Pamela E. Oliver
Professor of Sociology

Relations Between Movements: Counter-Movements and Competition

Countermovements

  1. Andrews, K. T. (2002). “Movement-Countermovement Dynamics and the Emergence of New Institutions: The Case of “White Flight” Schools in Mississippi.” Social Forces 80(3): 911-936. This article examines the foundation of private segregationist academies that emerged throughout the US South in the wake of court-ordered desegregation. I focus on the state of MS where private academies grew dramatically from 1969 to 1971. I provide an analytic history of civil rights & school desegregation conflicts in MS, & I use OLS models to examine county-level variation in local support for private academies during this period. My analysis shows that the formation of academies occurs as a response to desegregation i) when there is a credible threat that desegregation will be implemented (implicitly signaling the “success” of the movement); ii) when blacks have the organizational capacity to make claims & voice protest within newly desegregated schools; & iii) when whites have the organizational capacity to resist desegregation. These three specifications extend models of racial competition that have been used to explain white countermobilization. I argue that the establishment of academies was a countermovement strategy that flowed out of the prior history of organized white resistance to the civil-rights movement. In other words, whites were not only responding to court intervention & the proportion of African Americans in their community, but to the social movement mobilization of that community. 2 Tables, 1 Figure, 79 References. Adapted from the source document.
  2. # Meyer, D. S. and S. Staggenborg (1996). “Movements, Countermovements, and the Structure of Political Opportunity.” American Journal of Sociology 101(6): 1628-1660. PDF file Movement-countermovement interaction has become a fixture in contemporary social movement challenges & in contemporary politics. Here, the developing literatures on political opportunity & on movement-countermovement interaction are reviewed & synthesized. A general framework is presented for understanding the interplay of social movements & their social movement opponents, offering a set of theoretical propositions to animate & guide subsequent research.
  3. Mayer N. Zald and Bert Useem. “Movement and Countermovement Interaction: Mobilization, Tactics, and State Intervention.” In Mayer N. Zald and John D. McCarthy, eds., Social Movements in an Organizational Society.
  4. Tahi Mottl. “The Analysis of Countermovements.” Social Problems 27 (June 1980): 620-635. Countermovements are more likely to have state and/or elite support. Movements and countermovements take turns capturing different segments of the state. BC 408-423.
  5. James Jasper and Jane Poulsen. “Fighting Back: Vulnerabilities, Blunders, and Countermobilization by the Targets in Three Animal Rights Campaigns.” MS 397-406. Sociological Forum 8: 639-657. 1993.

Competition & Spillover

  1. Minkoff, Debra C. “The Sequencing of Social Movements.” American Sociological Review; 1997, 62, 5, Oct, 779-799. Pop ecology model of diffusion of movements, women’s movement and black movement are in competitive sequencing; organizational density is important. PDF copy
  2. David S. Meyer and Nancy Whittier. “Social Movement Spillover.” Social Problems 41: 277-298. 1994. MS 480ff. How movements affect other movements.