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The study aimed to investigate how Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and others from around the world present their views on boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). The quality of discourse was examined along with the implications of the rhetoric for social-justice and conflict resolution frameworks.

This qualitative study analyzed 257 texts (newspaper articles, opinion pieces, YouTube videos, emails. Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, campaigns and websites) for content and quality of discourse and for their implications for social-justice and conflict resolution work.

Most texts divided into those in favor of the boycott and those opposed. The content was also polarized − most pro-BDS texts saw Israel as a settler-colonial enterprise, and emphasized issues of social-justice, whereas opponents perceived Israel as a legitimate nation and were skeptical of the human rights angle. The main types of discourse discerned included: ethnocentric talk, attack and intellectual discussion, regardless of national/ethnic origin of the writer or stance toward the boycott.

Different types of texts were analyzed, which did not always fit easily into the discourse categories. Because this was the first study of its kind and looked at limited years, results should be approached with this in mind.

The rhetoric leaves little place for dialogue between those in favor and those opposed. Specific suggestions for combining social-justice work and conflict resolution work are offered.

BDS discourse in its present form hampers finding a solution to the conflict and abuse of Palestinian rights. A new approach is needed to try to resolve these issues.

Because there are few systematic studies on BDS, this article provides insight into how people discuss the strategy and how it connects to frameworks for resolving conflicts.

This chapter explores queer theory as a “thought of a method” in educational ethnography by sharing stories of two third grade boys and situating them in a discussion of Britzman’s ideas about reading and Butler’s notion of fantasy. The stories are presented as a possible queer educational ethnography, in which the ethnographer writes the fantastic narrative of the boys as they read creatively to reveal and unsettle gender and reading as sites of constraint to which other constraints adhere. The boys’ reading itself is a queer reading of these constraints and as such makes alterity visible and possible. The study and the methodological framework suggest that educational ethnographers and other adults who work in schools should become attuned to the markers of constraint and alterity, so as to recognize, shelter, and maintain the alterity that children make possible. The chapter asserts children must be allowed to read for alterity, and shows how fantastic narratives that emerge from such readings are limited by the hushing of individuals who disallow alterity in classrooms. Ultimately, this chapter is relevant to ethnographers of education in that it suggests that queer theory not only is necessary to narrate and thus shelter the ways that gender can and should be unsettled in classrooms, but also allows us to narrate and shelter other queer urgencies related to fear, violence, and vulnerability that children experience or share in classrooms. Implications for the current climate of school reform based on standardization of curriculum are also discussed.