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Industry publications abound with tips on how to create and nurture customer evangelism. Scholarly publications note the effects of evangelism to firms. Consultants promote evangelism creation as part of their skill set. Yet the existence customer evangelism and its effects remain unsupported by empirical evidence. The purpose of this paper is to quantitatively explore customer evangelism.

This paper takes one of the first steps towards empirical analysis of customer evangelism by using a formative composite latent variable model to identify customer evangelists from a survey population. The authors then compare customer evangelists against non-customer evangelists on key characteristics, as per the claims in the qualitative literature, to verify the accuracy of the selection model.

The analysis demonstrates that key claims in the qualitative literature in regard to customer evangelists are supported by quantitative data in this study, namely that customer evangelists are focused on authenticity, cultishness and sharing knowledge, and have a deep emotional and spiritual connection to the brand. They also have higher intentions to purchase the product in future than do non-customer evangelists. However, other claims in the qualitative literature – such as that customer evangelists are more socially oriented, knowledge-seeking, experientially oriented or idealistic than are non-customer evangelists – are not supported by the data in this study, or are inconclusive.

This study is one of the first to attempt to empirically identify customer evangelists, and is part of a movement to study consumer religiosity in an empirical context. This study paves the way for further empirical research into customer evangelism, consumer religiosity and consumer collectivism.

In this chapter, I present the scientific pillar of the project. Given the political proposal that informs the book, it is necessary for me to show why and how such an activist endeavour as I propose produces valid and reliable knowledge. To this end, I deal with the historical debate about the role of the intellectual in society based on the ideal types of the neutral expert and the academic activist introduced in Chapter 2.

In this article, I analyze constructions of and responses to vulnerability in the US government and a now-prominent evangelical aid organization, World Vision, during the 1950s and 1960s in Korea and Vietnam. World Vision was founded as the “development discourse,” Cold War rhetoric, and the neo-evangelical movement were all rising to prominence in the United States. World Vision’s early understandings of vulnerability resonated with Cold War and modernization theory rhetoric in certain ways; however, its approaches to remake vulnerable Asians were often distinct. World Vision evangelical Christians looked to private voluntary organizations and individual conversions in a free society to remake individuals and nations, notions not so different from neoliberal development approaches today. US foreign aid approaches were rooted in nation-building for centralized, planned government institutions and economies to modernize “traditional” people. This article examines the complex relationships between missionaries, evangelists, US foreign aid experts and the military in American constructions of vulnerable traditional Asians and interventions to modernize and Christianize them. In examining roots of faith-based development models through the case of World Vision and notions of vulnerability, historical threads and lineages emerge for understanding the relationship of religion and the state in modernizing projects, and faith-based and neoliberal development models.

How is moral legitimacy established in pluralist contexts where multiple moral frameworks co-exist and compete? Situations of moral multiplexity complicate not only whether an organization or practice is legitimate but also which criteria should be used to establish moral legitimacy. We argue that moral legitimacy can be thought of as the property of a dynamic dialogical process in which relations between moral schemes are constantly (re-)negotiated through dynamic exchange with audiences. Drawing on Boltanski and Thévenot’s ‘orders of worth’ framework, we propose a process model of how three types of truces may be negotiated: transcendence, compromise, antagonism. While each can create moral legitimacy in pluralistic contexts, legitimacy is not a binary variable but varying in degrees of scope and certainty.

This chapter evaluates research from the past 10 years suggesting that surfing can help develop ecological sensibilities and, in turn, lead to more environmentally sustainable lifestyles and practices.

The first part of the chapter reviews some of the key themes in the movement toward more sustainable surfing, including surfers' lifestyle practices. The second part of the chapter offers more in-depth case studies of (1) the production and consumption of surfboards and (2) the emergence of wave pools. Through these two case studies the chapter explores more promising practices that are driving more desirable human–surfing–environment relationships.

The chapter highlights the key tensions in debates over the so-called sustainable surfing movement. While surfers continue to see themselves as environmentally connected and having special relationships to the environment and sustainability, there are many contradictions and inconsistencies in this relationship. The negative environmental impact of the surfing industry remains notable, including in tourism, board manufacturing, and surfing events. The chapter highlights the limitations of relying on market-based, technologically dependent approaches to sustainable development.

The chapter shows the potential and promise of technological innovation for more environmentally sustainable practices, while recognizing the ongoing challenges in changing attitudes in the surf industry, and among many participants/consumers. It echoes broader literatures showing that attitudes and behaviors around environmental issues are complex and paradoxical.

Purpose – Generally speaking this chapter examines if Max Weber's theory of the protestant ethic helps explain socioeconomic progress currently seen in some communities in Latin America where Protestantism has advanced rapidly.

Methodology/approach – This chapter is a case study. It reviews the literature on San Pedro de Almolonga, a small indigenous town in western Guatemala, and presents the results of our ethnographic fieldwork in the town and its surroundings during January 2011.

Findings – Almolonga has become a very prosperous town through the production and commercialization of vegetables. Prosperity has emerged due to the high fertility of the soil, the entrepreneurial skills of its inhabitants, and the high market demand for vegetables. Protestantism has been an almost perfect complement that has made possible the maximization of Almolonga's economic potential.

Philosophers and political theorists have long warned of the “perils of dogmatism” for public discourse and identified intellectual humility as a necessary corrective. Sufficient intellectual humility encompasses at least four elements: openness to error, recognition of bias, recognition of intellectual parity in interlocutors, and avoidance of recourse to authority. Religions seem to present obstacles on all four fronts, particularly when actors embody more conservative renderings of a given religion’s repertoire. As such, a case involving different groups of religious exclusivists engaging one another on topics that directly interact their deepest faith commitments and political visions presents a useful test case for our theories of intellectual humility. This chapter considers conservative protestants engaging in public discourse with Muslims about whether or not Muslim and Christian understandings of “loving God” and “loving neighbor” have sufficient overlap to support political cooperation. The results of the dialogue effort were a mixture of controversy and cooperation. For evangelicals, the engagement produced sharp conflict and yet helped to shift the community’s plausibility structures, opening further the possibility of fruitful public discourse and strategic action in cooperation with Muslims. The analysis suggests a conceptualization of practical intellectual humility that emphasizes recognition of the other.

This chapter, inspired by the authors’ experiences with racism and sexism in higher education leadership and frontier Protestantism, will interrogate the leadership models found in library and information science (LIS) through the lens of Judeo-Christian religious social structures and terminology, along with an examination of transitional and transformational leadership frameworks, to suggest a more productive and less abusive leadership model, equitable and inclusive to those who are not white men.

This chapter provides a context for The Emerald International Handbook of Activist Criminology. It offers an overview of the small, yet burgeoning literature dedicated to ‘criminology activism’, which includes engagement with public criminology and various brands of critical criminology, as well as zemiology or the study of social harm beyond narrow state-centric definitions of crime. Among other things, the chapter considers the role academics might play in addressing social and criminal injustice, and the new opportunities afforded to both academics and activists – including citizen journalists and media professionals – by digital technologies and social media when intervening in campaigns for justice and formal criminal legal processes. To answer the question, why now, the chapter argues we are currently in the midst of an unprecedented period of upheaval requiring action from activists and academics alike, including criminologists engaged in social scientific research operating beyond the delusions of objectivity and value-neutrality, that is, politically engaged research aiming to remedy not only the absence of meaningful state intervention in crime and harm but also expose the role of corporations and the state itself in prosecuting and perpetuating crime and harm.