” with promises of a better afterlife.</p>
<p>Incorporating religion into the Black anti-slavery movement sowed the seeds for faith being central to the struggle for racial justice. As the church historian <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/08/us/james-washington-49-expert-on-black-religious-history.html#:%7E:text=Washington%20was%20professor%20of%20church,in%20religious%20studies%20from%20Yale.">James Washington</a> <a href="https://www.mupress.org/Frustrated-Fellowship-The-Black-Baptist-Quest-for-Social-Power-P183.aspx">observed</a> in 1986, the “very disorientation of their slavery and the persistent impact of systemic racism and other forms of oppression provided the opportunity – indeed the necessity – of a new religious synthesis.”</p>
<h2>‘Ubuntuism’</h2>
<p>The synthesis continued into the 20th century. Religious civil rights leaders like Lewis and Vivian clearly felt compelled to make the struggle for justice a central part of a spiritual leader’s role. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348213/original/file-20200718-21-j6mkd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348213/original/file-20200718-21-j6mkd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348213/original/file-20200718-21-j6mkd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348213/original/file-20200718-21-j6mkd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348213/original/file-20200718-21-j6mkd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348213/original/file-20200718-21-j6mkd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348213/original/file-20200718-21-j6mkd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">C.T. Vivian leading prayer on the courthouse steps in Selma, Alabama, in 1965.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Civil-Rights-Slaying/0973e0d7810e4deda1f49ebaa80f1568/43/0">AP Photo/Horace Cort</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1965, Vivian was punched in the mouth by <a href="https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/civil-rights-icon-rev-ct-vivian-dead-95/BHE6G2VW7RGGZHFNHMI3P6HXLE/">Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark</a> in an incident caught on camera and carried on national news. Vivian later said: “Everything I am as a minister, as an African American, as a civil rights activist and a struggler for justice for everyone came together in that moment.”</p>
<p>Though their activism was grounded in Christianity, Lewis and Vivian both forged strategic and powerful coalitions with those outside of their faith. In some ways, they transcended theologically informed ideologies with a world view more akin to Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s interpretation of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-archbishop-tutus-ubuntu-credo-teaches-the-world-about-justice-and-harmony-84730">Ubuntu</a>” – that one’s own humanity is <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-archbishop-tutus-ubuntu-credo-teaches-the-world-about-justice-and-harmony-84730">inextricably bound up with that of others</a>. </p>
<p>Lewis and Vivian personified this value in their leadership styles.</p>
<h2>George Floyd</h2>
<p>Racial justice remains integral to Black Christian leadership in the 21st century.</p>
<p>After the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, it was the Rev. Al Sharpton whose words were <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-05/george-floyd-memorial-al-sharpton-speaks-us-continues-protests/12324616">carried across the globe</a>, calling on white America to “get your knee off our necks” at Floyd’s memorial service.</p>
<p>In recent years, the Rev. William J. Barber II has been such a vocal and powerful presence in protests that some Americans consider him to be a <a href="https://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/article243294961.html">the successor to past civil rights greats</a>.</p>
<p>In an <a href="https://time.com/5784068/william-barber-ii-faith-injustice/">interview in early 2020</a>, Barber said: “There is not some separation between Jesus and justice; to be Christian is to be concerned with what’s going on in the world.”</p>
<p>John Lewis and Rev. C.T. Vivian lived those words.</p>
<p><em>Some of this information appeared in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/black-religious-leaders-are-up-front-and-central-in-us-protests-as-they-have-been-for-the-last-200-years-140136">previous article</a> published on June 17</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lawrence Burnley works for and owns shares in an organisation. He is affiliated with an organization. I work for the University of Dayton and a principal for Inclusive Engagements, LLC. </span></em></p>From the earliest days of the civil rights struggle, Black religious leaders have infused the fight for justice with spirituality. Rep. Lewis and Rev. Vivian are no exception.Lawrence Burnley, Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1401362020-06-17T12:13:39Z2020-06-17T12:13:39ZBlack religious leaders are up front and central in US protests – as they have been for the last 200 years<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348222/original/file-20200718-17-2nrozu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C16%2C5439%2C3620&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II speaks outside of the St. John's Episcopal Church Lafayette Square on June 14, 2020</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rev-dr-william-j-barber-ii-alongside-with-faith-leaders-news-photo/1220016808?adppopup=true">Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the Rev. Al Sharpton implored white America to “get your knee off our necks” at the memorial of George Floyd, his words were carried by <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-05/george-floyd-memorial-al-sharpton-speaks-us-continues-protests/12324616">news outlets across the globe</a>. Meanwhile in the U.S., the Rev. William J. Barber II has been an ever-present voice in the protests, prompting some to place him as <a href="https://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/article243294961.html">the successor to past civil rights greats</a>.</p>
<p>That people of the cloth are at the forefront of the current protests over police brutality should not be a surprise.</p>
<p>From the earliest times of the United States’ history, religious leaders have led the struggle for liberation and racial justice for Black Americans. As an <a href="https://udayton.edu/directory/diversity-inclusion/lawrence-burnley.php">ordained minister and a historian</a>, I see it as a common thread running through the history of the United States, from Black resistance in the earliest periods of slavery in the antebellum South, through the civil rights movement of the 1960s and up to the Black Lives Matter movement today. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://patrissecullors.com/about/">Patrisse Cullors</a>, one of the founders of Black Lives Matters, <a href="https://crcc.usc.edu/the-role-of-the-spirit-in-blacklivesmatter-movement/">says</a>: “The fight to save your life is a spiritual fight.”</p>
<h2>Spiritual calling</h2>
<p>For many Black religious leaders in the United States, civil rights and social justice are central to their spiritual calling. Informed by their respective faith traditions, it places religion within the Black American experience while also being informed by African culture and the traumatic experience of the Transatlantic trade of African people. </p>
<p>We see this in Malcolm X’s 1964 exhortation that Black Americans should <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1964/12/13/archives/malcolm-x-exhorts-negroes-to-look-to-african-culture.html">form bonds with African nations</a> and “migrate to Africa culturally, philosophically and spiritually.” Malcolm X’s desire to internationalize the struggle in the U.S. after his 1964 pilgrimage to Mecca also speaks to the role he saw Islam having in the civil rights movement. </p>
<p>“America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem,” he wrote in a letter <a href="https://www.sewanhakaschools.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=26282&dataid=18294&FileName=Malcolm%20X%20Letter%20From%20Mecca.pdf">during his visit to Saudi Arabia</a>. The struggle of Black Americans informed Malcolm X’s reading of the Quran.</p>
<p>Similarly, the interaction between religious text and real-world struggle informed earlier Black civil rights and anti-slavery leaders. Slave revolt leader Nat Turner, for example, saw rebellion as the work of God, and drew upon biblical texts to inspire his actions. </p>
<p>As the historian and Turner biographer <a href="https://history.providence.edu/faculty-members/patrick-h-breen/">Patrick Breen</a> noted in an <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/understanding-gospel-nat-turner-180960714/">article for Smithsonian Magazine</a>, “Turner readily placed his revolt in a biblical context, comparing himself at some times to the Old Testament prophets, at another point to Jesus Christ.” In his “Confessions,” dictated to a white lawyer after his 1831 arrest, Turner quoted the Gospel of Luke and alluded to numerous other passages from the Bible.</p>
<p>Turner had visions he interpreted as signs from God encouraging him to revolt. </p>
<h2>Visions</h2>
<p>Such prophetic visions were not uncommon to early anti-slavery leaders – <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/activists/sojourner-truth.html">Sojourner Truth</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=PaZqDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA209&lpg=PA209&dq=Go+preach+the+Gospel!+Preach+the+Gospel;+I+will+put+words+in+your+mouth&source=bl&ots=xceaNFfnGx&sig=ACfU3U2qjpxy0y-d9_7DVetdeJRGJPrNSQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjt66Pt7oPqAhWktTEKHVKoDGEQ6AEwCnoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=Go%20preach%20the%20Gospel!%20Preach%20the%20Gospel%3B%20I%20will%20put%20words%20in%20your%20mouth&f=false">Jarena Lee</a> were both spurred to action after God revealed himself to them. Lee’s anti-slavery preaching is also an early example of the important role that black religious female leaders would have in the civil rights struggle. </p>
<p>In arguing for her right to spread God’s message, Lee asked: “If the man may preach, because the Saviour died for him, why not the woman? Seeing he died for her also. Is he not a whole Saviour, instead of a half one?”</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342167/original/file-20200616-23255-1ut63ax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342167/original/file-20200616-23255-1ut63ax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342167/original/file-20200616-23255-1ut63ax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342167/original/file-20200616-23255-1ut63ax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342167/original/file-20200616-23255-1ut63ax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342167/original/file-20200616-23255-1ut63ax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1198&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342167/original/file-20200616-23255-1ut63ax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1198&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342167/original/file-20200616-23255-1ut63ax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1198&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Sojourner Truth was driven to anti-slavery activism by spiritual visions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sojourner-truth-1797-1883-abolitionist-and-womens-rights-news-photo/1164926972?adppopup=true">GHI Vintage/Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>These early anti-slavery activists rejected the “otherworld” theology taught to enslaved Africans by their white captors, which sought to deflect attention away from their condition in “this world” with promises of a better afterlife.</p>
<p>Instead, they affirmed God’s intention for freedom and liberation in both this world and the next, identifying strongly with biblical stories of freedom, such as the exodus of the Hebrew community from Egyptian enslavement and Jesus’ proclamation to “set the oppressed free.”</p>
<p>Incorporating religion into the Black anti-slavery movement sowed the seeds for faith being central to the struggle for racial justice to come. As the church historian <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/08/us/james-washington-49-expert-on-black-religious-history.html#:%7E:text=Washington%20was%20professor%20of%20church,in%20religious%20studies%20from%20Yale.">James Washington</a> <a href="https://www.mupress.org/Frustrated-Fellowship-The-Black-Baptist-Quest-for-Social-Power-P183.aspx">observed</a>, the “very disorientation of their slavery and the persistent impact of systemic racism and other forms of oppression provided the opportunity – indeed the necessity – of a new religious synthesis.”</p>
<h2>At heart, a preacher</h2>
<p>The synthesis continued into the 20th century, with religious civil rights leaders who clearly felt compelled to make the struggle for justice central part of the role of a spiritual leader. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342241/original/file-20200616-23243-z6z979.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342241/original/file-20200616-23243-z6z979.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342241/original/file-20200616-23243-z6z979.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342241/original/file-20200616-23243-z6z979.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342241/original/file-20200616-23243-z6z979.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1203&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342241/original/file-20200616-23243-z6z979.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1203&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342241/original/file-20200616-23243-z6z979.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1203&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preaching in Chicago.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-civil-rights-leader-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-news-photo/93115317?adppopup=true">Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“In the quiet recesses of my heart, I am fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist preacher,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in a 1965 <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xFt5f9MsuMoC&pg=PP14&dq=martin+luther+king+sermon&client=firefox-a#PPA3,M1">article for Ebony Magazine</a>. </p>
<p>Racial justice remains integral to Black Christian leadership in the 21st century. In an <a href="https://time.com/5784068/william-barber-ii-faith-injustice/">interview earlier this year</a>, Rev. Barber said: “There is not some separation between Jesus and justice; to be Christian is to be concerned with what’s going on in the world.”</p>
<p>Recognizing the rich legacy of Black religious leadership in the struggle of racial justice in the United States in no way diminishes the role of historic and contemporary secular leadership. From W.E.B. DuBois to <a href="https://religionnews.com/2012/02/22/blacks-say-atheists-were-unseen-civil-rights-heroes/">A. Philip Randolph</a>, who helped organize 1963’s March on Washington, and up to the current day the civil rights movement has also benefited from those who would classify themselves as freethinkers or atheists.</p>
<p>But given the history of religion in the Black protest movement, it should be no surprise that the killing of George Floyd has unleashed an <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-usa-religion/after-george-floyds-death-a-groundswell-of-religious-activism-idUSKBN23G1FS">outpouring of activism from Black religious leaders</a> – backed by supporters from different faith traditions. </p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140136/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lawrence Burnley works for the University of Dayton. He is affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, and the Association of African American Life and History. </span></em></p>From the earliest days of the anti-slavery movement, Black religious leaders have infused the fight for civil rights with spirituality.Lawrence Burnley, Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1312822020-06-04T12:27:55Z2020-06-04T12:27:55ZWhere are the African American leaders?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339598/original/file-20200603-130929-1ln3pry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C8%2C5439%2C3628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A protester raises a fist in New York's Washington Square Park during a June 2, 2020 demonstration.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protester-holds-up-a-raised-fist-with-a-shirt-that-has-news-photo/1242649150">Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As protests rock the country in the wake of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-cellphone-videos-of-black-peoples-deaths-should-be-considered-sacred-like-lynching-photographs-139252">killing of George Floyd</a> by a Minneapolis police officer, there is a notable absence in the national public discourse: African American community leaders.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339599/original/file-20200603-130955-z8zra5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339599/original/file-20200603-130955-z8zra5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339599/original/file-20200603-130955-z8zra5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339599/original/file-20200603-130955-z8zra5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339599/original/file-20200603-130955-z8zra5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339599/original/file-20200603-130955-z8zra5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339599/original/file-20200603-130955-z8zra5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339599/original/file-20200603-130955-z8zra5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fannie Lou Hamer, a delegate to the 1964 Democratic National Convention, delivered a powerful speech to the attendees.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-civil-rights-activist-fannie-lou-hamer-from-the-news-photo/642536406">Warren K Leffler/PhotoQuest/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/african-americans-economic-setbacks-from-the-great-recession-are-ongoing-and-could-be-repeated-109612">My scholarship</a> in the discipline of black politics can explain why there aren’t any national African American leaders at this moment, filling roles like Martin Luther King Jr., <a href="https://www.biography.com/activist/fannie-lou-hamer">Fannie Lou Hamer</a> and others once did.</p>
<p>In past eras, leaders of the African American community were instrumental in creating huge social and legal changes, including the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-act">Civil Rights Act of 1964</a>, the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/voting-rights-act">Voting Rights Act of 1965</a>, and the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/fair-housing-act-1">Fair Housing Act of 1968</a>. Sweeping changes were possible because black leaders were willing to call out problems before they became crises, and risk their lives and livelihoods to elevate the social, educational and economic standing of African Americans.</p>
<h2>The risk of direct challenge</h2>
<p>When Malcolm X gave his “<a href="http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/malcolm_x_ballot.html">The Ballot or the Bullet</a>” speech in Cleveland in 1964, he challenged the social order of America, in which African Americans were not treated equally. He specifically stated, “Any time you know you’re within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights, in accord with justice, then die for what you believe in. But don’t die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by equality.”</p>
<p>In <a href="http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/sayitplain/flhamer.html">testimony</a> at the Democratic National Convention in 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer explained the risk to her life that she took by attempting to register to vote.</p>
<p>Martin Luther King Jr. took a similar risk when he challenged what he saw as Lyndon Johnson’s imperialism and tyranny both in America and abroad in his “<a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/beyond-vietnam">Beyond Vietnam</a>” speech at the Riverside Church in New York City in 1967, declaring, “The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.”</p>
<p>So did Assata Shakur when she directly challenged the criminal justice system in her “<a href="http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/tmp.html">To My People</a>” address from a New Jersey jail in 1973, saying, “They call us kidnappers, [but] we did not kidnap the thousands of Brothers and Sisters held captive in amerika’s concentration camps. Ninety percent of the prison population in this country are black and Third World people who can afford neither bail nor lawyers.”</p>
<p>These leaders were not speaking the way politicians often do, with platitudes and cliches. They were not afraid of making white people upset – and knew that doing so was risking their own lives.</p>
<p>And they were not speaking as members of a political party, but rather organizations that had clear and undiluted messages. For instance, King’s objection to Johnson’s actions in Vietnam came after Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act into law – crucial successes for the movement King helped lead. Despite being allies on those issues, King was independent enough to criticize other Johnson policies when he saw fit.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339601/original/file-20200603-130923-1axf1cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339601/original/file-20200603-130923-1axf1cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339601/original/file-20200603-130923-1axf1cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339601/original/file-20200603-130923-1axf1cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339601/original/file-20200603-130923-1axf1cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339601/original/file-20200603-130923-1axf1cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339601/original/file-20200603-130923-1axf1cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339601/original/file-20200603-130923-1axf1cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Malcolm X spoke passionately, and without reserve, about his views on race and equality in the U.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-nation-of-islam-leader-and-civil-rights-activist-el-news-photo/73995480">Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>More reserved comments</h2>
<p>In more recent years, black leaders such as Rep. <a href="https://www.biography.com/political-figure/john-lewis">John Lewis</a> and Sen. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kamala-Harris">Kamala Harris</a> have been politicians tied to the Democratic Party, not activists speaking outside the country’s two-party political system. </p>
<p>Each time tragedy strikes, with the deaths of unarmed black people such as George Floyd, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/breonna-taylor-kentucky-emt-allegedly-killed-police-executing/story?id=70657850">Breonna Taylor</a>, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/11/us/ahmaud-arbery-mcmichael-what-we-know/index.html">Ahmaud Arbery</a> and countless others, I hear this black political class repeat the same empty rhetoric. Their statements usually are in the form of a social media post or letter to a publication pleading for black people to not riot, urging them to vote blue and advocating a methodical process through the political system.</p>
<p>For instance, former President Barack Obama told people protesting Floyd’s death to “<a href="https://medium.com/@BarackObama/how-to-make-this-moment-the-turning-point-for-real-change-9fa209806067">mobilize to raise awareness</a>, and we have to organize and cast our ballots to make sure that we elect candidates who will act on reform.”</p>
<p>At a forum about racial injustice, Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat, said, “It is time that the leaders in this United States Senate, in this United States, Congress, take action to reform a criminal justice system that for far too long has been <a href="https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/cory-booker-kamala-harris-speech-transcript-on-george-floyd-racial-injustice">informed by systemic racism and by racial bias</a>.” But she didn’t mention the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/35/related-bills">anti-lynching bill</a> languishing in the Senate that could potentially make a difference.</p>
<p>Similarly, New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker has <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/05/31/sotu-booker-police.cnn">mentioned that he will be drafting legislation to track police conduct</a>. </p>
<p>In everything that these politicians say, they take no risks, as King, Shakur and the others had. They do not step forward to address the deeper, more basic causes of problem of unarmed black people getting killed. These officials avoid being held accountable by setting no moral standard for the public to hold them to.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339602/original/file-20200603-130929-1lvcau1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339602/original/file-20200603-130929-1lvcau1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339602/original/file-20200603-130929-1lvcau1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339602/original/file-20200603-130929-1lvcau1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339602/original/file-20200603-130929-1lvcau1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339602/original/file-20200603-130929-1lvcau1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339602/original/file-20200603-130929-1lvcau1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339602/original/file-20200603-130929-1lvcau1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former President Barack Obama has been less strident than many past black leaders.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-screengrab-former-president-barack-obama-speaks-news-photo/1225292515?adppopup=true">Getty Images/Getty Images for EIF & XQ</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Lack of accountability</h2>
<p>A good leader also holds other officials accountable when those officials are in the wrong. For instance, Rep. Jim Clyburn, an African American Democrat from South Carolina, has <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/29/joe-biden-james-clyburn-south-carolina-icon-comeback/4912936002/">endorsed presidential candidate Joe Biden</a>,</p>
<p>But when Biden controversially declared that blacks should automatically support him, and said “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/05/22/861202511/biden-says-african-american-voters-who-are-not-sure-whom-to-vote-for-aint-black">you ain’t black</a>” to those who question him, Clyburn didn’t join the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/05/25/joe-biden-you-aint-black-racism-trump-column/5254434002/">public outcry</a>.</p>
<p>In fact, few prominent members of the black political class condemned Biden for his attempt to define blackness from his position of privilege as a prominent white man. It was up to less powerful members of the public to note Biden’s support for “<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/20/18677998/joe-biden-1994-crime-bill-law-mass-incarceration">tough-on-crime</a>” laws that <a href="https://www.npr.org/2014/09/12/347736999/20-years-later-major-crime-bill-viewed-as-terrible-mistake">disproportionately affected African Americans</a>.</p>
<p>This absence of leadership leaves constituents unsatisfied. A May 28, 2020, town hall event in Dane County, Wisconsin, gathered local black leaders, including religious leaders and law enforcement officials. One citizen, Jacquelyn Hunt, eloquently objected to the routine way the panelists responded to public concerns: “<a href="https://madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/sickening-and-hurtful-town-hall-on-george-floyd-death-brings-together-black-leaders-police-chiefs/article_f6aace3e-2c36-5161-b86c-fdaaaab90b98.html">Listening to the panel</a>, I’m not sure they have the ability to hear through my ears as a black mother … They can’t hear the words that they say, and that to a black mother, they sound like more of the same.”</p>
<p>There are no easy cures for the problem of unarmed black people getting killed. But without strong black leadership, the solutions will likely continue to prove elusive.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131282/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vincent Adejumo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sweeping changes were possible in the past because black leaders were willing to risk their lives and call out problems before they became crises.Vincent Adejumo, Senior Lecturer of African American Studies, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1279672019-11-28T16:23:07Z2019-11-28T16:23:07ZBlack Friday in Britain: where it all went wrong<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304271/original/file-20191128-178135-16rjvlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The shop drop. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/toppled-turned-over-upside-down-empty-68121076">Natalia van D</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year has been challenging for retailers, to put it mildly. According to the British Retail Consortium, sales <a href="https://home.kpmg/uk/en/home/media/press-releases/2019/10/brc-kpmg-retail-sales-monitor-september-2019.html">were down</a> 1.3% year on year in September, the most recent month available, and the worst since the consortium’s records began in 1995. The summer wasn’t much better, with sales down 0.5% <a href="https://home.kpmg/uk/en/home/media/press-releases/2019/09/brc-kpmg-retail-sales-monitor-august-2019.html">in August</a> and up only 0.3% <a href="https://www.cityam.com/july-2019-worst-on-record-for-retail-sales-growth/">in July</a> – itself a record low. The <a href="https://www.retailresearch.org/">Centre for Retail Research</a> says it is anticipating less than 1% growth in real terms for the year as a whole. </p>
<p>As retailers cross their fingers for an end-of-year turnaround, Black Friday is supposed to provide a lift in retail sales on November 29. The great sales event imported to the UK from the US in 2010 is all about trying to attract business away from competitors and boosting profits by maximising sales. Yet in its tenth year, Black Friday seems to be flagging. How useful is it likely to be in attracting customers this year?</p>
<p>Traditionally the Friday after Thanksgiving <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/black-friday/2019/11/28/black-friday-name-meaning-how-history-sales-event/">in the US</a>, Black Friday began in the UK as a single-day event to encourage customers to get the best deals ahead of the Christmas period. The media <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businessclub/business-club-video/consumer-and-retail-sector-vide/11259894/Asda-Black-Friday-madness-as-frantic-shoppers-fight-over-TVs.html">ran</a> lots of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30241459">stories</a> about <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25154497">queues</a> of customers waiting agitatedly outside stores, desperate to get their hands on the best deals. Store doors would be flung open and chaos would ensue for retail staff and customers – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/blog/2011/nov/25/black-friday-sales-stampede">just like</a> in America.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304274/original/file-20191128-178107-19ff6z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304274/original/file-20191128-178107-19ff6z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304274/original/file-20191128-178107-19ff6z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304274/original/file-20191128-178107-19ff6z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304274/original/file-20191128-178107-19ff6z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304274/original/file-20191128-178107-19ff6z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304274/original/file-20191128-178107-19ff6z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304274/original/file-20191128-178107-19ff6z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Long John silver?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-23-november-2011-blurred-404055406">pxl.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Now, however, Black Friday <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/04/20/what-retailers-can-learn-last-years-black-friday-s">isn’t surrounded</a> by the same air of buying panic. Last year’s event <a href="https://www.imrg.org/blog/black-friday-trends-2019/">produced</a> the lowest sales peak in the UK since it was introduced. This might be because it isn’t just a one-day event anymore. Click on most retailers’ websites, or walk into your local shopping centre, and Black Friday deals have been available in the days leading up to November 29. Leading retailers such as Amazon, John Lewis and Curry’s PC World are all examples. </p>
<p>Extending Black Friday into a week-long event gives customers greater opportunity to browse, compare and consider their purchasing decisions. It reduces the opportunity for a competitive advantage and limits a “buy now, think later” mentality in consumers. It undermines the sense that <em>this</em> is the sale of the year. </p>
<h2>Another day, another sale</h2>
<p>It also feels increasingly like Black Friday is just another sale among a swathe of sales throughout the year. In these troubled times, discounting <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/consumer-business/articles/retail-trends.html">has become</a> a prevalent feature of the retail industry – greatly assisted by the ease of making price comparisons online. <a href="https://home.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/uk/pdf/2018/01/kpmg-annual-retail-survey-2018.pdf">According to</a> the 2018 KPMG Annual Retail Survey, 57% of consumers used the internet to find the best deals before making a purchase. </p>
<p>The net result is an air of retail desperation which may be making consumers increasingly immune to sales offerings – not to mention apathetic and sceptical. As many as 20% of shoppers <a href="https://www.pwc.co.uk/industries/retail-consumer/insights/black-friday-cyber-monday.html">are not</a> convinced that Black Friday deals are genuine, for instance. In addition, 29% of customers <a href="https://www.pwc.co.uk/industries/retail-consumer/insights/black-friday-cyber-monday.html">feel that</a> Black Friday offers are not exciting. They may have a point: when I browsed the Amazon Black Friday toy deals, for instance, there were very few offers for big brands such as Frozen 2 or L.O.L. Surprise. </p>
<p>Worse, 48% of consumers have <a href="https://www.pwc.co.uk/industries/retail-consumer/insights/black-friday-cyber-monday.html">reported that</a> they are not interested or don’t intend to buy on Black Friday. It seems to have become a level of background noise within an orchestra of endless sales, where it is unclear when one sale ends and another one begins. </p>
<p>True, one could argue that a lot of people remain interested in Black Friday sales. Many will use it as a welcome opportunity to treat themselves and get ahead in their Christmas shopping. But if Black Friday is to keep enthusing consumers, it has to be more than just another sale. It has to grab people by the purse strings with discounts that genuinely seem unmissable. Otherwise, what makes Black Friday the sales event of the year? As this latest Black Friday arrives, you can almost feel the collective shrug amongst consumers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Lee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Now in its tenth year in the UK, the great American post-Thanksgiving bonanza is starting to look like a turkey.Rachel Lee, Teaching Fellow in Marketing, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/992372018-07-04T09:08:53Z2018-07-04T09:08:53ZDepartment stores are not doomed – take a look at who’s doing it right<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225986/original/file-20180703-116114-1s2ilfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Famous dome in Galeries Lafayette, Paris. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ingridt/8605451571/in/photolist-atV5yz-atV7Be-e7rbWF-8P29MF-pYX3Mt-9jwcwp-pYXB3F-FcPTBZ-pSQew7-q87ZYL-pSR7vo-qapkPc">A. Wee</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Department stores were once seen as innovative. They stocked wide ranges of goods – Noel Coward <a href="https://www.questia.com/newspaper/1G1-356086097/harrods-closes-pet-shop-that-sold-lions-elephants">once bought</a> an alligator from Harrods. It was Harry Gordon Selfridge who <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/bespoke/story/20150326-a-history-of-the-department-store/index.html">coined the phrase</a> “the customer is always right”. Stores rewarded customer loyalty by providing exclusive credit via store cards. Little by little, all this eroded. </p>
<p>To the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44394948">news that</a> House of Fraser is closing half its stores, we <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44627031">can add</a> a profit warning from John Lewis. Times are tough for retailers, to be sure, with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/mar/14/toys-r-us-to-shut-all-uk-stores-resulting-in-3000-job-losses">Toys R Us</a> and <a href="http://www.channelpro.co.uk/maplin-stores-closure">Maplin</a> going under, and mainstays like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/may/22/marks-spencer-close-stores">Marks & Spencer</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jun/01/mothercare-to-close-50-stores-as-part-of-rescue-package">Mothercare</a> closing stores. The threat to department stores is perhaps especially troubling, since they act as “anchors” for entire high streets and shopping centres. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225984/original/file-20180703-116114-ks9n0t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225984/original/file-20180703-116114-ks9n0t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225984/original/file-20180703-116114-ks9n0t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225984/original/file-20180703-116114-ks9n0t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225984/original/file-20180703-116114-ks9n0t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225984/original/file-20180703-116114-ks9n0t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225984/original/file-20180703-116114-ks9n0t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225984/original/file-20180703-116114-ks9n0t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Harry Gordon Selfridge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ingridt/8605451571/in/photolist-atV5yz-atV7Be-e7rbWF-8P29MF-pYX3Mt-9jwcwp-pYXB3F-FcPTBZ-pSQew7-q87ZYL-pSR7vo-qapkPc">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>Debenhams <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/debenhams-issues-new-profit-alert-as-trading-remains-tough-11409269">recently announced</a> job cuts and store closures, while the last BHS <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37207481">disappeared</a> just two years ago. Worse, the trend looks global: those reporting either sales declines and/or store closures in recent years include <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/myer-profits-slump-as-stocktake-sale-flops-shares-hit-all-time-low-20180209-p4yzsi.html">Myer</a> in Australia; <a href="https://global.handelsblatt.com/companies/too-much-space-too-little-time-745272">Karstadt</a> and <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-hudsons-bay-posts-first-profit-in-eight-quarters-but-misses-2/">Kaufhof</a> in Germany; <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/05/11/macys-sales-profit-plunge-and-so-does-shares-price/101543670/">Macy’s</a> and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-retail-debt/">Sears</a> in the US; and <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/business/retail-and-services/brown-thomas-turnover-and-profit-fall-in-wake-of-store-closures-1.3270377">Brown Thomas</a> in Ireland. (Some, such as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-macy-s-results/macys-lifts-forecast-says-every-week-was-good-in-first-quarter-idUSKCN1IH1KV">Macy’s</a> and <a href="https://global.handelsblatt.com/companies/karstadt-turns-fortunes-around-901691">Karstadt</a>, look like turning around.) </p>
<p>The challenges are numerous. Bank credit cards let customers shop wherever, while cut-price specialists offer deeper selections at cheaper prices. People shop online with much less effort. Yes, physical stores let you handle goods, but a <a href="http://adage.com/article/news/rude-pushy-salespeople-top-list-consumer-gripes/228019/">recent major survey</a> found 64% of customers leaving a store due to poor customer service. </p>
<p>So are we talking terminal decline? I am <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/westburn/tmr/2010/00000010/00000003/art00006">involved</a> in <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781136480058/chapters/10.4324%2F9780203133859-15">research</a> that <a href="http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.517458">strongly</a> suggests otherwise: we may just be seeing a shakeout of weaker offerings. Here are five ways for department stores to ensure an optimistic future:</p>
<h2>1. Offer an experience</h2>
<p>The whole of retail <a href="https://hbr.org/1998/07/welcome-to-the-experience-economy">has shifted</a> from a purely transactional focus towards giving customers experiences. Some department stores do this better than others. Macy’s <a href="https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/19/macys-will-use-vr-to-sell-furniture-in-50-stores-by-summer/">virtual reality showrooms</a> in New Jersey and Florida, for example, invite customers to work with a “concierge” to build a 3D replica of their own living room. They then preview furniture and home decor options in virtual reality. Macy’s is rolling this out to 50 stores this summer. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.cauldermoore.co.uk/whats-next-for-department-stores/">next step</a> is to make experiences transformational – challenging customers’ preconceptions about themselves and the world around them. In-store art installations and exhibitions have the power to do this. The <a href="http://www.selfridges.com/GB/en/features/articles/radical-luxury/the-flipside">Selfridges Flipside</a> exhibition in London was all about challenging the meaning of luxury: the store invited seven brands including Louis Vuitton to create installations that pinpointed what true luxury is now. </p>
<p>Le Bon Marché in Paris has used its space for art exhibitions featuring contemporary artists like <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/paris/articles/ai-weiwei-at-le-bon-marche/">Ai Weiwei</a>, <a href="https://www.designboom.com/art/chiharu-shiota-le-bon-marche-paris-where-are-we-going-white-boats-01-24-2017/">Chiharu Shiota</a> and <a href="https://www.dezeen.com/2018/02/06/leandro-uses-visual-trickery-bon-marche-paris-installation/">Leandro Erlich</a>. Erlich, of Argentina, created an installation that made the escalator look like it was tied in knots, for example. Using global artists has the added advantage of raising a store’s profile in the international press. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225961/original/file-20180703-116123-jkvfxj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225961/original/file-20180703-116123-jkvfxj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225961/original/file-20180703-116123-jkvfxj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225961/original/file-20180703-116123-jkvfxj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225961/original/file-20180703-116123-jkvfxj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225961/original/file-20180703-116123-jkvfxj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225961/original/file-20180703-116123-jkvfxj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225961/original/file-20180703-116123-jkvfxj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Leandro Erlich’s installation in Paris.</span>
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<h2>2. Build a community</h2>
<p>Department stores are more likely to succeed if they build a community around themselves. Major art exhibitions are one option; Liberty London has achieved something similar with a <a href="https://www.libertylondon.com/uk/liberty-life/what%27s-on/">sewing school</a>. Fortnum & Mason of London runs <a href="https://www.fortnumandmason.com/events/christmas-workshops">Christmas workshops</a> for things like the perfect New Year’s dinner party and, for children, Christmas cupcake decorating. </p>
<p>Department stores are also building virtual communities, typically around the brand and specific interests. US department store Nordstrom was among the first luxury brands to create its <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Nordstrom1901/">own Reddit</a> username and community. Galeries Lafayette and Selfridges are good at using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to have dialogues with customers. </p>
<h2>3. Encourage socialising</h2>
<p>The longer someone stays in a store, the more likely they are to make a purchase. One way of increasing “dwell time” is to encourage socialising in store. Retailers often do this to encourage shopping with friends and family: craft tables for children, or pampering services like nail, brow and blow bars. It’s wise to make this fit with the store’s brand – or a particular element. It is no accident that Selfridges’ <a href="http://www.hemsleyandhemsley.com/home/cafe/">Hemsley + Hemsley</a> clean eating restaurant is in the London flagship store’s <a href="http://www.selfridges.com/GB/en/features/articles/content/discover-the-bodystudio">Body Studio</a>. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bAc7TcTE-tk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Encourage customers to socialise and they’re also more likely to get involved in the store’s brand. Marketing expert Michael Solomon’s <a href="https://store.bookbaby.com/book/marketers,-tear-down-these-walls">new book</a> talks about “return on involvement” (a play on <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/returnoninvestment.asp">return on investment</a>) – get them more involved and the cash tills ring louder. </p>
<h2>4. Be unique</h2>
<p>Innovative retailers offer “only at this store” experiences – Bergdorf Goodman of New York’s exclusive distribution deals with emerging designers, for example. Mitsukoshi of Tokyo boasts a famous <a href="https://tokyobling.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/mitsukoshi-roof-top-garden-ginza/">rooftop garden</a>, while the world’s largest department store, <a href="http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/ATR/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?cid=769156">Shinsegae, Busan</a> in South Korea has an ice rink, spa, indoor golf space and cinema. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225963/original/file-20180703-116117-1spbt4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225963/original/file-20180703-116117-1spbt4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225963/original/file-20180703-116117-1spbt4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225963/original/file-20180703-116117-1spbt4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225963/original/file-20180703-116117-1spbt4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225963/original/file-20180703-116117-1spbt4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225963/original/file-20180703-116117-1spbt4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225963/original/file-20180703-116117-1spbt4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Mitsukoshi’s roof garden.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/61709246@N08/14347099090/in/photolist-nRNCHq-nRNDVq-oJowtn-he2M7E-ob5pha-o9d8FL-234A6QB-b3t8Mp-H6Su2E-5gW2LM-qCn6kS-ekjyjw-eudoT6-m4rEyj-btq5iy-okJBhm-a48MnW-omcga2-21daSt-b3t9ct-b3t7Kv-2CctSw-7p1427-cbeNPh-e3ceAL-5gW5ZV-Jda67F-nqyQNk-ohPMFc-5gW4Ze-5dVyrb-9MJVyP-5gW6f8-5h1qDG-5gW3Xe-6B4B5C-ozhE39-g5erjU-eudmJz-9MoGNh-9MJVAr-9PbX8G-oz7mf7-9PbX5q-eugtvU-b3t79x-eufxmj-9MKrPr-fLhHdB-9N1e8a">Zoe</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>The concept store has emerged in recent years: department store variety, but on a smaller scale. Many are seen as destination stores. For instance <a href="https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g1066456-d13273896-Reviews-Tenoha_Style_Store-Shibuya_Tokyo_Tokyo_Prefecture_Kanto.html">Tenoha</a>, with outlets in Tokyo and Milan, features a co-working cafe, a private meetings room and an events and pop-up space. </p>
<p>Successful department stores also tend to have a very individual aesthetic. As well as Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason in London, the likes of <a href="https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/illum-gdk412279">Ilum</a> in Copenhagen, <a href="https://www.saksfifthavenue.com/Entry.jsp">Saks Fifth Avenue</a> in New York, <a href="https://www.bongenie-grieder.ch/en/">Grieder</a> in Zurich and <a href="https://www.tsum.ru">TsUM</a> in Moscow can all testify to this. </p>
<h2>5. Brand, brand, brand</h2>
<p>What is the brand identity of Debenhams? Or House of Fraser? A department store needs to have a brand with a purpose. Strong examples in the UK include Selfridges, which is built around creativity and vision, while Liberty of London is about opulence, decoration and pattern. I’d also still include John Lewis, which is about value and integrity – its new <a href="https://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/about/our-strategy.html">ten-year strategy</a> heavily prioritises innovation and service.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruth Marciniak does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Glance at House of Fraser, John Lewis et al and you might think it’s time to give up the ghost.Ruth Marciniak, Senior Lecturer, Fashion Marketing, Glasgow Caledonian UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/727592017-02-10T12:16:41Z2017-02-10T12:16:41ZWaitrose banks on its middle-class base as supermarkets brace for tough times<p>You would probably expect a middle-aged, middle-class academic to do their shopping at Waitrose, and yes, I do. So there was disquiet in our household at the news that Waitrose is planning to close six stores potentially <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/08/hundreds-of-waitrose-jobs-may-go-as-retailer-plans-six-store-closures">putting 600 jobs at risk</a>. Britain’s favourite upmarket supermarket is apparently reining in expansion, but why? By all accounts Waitrose had a reasonable Christmas with <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2819256/waitrose-to-axe-nearly-700-staff-and-close-at-least-five-stores-in-huge-shake-up/">sales up almost 5%</a>. </p>
<p>So what prompted this change of heart after considerable expansion over the last few years? There seem to be a lot of factors in the mix, including a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/20/waitrose-boss-rob-collins-affable-john-lewis-graduate-trainee">relatively new boss</a> – perhaps wanting to make his mark – and the introduction of the new minimum wage for over-25s. The company has denied that the latter had prompted it to <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/waitrose-cuts-overtime-and-sunday-pay-10248437">stop paying Sunday and overtime rates</a> to new shop workers. The company is also now operating in a deeply competitive environment – by which I mean there is just so much more choice of where to shop that perhaps we have reached saturation point in terms of how many supermarkets we actually need?</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156222/original/image-20170209-28716-ig1uj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156222/original/image-20170209-28716-ig1uj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156222/original/image-20170209-28716-ig1uj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156222/original/image-20170209-28716-ig1uj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156222/original/image-20170209-28716-ig1uj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156222/original/image-20170209-28716-ig1uj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156222/original/image-20170209-28716-ig1uj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156222/original/image-20170209-28716-ig1uj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Harsh climate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/derpunk/3225388191/in/photolist-6VX622-F3aPQ-KYXfi-r7Ufmr-a88bZi-6kc5iS-3L1HVY-iyBXWe-hLPkcs-6apVnY-5V1Xxe-6akMo4-8iBQUt-rDAaSY-e2AXzq-8iF5ZN-5hWPj4-8iBQNM-DTVfp-5hWJQH-7GDqwE-sUxLe-WhY2e-8jzyCZ-adohJ-2woMTQ-nFuJB-e2AWKw-nFuCe-7B215-5Y7BkF-adof9-K9EPx8-nLHWms">Bruno Casonato/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>German challengers</h2>
<p>Indeed Waitrose is not the first major retailer to reconsider store expansion. A couple of years ago <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/business/revealed-20-49-planned-tesco-4943747">Tesco started to rethink</a> its expansion plans and bailed out on some new stores. Sainsbury’s also announced that a large number of planned developments <a href="http://www.kentonline.co.uk/herne-bay/news/supermarket-pulls-plug-on-megastore-92199/">will not go ahead</a>; in both cases after prolonged planning battles. </p>
<p>Back in 2014 the previous <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2837110/Supermarkets-facing-closure-says-Waitrose-chief-Executive-predicts-bigger-stores-shut-doors-changes-way-customers-shop.html">chief executive of Waitrose had predicted</a> that there would be more large store closures. He argued that a rise in smaller stores and a move away from the single weekly shop revealed a change “as fundamental as supermarkets coming into the UK in the 1950s and reinventing what food shopping was all about”. </p>
<p>But this change is more than a cultural shift in how Britons shop. A more important factor is the acceptance of the German budget supermarkets Aldi and Lidl by all kinds of shopper. In the 12 weeks to January 29, 2017, Aldi had 6.2% <a href="http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/aldi-uks-5th-biggest-supermarket-lidls-not-far-behind/future-business/article/1386497">of the UK grocery market</a>. Lidl wasn’t far behind. Aldi is now Britain’s fifth biggest supermarket by market share, having overtaken the Co-op.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156223/original/image-20170209-8649-tt2bo2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156223/original/image-20170209-8649-tt2bo2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156223/original/image-20170209-8649-tt2bo2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156223/original/image-20170209-8649-tt2bo2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156223/original/image-20170209-8649-tt2bo2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156223/original/image-20170209-8649-tt2bo2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156223/original/image-20170209-8649-tt2bo2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156223/original/image-20170209-8649-tt2bo2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Treading on toes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ell-r-brown/5234809392/in/photolist-mVGa84-8YzLsm-8YzH5o-nRtSSS-8YzJPW-nB381b-8YwFsk-8YzKBQ-9m8pUV-4qFAtK-9m8pCn-8YwW4t-e3ixSS-8YzMcf-nTrFML-nB2SWs-nTehf6-CWny8-6Xf6f1-BbTzbd">Elliott Brown/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>So-called portfolio shopping has become much more popular. Shoppers may prefer Tesco or Waitrose, but are not averse to ad hoc visits to the “discounters”. Many food shoppers have also found that doing the whole of the weekly shop is pounds cheaper at Lidl or Aldi – and in many cases their stores are located close to one of the big four. That means if you simply must have an item only available at the major players, then it’s not too inconvenient to pop in to grab it. </p>
<h2>Saturation point?</h2>
<p>The importance of these discount stores cannot be underestimated. Economic pressures on the average consumer have led to a shift from offering wide ranges to value. This is now exacerbated <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-sterling-manufacturing-ins-idUKKCN0ZO0FB?type=GCA-ForeignExchange">by the weak pound</a> and the subsequent <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38908652">threatened food price rises</a>. </p>
<p>While the German retailers’ growth has slowed recently, that is not really surprising given the inroads they have already made. And they have not stepped back from their own expansion plans. Financially, the discounters attack existing supermarkets on their balance sheets through forcing down margins. This inevitably means that competitors such as Waitrose will consider closing less-profitable stores to keep the balance sheet looking good, for shareholders and partners. </p>
<p>So while the experience and atmosphere of shopping in Waitrose may be more enjoyable than that of its discounting competitors, price will always be important for food. We may vary the brands we buy, but our demand is fundamentally inelastic. There is a limit to the market. After all we can only eat so much and, with a greater emphasis <a href="http://sustainablefoodtrust.org/articles/global-food-waste/">on reducing food waste</a>, a declining pound and uncertain economic future, many shoppers look to reduce outgoings where they can. Food is an easy target for such savings.</p>
<p>Waitrose can try to expand to other markets abroad, although history and the current political climate in obvious markets such as the US <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/dec/05/tesco-american-dream-retreat-us-fresh-easy">don’t bode well for that strategy</a>. I am a great believer in the importance of market share through gaining physical and mental availability – advertising your brand and making sure that your brand is constantly <a href="https://byronsharp.wordpress.com/">in front of potential customers</a>. However, you also need to be distinctive and I think it probably is the right time for Waitrose to be building on its already considerable distinctive assets in terms of quality and service while letting others fight out the space and price wars. </p>
<p>Of course, one strategy Waitrose can adopt is to upscale the products its existing customers buy. That means fewer essential Waitrose products and more exotic, indulgent or healthy products to pander to the tastes of its core middle-class clientele. While other supermarkets have moved into non-food items, Waitrose is increasingly including deli and cafe options such as wine and tapas bars, eat-in bakeries and, in its latest initiative, high-quality, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3313628/Yo-Waitrose-High-end-supermarket-open-SUSHI-bars-stores-feed-health-conscious-customers.html#ixzz4YCARJ2LB">freshly-made sushi</a>. </p>
<p>Whether these offerings provide the best financial margins is open to question but they can promote Waitrose increasingly as a “<a href="http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/destination-store">destination shop</a>” – the kind of place where time-pressed, affluent customers go, primarily for the sushi or half-an-hour’s relaxation over coffee, but come out with the baked beans and cereal too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72759/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Isabelle Szmigin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The upmarket store is reining in expansion but doubling down on value-added for its core clients.Isabelle Szmigin, Professor of Marketing, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/705732016-12-22T13:36:38Z2016-12-22T13:36:38ZTV Christmas ads come with the gift of gender stereotyping<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151373/original/image-20161222-17301-rqwhya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=204%2C111%2C3989%2C2547&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/pic-528456847/stock-photo-ordinary-young-parents-with-two-little-siblings-choosing-x-mas-decorations-in-market-focus-on-woman.html?src=vlFmKGzqX9STyzXGrI39jA-1-96">Iakov Filimonov/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the pantomime season unfolds, we are all subjected to the “wondrous” festive tales told by advertisers. <a href="http://www.johnlewis.com/christmas-advert">John Lewis</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtKYdG9r0Pk">Waitrose</a> have given us adverts full of animal characters; different species coexisting in tentative harmony or enduring stormy times. While they seem to subtly address ethnic diversity, to an extent and in between the lines, gender issues arguably are still lurking – out of focus and in the background.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtKYdG9r0Pk">Waitrose ad</a> offers us a caring child who leaves a festive minced pie for an exhausted robin. The child at first seems androgynous, but a dress later betrays her gender. Notably, however, the robin is saved on its precarious journey to the pie by a rugged man working on a fishing boat. </p>
<p>In the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/morrisons">Morrison’s advert</a>, meanwhile, the main character is an all-knowing, slightly geeky boy – while the women do the shopping and serve the dinner (although the father does make an appearance at the supermarket, seemingly to select the wine). It all fits in rather nicely with the <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1021020920715">gender stereotypes</a> of caring, rather passive women and assertive, knowledgeable men.</p>
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<h2>Heroes</h2>
<p>The family in the <a href="http://www.johnlewis.com/christmas-advert">John Lewis ad</a>, while “progressively” black, follows very traditional gender roles, too. The mum looks after the children at home while the dad makes a heroic effort of putting up the trampoline – fighting the frost and accidental injury in the dark.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq5SGSCZe4E">Sainsbury’s ad</a> portrays a touching story of an overworked dad whose only dream is to find time for his family over Christmas. This he achieves through a eureka moment when he decides to solve the problem in a technological way: by cloning himself. Everyone is happy: the wife and children waiting at home and the male (and twerking!) boss. Again, the characters embody gender stereotypes.</p>
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<p>Perhaps the trophy for the least gender conservative ad should go to Mrs Claus in this year’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5QPXhStb5I">Marks & Spencer’s advert</a>. She is a confident, classy, attractive older woman who uses high-tech solutions to respond to a late present request. In true James Bond style, she resorts to hidden electronic maps and holographic monitors (forget touch-screens) and jets off on a snowmobile followed by a helicopter. </p>
<p>She simply enters the destination address through the main door dismissing chimneys altogether. The family in the background seems rather egalitarian, too – a rare example of a father figure looking after children as naturally as the mother does. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/MediaMattersARU/">Some are quick to point out</a> that Mrs Claus has to keep her missions secret to protect Mr Claus’ ego. Still, the story is very heartwarming and full of love.</p>
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<h2>So what?</h2>
<p>But why should we care about how men and women are portrayed in advertising? Well, research shows that exposure to gender stereotypes in advertising has numerous negative effects and mainly, but not exclusively, on women. For example, it decreases women’s <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00287260">achievement, motives and ambition</a> as well as attitudes to the <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00287738">involvement in politics and self-esteem</a>. </p>
<p>It also reduces performance in <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247747022_Consuming_Images_How_Television_Commercials_That_Elicit_Stereotype_Threat_Can_Restrain_Women_Academically_and_Professionally">maths tests</a>, interest in <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23401480">quantitative domains</a>, such as numeracy skills, and preference for <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Crystal_Hoyt/publication/256486332_Exploring_the_effect_of_media_images_on_women's_leadership_self-perceptions_and_aspirations/links/02e7e5230ba25d047f000000.pdf">leadership roles</a> or <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21381851">non-traditional jobs</a>. As a consequence, women tend to avoid domains which are inconsistent with their gender stereotype and this <a href="https://socialidentitylab.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/social-psychological-and-personality-science-2015-hall.pdf">prevents them from acquiring the experience and skills</a> needed for the best paid jobs, such as those in management, banking and engineering. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151372/original/image-20161222-17296-fabt06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151372/original/image-20161222-17296-fabt06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151372/original/image-20161222-17296-fabt06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151372/original/image-20161222-17296-fabt06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151372/original/image-20161222-17296-fabt06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151372/original/image-20161222-17296-fabt06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151372/original/image-20161222-17296-fabt06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151372/original/image-20161222-17296-fabt06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ads can act as a disincentive for career aspiration.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/pic-423598627/stock-photo-unposed-group-of-creative-business-people-in-an-open-concept-office-brainstorming-their-next-project.html?src=1KW0QDZC5OGzFRKXrDLVoA-1-10">ESB Essentials/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jasp.12366/pdf">Men are discouraged</a> from entering into stereotypically female domains, too. Moreover, they are not immune to the negative effects of such media either. After exposure to attractive, wealthy and high-status male media images, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228626956_What_About_Men_Social_Comparison_and_the_Effects_of_Media_Images_on_Body_and_Self-Esteem">male viewers report lower levels of body esteem</a>. Thus gender stereotypes are perpetuated on both sides. </p>
<p>One explanation of the negative effects of gender stereotypes refers to <a href="http://www.reducingstereotypethreat.org/definition.html">stereotype threat</a>. This describes a fear experienced by stigmatised groups (whether they are women, elderly or ethnic minorities) of confirming the negative stereotype pertaining to their group. This in turn takes away the cognitive resources (or mental powers) needed to perform well. Thus the vicious circle closes.</p>
<h2>Breaking stereotypes</h2>
<p>Should advertisers resort to <a href="http://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-the-pantomime-and-why-its-about-so-much-more-than-blokes-in-dresses-69683">cross-dressing in true British pantomime style</a> to break away from the gender tradition? Not necessarily. Ironically, and despite the <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-016-0617-y">omnipresence of gender stereotypical advertising</a>, non-traditional advertising can be very effective. </p>
<p>We have seen it with the Dove “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/dove-real-beauty-campaign-turns-10_n_4575940.html">Real women</a>” campaign – and others are following suit. Just look at Sanitary towel maker Always’ “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs">Like a Girl</a>” campaign, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eJYW4ew5eg">Girls do Science</a>” by Microsoft, or “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toH4GcPQXpc">The Girl Can</a>” by Sport England. They all focus on breaking female gender roles. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">This girl can.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In fact, sticking to female gender stereotypes in advertising may result in a backlash – such as the response to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/thank-you-bikini-terrorists-for-moving-us-on-from-throwback-diet-ads-now-eachbodysready-40973">“beach body ready”</a> campaign. What of breaking male roles though? My recent research shows that a non-traditional, <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09589236.2016.1234369">warm house husband portrayal</a> can indeed be more effective than the traditional businessman type – for both men and women and in countries as diverse as the UK, Poland and South Africa.</p>
<p>There is a positive message in this festive story. When advertisers do challenge gender issues it can be effective, and of course appropriate, at a time when we should all be spreading a Christmas message of peace and equality far and wide.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70573/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Magdalena Zawisza does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From women in the kitchen to Santa’s huge ego, Christmas ads are still ridden with conservative gender messaging.Magdalena Zawisza, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/677262016-11-10T13:00:08Z2016-11-10T13:00:08ZHow John Lewis owns Christmas<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145425/original/image-20161110-25090-ehf5xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Viral marketing in the making.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Lewis.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Singing angels no longer herald the onset of Christmas – John Lewis’ Christmas advert does. Its release is highly anticipated and is guaranteed, more than any other Christmas advertising campaign, to get the British nation talking, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/johnlewis">tweeting</a> and, of course, buying. </p>
<p>This year’s advert stars #BustertheBoxer dog, who watches wistfully as local wildlife bounce on the trampoline that a father has struggled to assemble in the garden for his daughter. The story it tells appears to depart from John Lewis’ tried and trusted formula of producing sentimental adverts that make us weep. But is this really the case?</p>
<p>Well, no. For this advert shares much in common with previous years’ campaigns: a focus on telling a story that powerfully expresses what John Lewis calls “thoughtful gifting”. The only difference is that the payoff is gentle humour rather than schmaltzy pathos. </p>
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<p>But how have the John Lewis adverts come to symbolise Christmas for the British? The department store’s <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/profileslite#/John_Lewis">core demographics</a> are the suburban middle to upper classes. But it also attracts a huge number of metropolitan, urban “elites” as well. It has quintessentially British corporate values and its long heritage of treating employees, suppliers and customers fairly is part and parcel of its DNA and not a modish response for higher ethical and CSR standards.</p>
<h2>A credible storyteller</h2>
<p>John Lewis has been a partnership – it’s owned by its employees – for nearly 100 years and isn’t beholden to institutional shareholders. A proportion of its profits are shared among its partners. They are motivated to deliver excellent customer service, which is crucial to retail success; after all, it’s their company. </p>
<p>At the heart of its relationship with its customers, is John Lewis’ <a href="http://www.johnlewis.com/inspiration-and-advice/never-knowingly-undersold-policy">“Never Knowingly Undersold”</a> price promise. This is a commitment to have the cheapest market price for branded products. It was introduced in 1925; way before most of its rival retailers were even founded.</p>
<p>At a time when some high street retailers, such as Sports Direct, are in the media spotlight for the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/22/mike-ashley-running-sports-direct-like-victorian-workhouse">wrong reasons</a>, John Lewis, has earned and maintains a special place in the nation’s heart through its corporate narrative of doing retail fairly. Thus, John Lewis’ form of ethical capitalism gives it the credibility to tell powerful stories, particularly evident in its Christmas adverts. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145410/original/image-20161110-25084-3abpaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145410/original/image-20161110-25084-3abpaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145410/original/image-20161110-25084-3abpaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145410/original/image-20161110-25084-3abpaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145410/original/image-20161110-25084-3abpaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145410/original/image-20161110-25084-3abpaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145410/original/image-20161110-25084-3abpaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The hyper-consumerism of Christmas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IR Stone / Shutterstock.com</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>In secular Britain, Christmas now signifies the worst aspects of a consumer society: rampant commercialism and excessive spending, often in the pursuit of meaningless gift-giving and the accumulation of debt. For many, little thought is given to the wise men and the three gifts they brought baby Jesus.</p>
<p>For John Lewis’ core consumers – more likely than most to suffer from the material envy of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/expat-health/4202539/Are-you-suffering-from-affluenza.html">“affluenza”</a> – Christmas can become a source of worry. With adverts that express the power of “thoughtful gifting”, John Lewis soothes and ameliorates this culturally produced yet existentially felt anxiety. It is, in effect, trying to make Christmas special again, returning it to the realm of the sacred and away from the <a href="http://jcr.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/1/1.abstract">profane</a>. This formula is now not only copied by its <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KHoVBK2EVE">retailing rivals</a>, but also by <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-37893719">college students</a> looking to hone their technical and storytelling skills. </p>
<h2>Mythic quality</h2>
<p>It was John Lewis’ 2011 “The Long Wait” campaign, that elevated its Christmas adverts to <a href="http://douglasholt.org">iconic status</a>. The ad featured a young boy impatiently waiting for the arrival of Christmas and features a plaintive soundtrack, a reworking of The Smiths’ song Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want. </p>
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<p>This sets up the advert’s twist; we’re led to believe that he can’t wait for Christmas because of all the presents he’s going to receive. When Christmas Day finally arrives, however, he wakes up, ignores his own presents at the foot of the bed, and proudly marches into his parents’ bedroom to give them their present first. </p>
<p>No doubt, parents across the land were left weeping. The advert tugs at their heartstrings in two ways. First, it’s a beautifully executed advert that emotionally connects with parents and non-parents alike. It combines the idea of the unconditional love between a parent and child with the unselfish, re-enchantment of the act of gift giving – Christmas is for giving not receiving.</p>
<p>But it’s poignant, too. It has a mythic quality; an idealised, highly romanticised representation of family life at Christmas. For many, Christmas can be a painful period with fractured families, selfish children, too much food, too much alcohol, thoughtless gifts and troublesome relatives.</p>
<p>These unedifying realities are masked by John Lewis’ adverts. Instead they promote a Utopian version of Christmas that just happens to be ours, too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67726/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>John Lewis’ Christmas ad is highly anticipated and guaranteed to get Britain spending.Avi Shankar, Professor of Consumer Research, University of BathTim Hill, Lecturer in Marketing, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/674012016-11-02T17:19:08Z2016-11-02T17:19:08ZFrom shopping to politics – why a department store boss has what it takes to be mayor<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143946/original/image-20161031-15821-m2rmqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">King of shops: Andy Street.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">PA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If Britain is indeed a nation of shopkeepers, as Napoleon Bonaparte once claimed, the John Lewis department store is one of its icons. Popular, successful, apparently “never knowingly undersold”, it has a special place in the hearts of many of the country’s consumers. It is also the proud owner of a royal warrant from Her Majesty the Queen, and the well publicised <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/mar/13/houseofcommons">go-to shop for British Members of Parliament</a> and their (sometimes) controversial expense accounts.</p>
<p>And now the shop’s experienced boss, Andy Street, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/oct/01/john-lewis-boss-andy-street-abrupt-departure-challenging-times">has stepped down</a> after 31 years with the firm to swap the well lit shop floor for the slightly murkier world of politics. The 53-year-old is standing as the Conservative Party candidate in the fight to be <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2016/9780111147856/article/3">mayor of the West Midlands</a>. But does a history of winning over customers translate into a future winning votes?</p>
<p>Street’s success as a business leader <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/andy-street-i-was-captivated-by-the-magic-of-the-partnership-6275217.html">is evident</a>. Over the nine years that he has led the retail division of the <a href="https://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk">John Lewis Partnership</a> (JLP), he has launched a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/06/john-lewis-christmas-sales-boosted-by-online-shopping">successful online business</a> which runs in parallel with the actual stores. This was a significant transformation of the business which required him to lead the organisation’s employees – or “partners” as they are known – towards future financial sustainability. </p>
<p>While this period of transformation leaves his successor, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/oct/25/john-lewis-paula-nickolds-chief-executive-first-female">Paula Nickolds</a>, with some challenges around the future role and design of the stores, the transition to running a very successful online offering has been relatively seamless for both customers and employees.</p>
<p>I’ve met Andy Street on three occasions and while I am sure he won’t remember me, I remember him very well. Remembering a leader well means they have made an impact upon you, however short the encounter. And I am pleased to say that the impact Street made on me was entirely positive. He is an extremely able and competent leader and clearly not afraid to challenge – characteristics that are typical of most CEOs. </p>
<p>What is less typical and perhaps less well known is his benevolence and genuine concern for others. His efforts to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/8629049/Why-John-Lewiss-Andy-Street-is-opening-up-his-shops-to-community-groups.html">support local communities</a> in areas where the JLP stores are situated have been entirely within the John Lewis tradition. Quietly executed, hardly known. He also has integrity, having grown up to be an exemplar of the John Lewis values of trust and reliability in retailing, and the management of people. </p>
<p>Ability, competence, benevolence and integrity are all <a href="http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/research/where-trust-gone.aspx">known to be</a> the tests people apply to discern whether either an individual leader or an organisation is trustworthy.</p>
<p>Andy Street has worked for the same organisation since joining as a graduate, working his way up from the shop floor to boardroom. This means his ability and competence, his personal benevolence and his integrity have been the subjects of constant scrutiny throughout his career. The John Lewis retail stores’ entire workforce will have judged him continuously and, as an employee owned partnership, will have had the right and voice to air their opinions. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Plucking heart strings.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed this right to voice their opinions extends to the right to oust him from the leadership role should they record deep dissatisfaction with his performance. They have chosen not to. But why does this leadership experience and employee endorsement make him a suitable candidate for mayor of Birmingham?</p>
<p>My own <a href="http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/research/where-trust-gone.aspx">research on John Lewis</a> (and 24 other companies) in the wake of the financial crisis <a href="https://theconversation.com/trust-will-out-how-the-financial-crisis-boosted-the-best-leaders-32242">focused on its trustworthiness</a> and its distinctive leadership team. I know therefore that Street has been used to being accountable for his actions to a level that most CEOs will never experience. He is accustomed to being challenged by his own workforce, not because he has done anything wrong, but because <a href="https://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/about/our-principles.html">the principles</a> by which John Lewis was founded gives employee the right to challenge their leaders, a legitimacy in its governance structures that other organisations do not possess. </p>
<h2>Leading the way</h2>
<p>He is used to being held to account by employees at all levels. For instance, no senior manager in John Lewis is allowed to refuse to answer a question posed by anyone in the organisation. If they do not know the answer at the time of the question, they are expected to find the answer and report back to the employee. This is a leader who is used to a style of communication as two way dialogue – a conversation rather than a senior manager directive. This seems an ideal training for an individual who seeks to represent a community as mayor.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144021/original/image-20161101-24460-5gxk62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144021/original/image-20161101-24460-5gxk62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144021/original/image-20161101-24460-5gxk62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144021/original/image-20161101-24460-5gxk62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144021/original/image-20161101-24460-5gxk62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144021/original/image-20161101-24460-5gxk62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144021/original/image-20161101-24460-5gxk62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Chamberlain.</span>
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</figure>
<p>The competencies required to get into the senior ranks of John Lewis include having a strategic vision coupled with a disciplined execution. Individuals are also measured on their commitment to create an enduring legacy for the next generation of employees and leaders. In the course of my research, I was told by other senior leaders at JLP: “You’re here on behalf of the the people you lead.” A sense of service is therefore key to your success. </p>
<p>A former mayor of Birmingham, Joseph Chamberlain, said of the key qualities required of a leader: “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities – because it is the quality which guarantees all others.”</p>
<p>Luckily for the West Midlands, Andy Street has ability, benevolence and integrity in bucket loads. But he also has the courage and benevolence to now switch his career to one of public service in his home town. </p>
<p>I for one wish him every good fortune.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67401/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Veronica Hope Hailey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After a long career in retail, the former John Lewis CEO is switching to politics.Veronica Hope Hailey, Dean, School of Management, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/611872016-07-14T09:46:07Z2016-07-14T09:46:07ZWhat does modern slavery look like?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129460/original/image-20160705-801-1ytc1mo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GongTo/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The government, which introduced <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/UKpga/2015/30/contents/enacted/">legislation banning modern slavery</a> last year, thinks there may be up to <a href="https://bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30255084">13,000 people</a> held in modern slavery across the UK. But many believe this is a <a href="http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/country/united-kingdom/">serious underestimate</a>.</p>
<p>You may be surprised to hear slavery still exists, thinking it has long been abolished, but the truth is it never went away. Traditional versions of slavery have morphed into <a href="http://www.antislavery.org/english/slavery_today/what_is_modern_slavery.aspx">forced prostitution</a>, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/may/23/vietnam-children-trafficking-nail-bar-cannabis">cannabis farming</a> and labour exploitation, which are now being seen in both “developing” and so-called “developed” countries.</p>
<p>Forced labour is one of the most common forms of <a href="http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/656-nca-strategic-assessment-the-nature-and-scale-of-human-trafficking-in-2014/file">modern slavery</a>, and is found in many sectors across the UK, including agriculture, food production, construction, fishing and leisure and hospitality. </p>
<p>The issue of forced labour in the UK came to light more than 12 years ago, when 23 trafficked <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-25986388">Chinese cockle pickers drowned in Morecambe Bay</a>, Lancashire. They were trapped by sweeping tides while working illegally, picking cockles for hours on end to send money back to their families. At the time, there was widespread outrage, that this type of modern slavery could be happening here, in the UK. But if anything, more than a decade on from the tragedy, things are getting worse, not better with the <a href="http://www.ec.europa.eu/anti-trafficking">latest government data</a> suggesting that trafficking for labour exploitation is now more serious than trafficking for sexual exploitation. This pattern is repeated across many European countries.</p>
<h2>Want a job?</h2>
<p>In the UK, <a href="http://www.gla.gov.uk/media/1584/jrf-forced-labour-in-the-uk.pdf">forced labour has been able to infiltrate the supply chain</a>, because many companies providing labour don’t have a ready supply of people themselves and prefer to hire labour from agencies, however informal. Many make use of a network of labour agencies they can hire people from. And those companies which provide labour (known as labour suppliers or gangmasters) in turn may have smaller, more informal companies who can provide people to them, often at short notice. </p>
<p>At the end of these labour supply chains, <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/oliver-twist-style-street-crime-gangs-returning-5799877">criminal gangs can easily operate relatively undetected</a>. These gangs prey on people’s desire to improve their situation, deceiving them about the prospects of safe, well paid work in other countries. This, combined with worker’s often inadequate grasp of English or knowledge of their rights, creates an environment where they are vulnerable to exploitation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127907/original/image-20160623-30250-57x7he.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127907/original/image-20160623-30250-57x7he.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127907/original/image-20160623-30250-57x7he.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127907/original/image-20160623-30250-57x7he.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127907/original/image-20160623-30250-57x7he.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127907/original/image-20160623-30250-57x7he.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127907/original/image-20160623-30250-57x7he.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">You won’t see the chains because modern slavery doesn’t work like that.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dmitry Kalinovsky/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Because these gangs can move labour around cheaply and easily, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/19/human-traffickers-using-migration-crisis-to-force-more-people-into-slavery">vulnerable people can be transported across national borders</a>. The gangs then force these people to work for them – withholding ID documents and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/nov/20/forced-labour-uk-escape-fear-polish-migrant">threatening workers with violence</a> – or sexual violence in the case of women whilst also making illegal deductions from wages and placing restrictions on workers’ mobility. </p>
<h2>Widespread concern</h2>
<p>This type of slavery is happening across all areas of the UK and in supply chains. One factory owner in Yorkshire <a href="http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/slave-workforce-kozee-sleep-bed-10885326">was convicted</a> after his bedding company was found to have been using a “slave workforce” of Hungarians paid as little as £10 a day for 16 hours work. Ethical audits from high street retailers purchasing their products, including John Lewis and Next <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-34476806">had failed to spot the problem</a>.</p>
<p>All over Britain, but particularly around the east of England and Scotland, <a href="https://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/default/files/jrf/migrated/files/2016-contemporary-slavery-uk.pdf">forced labourers are used to harvest fruit and vegetables</a>, much of which finds its way onto the shelves of well known high street brands.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127906/original/image-20160623-30278-1hh2du9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127906/original/image-20160623-30278-1hh2du9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127906/original/image-20160623-30278-1hh2du9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127906/original/image-20160623-30278-1hh2du9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127906/original/image-20160623-30278-1hh2du9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127906/original/image-20160623-30278-1hh2du9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127906/original/image-20160623-30278-1hh2du9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Modern Slavery can take many forms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kokliang/shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Recent information shared by one of my sources, a former head of quality assurance at a telecoms company (who wishes to remain anonymous), told me about a raid that took place on one of its UK suppliers. They found 50 men sleeping under benches, urinating into a bucket, with their pay and mobility restricted. He also told me about another company which was found to be employing child labour, right here, in a UK factory. </p>
<p>Another source recently revealed that one prominent budget hotel was being used as a brothel in the UK, for women trafficked from Africa into a nearby international airport. And a trading standards officer visiting a house in north-west England discovered a woman living there who had been held in domestic servitude for almost 15 years. This is now the subject of an ongoing serious case review in the local authority concerned. </p>
<h2>New fears</h2>
<p>While most companies are likely to be reputable, it must be asked how much do they know much about the companies to which they subcontract, or the companies their subcontractor subcontract to? </p>
<p>One new potential area for new investigation is music festivals. These events – which grow bigger and bigger every year both in terms of the size <a href="https://www.thinkmoney.co.uk/news-advice/14-million-uk-adults-plan-on-attending-a-festival-this-year-0-4439-0.htm">and attendance</a> – hire many who do the dirty jobs on site including cleaning toilets and supplying food. At a recent national police meeting on Operation Gothic – one police operation that aims to tackle crime at events in the UK – I was told that police were investigating claims of forced labour at music festivals where those supplying labour did so using labour supply chains which were not carefully scrutinised.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127908/original/image-20160623-30289-x3yhe3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127908/original/image-20160623-30289-x3yhe3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127908/original/image-20160623-30289-x3yhe3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127908/original/image-20160623-30289-x3yhe3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127908/original/image-20160623-30289-x3yhe3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127908/original/image-20160623-30289-x3yhe3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127908/original/image-20160623-30289-x3yhe3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Forced labour is most likely to occur where the informal sector meets the formal economy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Matej Kastelic/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Police across the UK are now becoming aware of the different types of forced labour, with many forces (but sadly not all) setting up <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/468729/IASC_StrategicPlan_2015.pdf">programmes</a> to train officers to spot the signs of trafficking. But this can be difficult, as these types of criminal gangs often close down operations and move into other fields if they discover they are under surveillance.</p>
<p>Putting a stop to forced labour here in the UK requires workers in all professions to know what modern slavery looks like. A start has been made with the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/30/section/54/enacted">Modern Slavery Act</a> which requires larger companies to check their supply chains and confirm to their shareholders they are slavery free. But more still needs to be done, and freeing the UK from slavery should be everyone’s business now.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61187/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gary Craig has received funding in the past from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and from the ESRC for research into the causes and impacts of forced labour. This is independent research not subject to control or influence by the funder.. </span></em></p>You won’t see the chains because modern slavery doesn’t work like that.Gary Craig, Emeritus Professor of Social Justice, University of HullLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/585172016-05-05T10:44:42Z2016-05-05T10:44:42ZHow a John Lewis style co-op could save the Port Talbot steelworks<p>It’s had lots of owners, who haven’t always taken good care of it; it’s home to an exceptionally complex and dangerous industrial process; it’s dirty and smelly; and it can be difficult to sell what it produces. Why would anyone want to buy a steelworks? And in particular, why would the 4,000 people currently working at Port Talbot steelworks want to buy it from Tata? </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business/business-news/man-who-wants-save-port-11285616">recent bid</a> by Excalibur Steel UK – along with the offer of an ownership stake for employees – and previous <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/19/senior-port-talbot-staff-buyout-plan-tata-steel-plant">talk of a management buy-out</a> raised the possibility of a co-operative structure could be put in place at the steelworks. </p>
<p>Employees had already been coming forward to commit to investing some of the money they’d earned there over the years, in a gesture of faith in themselves and UK-based steel-making. And the people of South Wales have form in this area – some of those made redundant from Tower Colliery in 1994 bought it and ran it successfully <a href="http://www.gaianeconomics.org/tower.htm">for another 13 years</a> (in the face of great political scepticism and resistance).</p>
<p>In terms of other organisations the steelworkers can learn from, politicians and business school educators regularly hold up the employee-owned John Lewis Partnership as an <a href="http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/go/johnlewis">exemplar of good business</a>. And not just in the commercial sense, even though its turnover and profits often rise <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/9540329/John-Lewis-and-Waitrose-profits-rise-60pc.html">even during recessions</a>. </p>
<p>It is also good for the people who shop there (it’s repeatedly near the top of <a href="http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-3235361/Consumer-favourite-Direct-loses-crown-Lush-battle-brands.html">customer service polls</a>) and, above all, it is <a href="http://www.cityam.com/213284/and-britains-twenty-most-attractive-employers-are-john-lewis-bmw-british-airways">good for the people who work there</a> (especially when the company does well and bonuses are distributed). Management <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053535708000243">research</a> always concludes that partnerships like John Lewis and co-operatives are the most functional, reliable, and ethical organisational forms we have available to us. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120371/original/image-20160427-30979-1ugmhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120371/original/image-20160427-30979-1ugmhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120371/original/image-20160427-30979-1ugmhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120371/original/image-20160427-30979-1ugmhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120371/original/image-20160427-30979-1ugmhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120371/original/image-20160427-30979-1ugmhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120371/original/image-20160427-30979-1ugmhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Staff-owned and successful.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/declarationend/5730844671/in/photolist-9Jq5sK-BrF7Jh-a74tWT-CeCoGs-kp9KQz-4ctq7J-4gYLwj-4XtHTa-hU8cfM-7hz4B5-bWeAJp-kpatt2-r9cEh-kp9Q1D-nSJN2A-6Ec3vh-fiyYE3-9oxikC-9jRMp4-cdAUr3-omvsPQ-ixdJfQ-6vRiZ5-aSmh24-CeBoqN-hLe2uu-3yNjoq-5McnC5-2PRpRo-4pmxAR-4Gi1rc-hLek7x-cqZY3s-6sQSce-7bXE5o-bzKaxs-dVYBxo-kpbZsj-pZkFoS-fh64w8-7bXUhA-fSo2j-hLdZ7o-r5moEH-7bY11N-5haRzH-wRc4y-nxNz1S-nx3GS3-fBbNYo">Andy K/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So perhaps we should all imagine owning the organisation we work for, even a small part of it (as may happen if Excalibur Steel UK are successful). The financial and human benefits are something Andrew Pendleton, an expert in human resource management at Durham University, has been emphasising <a href="https://www.dur.ac.uk/research/directory/staff/?id=13491">for a number of years</a>. Employee share ownership plans like those Pendleton researches are, however, a mediated form of ownership, with the stock market and share dealers in between you and your workplace. What if we really owned where we worked – the buildings, the machines, the raw materials, the inventory, and (most important of all) the way it’s organised and managed? </p>
<h2>A rare breed</h2>
<p>Some people do already do this in organisations called <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/brewery-workers-pour-hearts-business-given-stake/">democratic co-operatives</a> – but they are a surprisingly rare breed. A small number of recurring examples are held up by researchers: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/07/mondragon-spains-giant-cooperative">Mondragon</a>, an industrial company in the Basque region of Spain, parts of the British Co-operative Group, kibbutzes in Israel, Indian Coffee Houses, and a few small and medium-sized US craft breweries. </p>
<p>Their rarity is perhaps because they are relatively difficult to start and maintain. Some, like Mondragon, offer a similar style of structured work environment to other big companies and are relatively expensive to join. They’re also not encouraged by legal and political structures, which favour more conventional owner-manager or incorporated forms. Plus, buying an established organisation like the steelworks can be expensive and legally complex. </p>
<p>What’s missing for this initiative is structured support – in terms of both financing, expertise, and goodwill. John Spedan Lewis gave the business that his family had founded to its employees at a moment when it was in good financial health and well-established in its market. He also trusted the employees to do a good job. Port Talbot steelworks is not in that position in any respect. For those who have worked so hard to maintain steel-making in South Wales in recent years, restart help is needed, both financially and in terms of practical encouragement to take control. </p>
<h2>The best alternative</h2>
<p>Co-operatives don’t solve all problems. They don’t guarantee that everyone will be really happy in their work. Members still have colleagues they don’t get along with, are still subject to difficult Monday mornings, and are probably still not paid as much as they’d like. Co-operatives also don’t do away with the worst aspects of capitalism either, such as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun">dysfunctional markets</a> or <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2014/jul/24/price-nature-neoliberal-capital-road-ruin">environmental degradation</a>, especially if we all continue to consent to it as the way we organise society and the economy as a whole. </p>
<p>But co-owned organisations do achieve an alternative to many of the dysfunctions of contemporary shareholder-owned companies. They provide greater democracy and employee voice, along with more controlled and equitable distribution of profits. </p>
<p>What is more, the alternatives to the Port Talbot management buyout are not attractive – yet more temporary owners in the vein of Corus and Tata, reluctant (and also very temporary) state ownership, or closure. All that’s needed is will from the employees, goodwill from Tata and the British government, and cash (probably surprisingly little, if we remember BMW selling the enormous Longbridge plant <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/741701.stm">for £10</a>). Then, finally, the people who built and have laboured in the steelworks could have the opportunity to organise and manage themselves. It’s difficult to imagine they would do a worse job than any other owner.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>John Lewis shows how co-ops can be an exemplar of good business – both financially and for their customers and employees.Scott Taylor, Reader in Leadership & Organization Studies, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/503312015-11-06T16:53:44Z2015-11-06T16:53:44ZMan on the moon: John Lewis panders to a lazy view of the elderly<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101100/original/image-20151106-16277-12vgo14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=43%2C1%2C711%2C398&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One in the eye for John Lewis.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/summer1978/17448207595/in/photolist-8rTXWz-8rX3Cq-84aiHf-dqBYPo-dXvRJf-dv15jW-8THSer-8THSdT-fuj3Y-feKyZV-feZQ73-nG46T-8THSeT-cdXcv7-6Dkeb2-8TLWB1-e7cNjm-szQCer-8zLm1f-56Tw3H-rXPanJ-djQ1zk-bNBZj6-9XBC4F-9XEuWf-37HfT8-dSseGW-8TLWBs-8zHe24-8zHdLK-8zLmeC-8zLkAj-n8we8-8MpznL-4VDrpN-4wff1-64f3w7-5S2D1J-6zVbAa-6L1WsD-aRJ5T6-6x9SiK-q8Be2d-cdXcG3-cdXcE9-bWzSa8-cdXcAG-bWzS3B-ffTbxa-feKxM4">RV1864</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every November a television advertisement is rolled out in the UK that provokes smiles and tears from some, but cynical sighing and eye-rolling from others. In the past, the department store chain John Lewis has sent bears, hares and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iccscUFY860">penguins</a> to mark the opening salvo of the festive season.</p>
<p>This year, the commercial seeks to address an important issue in society – the isolation of the elderly during Christmas time. But under the surface of plucking at our heart strings, what message is it really sending about older people and is it as positive as it could be? </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wuz2ILq4UeA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The John Lewis Ad.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A powerful generation</h2>
<p>The ad centres on a young girl who spots an old man living on the moon. It then follows her efforts to send him presents, eventually successfully delivering her gift of a telescope so they can both connect with each other on Christmas Day.</p>
<p>On the one hand, the advert delivers the important message that we need to appreciate the loneliness of our older generation and make plentiful efforts to address this issue. The importance of supporting connections across generations is very valuable and the efforts of children forming firm relationships with older parents and grandparents can improve well-being for the older generation. So in this sense, it is a positive offering.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it adds more weight to the biggest mistake the media (and policymakers) are often guilty of: the assumption of the homogeneity of the older generation. In this, we overlook the idea that the new generation of older people are also a powerful resource for their families, communities and economies when they live in supportive, age-friendly environments. As a healthier group, with increasingly longer lifespans, they have the untapped potential to contribute to not just their own well-being, but also that of their families and the communities they live in.</p>
<h2>Staying active</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.southampton.ac.uk/assets/sharepoint/groupsite/Administration/SitePublisher-document-store/Documents/aai_report.pdf">Research carried out</a> at the University of Southampton for the <a href="http://www1.unece.org/stat/platform/download/attachments/76287849/AAI%20Report%20LOW%20RES.PDF?version=2&modificationDate=1433927681725&api=v2">Active Ageing Index project</a> shows increasing numbers of older people across the EU remain healthy and independent for longer. Many are fulfilled in jobs, with active social lives. They are engaged in civil society. And this is despite the financial crisis and austerity that have marked recent years. </p>
<p>But this can’t continue without further changes in our perception of older people and by enhancing our support for them through younger generations.</p>
<p>Strategies are needed to prevent the loss of valuable expertise, preserve the wisdom of older people and strengthen society’s human and structural resilience. We can take solace from the progress made by the countries who <a href="https://theconversation.com/which-countries-make-the-most-of-their-older-people-and-who-lags-behind-40597">make the most of their older people</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101109/original/image-20151106-16239-10vwlsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101109/original/image-20151106-16239-10vwlsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101109/original/image-20151106-16239-10vwlsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101109/original/image-20151106-16239-10vwlsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101109/original/image-20151106-16239-10vwlsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101109/original/image-20151106-16239-10vwlsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101109/original/image-20151106-16239-10vwlsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101109/original/image-20151106-16239-10vwlsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Never too old to disco.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gregvanbrug/316593070/in/photolist-tYC6d-4RaR7-54nLzp-54nv1M-54rME5-54ovBk-54nV1v-54u6eU-54o26e-54s3iu-54syZo-54oXh8-54pUeT-54oRPk-54tmPA-54tdNJ-54rGSQ-54sYvy-54t48G-5889Hz-54nZbz-54oH32-54rRsu-54oxyz-54otwD-54tjSu-54tfN3-54obYM-54onfZ-54tYzw-54pWhF-588drK-54oBzR-54nDMX-54nJdV-54sF23-54u4cS-54rVNo-54oDEp-54oVwM-54thYW-54s5qU-54oTin-54sc1j-54sD1j-54oeHX-54t1Lj-54smDL-54nSDD-54u29j">Greg van Brug</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>It’s not rocket science</h2>
<p>The right social policy priorities and responses, including social protection and universal social services, are needed to support the growing number of older citizens and <a href="http://www.gsdrc.org/professional-dev/ageing-and-development/">mitigate the negative implications</a> of population ageing. As early as the 1960s, Japan – the only country in the world with over a third of the population aged above 60 – invested in a comprehensive welfare policy, introduced universal healthcare and social pension, and a plan for income redistribution, low unemployment rates and progressive taxation. This investment has paid off: Japan is currently one of the healthiest and wealthiest countries in the world.</p>
<p>What does all this mean for John Lewis’s man in the moon? Well, more efforts should be made (in such ads, and other media) to highlight the good examples of those who are active and engaged, despite frailty and other challenges of old age. This emblematic advert runs the risk of rubber stamping a tired cliché of all older people living alone, in desperate need of connection and support.</p>
<p>But not too much it seems. While it is wonderful that the old man and the young girl finally make a connection as the film draws to a close – building a bridge between generations and raising his spirits – they are still doing it from afar. Our ragged pensioner is still stuck on the moon, with the fairly high degree of isolation that inevitably brings.</p>
<p>A truly positive take on old age – emphasising actively engaged citizens with a real sense of well-being – might see our old man blast his way back to earth in a rocket, become the life and soul of the Christmas party and enrich the lives of the next generation by sharing diverse experiences from his long, fulfilling and active life.</p>
<p>Maybe next year?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50331/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asghar Zaidi receives funding from United Nations Economic Commission for Europe; European Commission and UK's Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p>The retailer’s emblematic ad should have stuck their grandad in a rocket and blasted him straight to party central.Asghar Zaidi, Professor in International Social Policy, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.