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Focuses on the cultural changes produced by the movement against child sexual abuse, by tracing changes in mass media portrayals of child sexual abuse from 1970s to the 1990s. Media reflected a contradictory mixture of meanings drawn both from movement organizations and mainstream culture. Mass media coverage increased dramatically; it reflected movement success, but like policy gains, media selection processes favored movement messages that resonated with mainstream beliefs. Coverage emphasized abuse by strangers over incest, breaking silence, the need for therapy and healing, but de‐emphasized the movement's emphases on self‐help and solidarity among survivors. By the early 1990s, medical and criminal frames dominated and sceptical coverage increased as a countermovement emerged. Contrary to the view that media coverage represented a “moral panic,” the chapter argues that it did not have the characteristics of a moral panic, and is better understood through the interactions of movement, experts, and media selection processes.

This chapter looks at countermovement organizing, focusing on the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF). It highlights the struggles over the social construction of knowledge that came with the rise of the FMSF and its allies, and analyzing the political and cultural reasons for the movement's gains. It traces the frames used by the FMSF and analyzes the success of the frame emphasizing “memory science” and the unreliability of “recovered memories.” The chapter discusses the countermovement's tactics and its coalitions across the political spectrum, including with conservative, anti‐feminist, and progressive groups. It argues that the social construction of knowledge is an important part of social movements.

This chapter assesses the impact of the rise of these conservative Islamic countermovements on activism in support of women's rights. After all, women not only played an important role in the push for democracy but were able to see through significant reforms for women during reformasi. But the same conditions that have made it possible for progressive women activists, religious and secular, to make these gains contributed also to the rise of conservative Islamic groups. These groups' values are directly threatened by a vibrant women's movement. This chapter argues that the movement's ideological divisions and its inability to mobilize a mass base—along with the changes brought about by decentralization—have made it difficult for the progressive women's movement to respond to more organized conservative forces.

This chapter examines how the mainstream local and regional press covered the antisuffrage perspective in the critical year of 1917 as it became increasingly evident that the suffrage movement had momentum to secure a federal amendment. The goal here is to increase understanding of press portrayals of a countermovement and thus to add to literature on social movement theory. Its findings reveal that most coverage situated the suffrage debate in the context of World War I. Antisuffragists relied on negative discourse that criticized the patriotism of the suffragists and argued that women did not want the added burden of voting. In contrast, suffragists avoided emotional reactions and instead based their arguments on facts and on the benefits of women being in the public sphere. This study contributes to prior research on countermovements and the implications of taking a negative and narrow approach when attempting to undermine a social movement

Chapter 6 turns to broader questions about founding and some of the limitations of focusing on these historical segments of a “civic founders’ constitution.” First, how does the notion of civic founders bear on thinking about powerful countermovements and backlashes, such as anti-suffragists and segregationists? Second, how does the notion of civic founders relate to other important reform movements, such as twentieth-century labor and civil rights movements, and more recent Occupy, gay marriage, and Tea Party movements? Third, how realistic is popular constitutionalism as a route to reform in the modern era, given scholarship on legal change? Finally, the chapter argues that despite the challenges of focusing on the role of civic groups and movements in constitutional development, this approach provides crucial insights into what the Constitution is, and how it relates to civic life. The result is a more profound understanding of the text, ideals, and norms of American constitutionalism.

This chapter presents evidence for the so-called homophobic anticipatory countermovement, with reference primarily to Southeast Asian cases—particularly Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines—and considers the roots and implications of such a sequence. These cases are chosen for their proximity, which is useful for evaluating the extent of global and regional discursive circuits, but also for their diversity. Indonesia and Malaysia are both Muslim-majority states, but Indonesia today is far more democratic than Malaysia; the Philippines is a Catholic-majority democracy; while Singapore is a single-party-dominant state with important Muslim and evangelical Christian minorities. While all but prosperous Singapore are developing states, all are highly exposed to global trade, media, and other circuits. Moreover, all four states offer recent examples of high-profile homophobia, all with roots in Christian or Islamist discourse.

Jumping, climbing and suspensory locomotion are specialized locomotor mechanisms used on land and in the air. Jumping is used for rapid launches from substrates. Climbing and suspensory movements enable locomotion up, under and through vertically-structured habitats, such as forests. Elastic energy storage is particularly important for jumping and catapult systems and we address the core concepts of power amplification that are exemplified in nature’s extreme jumpers. We examine the diverse mechanisms of attachment that characterize animals that can grasp and adhere to a diversity of structures. We conclude the chapter by examining the integration of biological capabilities with engineering innovations in these systems.

An organized campaign to deny the reality and significance of climate change has worked to undermine the claims of the scientific community and block efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This chapter outlines the historical and cultural conditions that have provided fertile soil for climate change denial’s emergence (most notably, the rise of neoliberalism as hegemonic ideology). It explains the denial countermovement’s strategies of manufacturing uncertainty and controversy, which substitute ideology for science and put our societal resilience at stake. The chapter describes the key components of the U.S. countermovement: the fossil fuels industry and corporate America; conservative think tanks and foundations; contrarian scientists; front groups and “Astroturf” campaigns; conservative politicians; and conservative media and the denial blogosphere. The chapter also documents the international diffusion of climate change denial, indicating that the countermovement is evolving into a global force designed to combat the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and international climate advocacy network.

In the current alignment in American politics, polarization sharply divides Americans. But party loyalties are permeable to change; movement loyalties, in contrast, are impervious to political currents. This chapter regards Trumpism as such a movement, and the Resistance as the countermovement it has triggered. This gives the Resistance both the advantage of having Trump as a focal point but the cost of his unpredictability and volatility. The chapter employs the concept of “cycles of contention” to understand this conjuncture. Its outcomes depend less on the initial shock than on three important mechanisms that it has triggered—the amplification of initial cleavages, the spillover from one sector of conflict to others, and a shift in scale both upward to the national level and downward to states and localities. These mechanisms have expanded the cycle but have also created rifts in the Resistance.

This chapter examines the way old and new movement organizations addressed strategic dilemmas regarding constituency and leadership in the Trump Era. This chapter examines two case organizations to illustrate how long-standing and new organizations grappled with two particular challenges: (1) How would they define their constituencies, and what is the extent to which they will put questions of race at the center (or not)? And (2) Will they invest resources in leadership development, and how will that investment be balanced with strategies to mobilize “at scale”? The cases are ISAIAH, a long-standing faith-based community organization in Minnesota, and Indivisible, a new national organization that emerged after the 2016 election. This chapter thus illuminates the way two organizations reacted to changing political conditions in the Trump Era and the key strategic dilemmas that emerged.

This chapter reviews the first year of political activism with particular emphasis on three challenges the Trump presidency and the Resistance pose: to the understanding of social movements; to the American Left; and to the stability of American political institutions. The Resistance extends beyond familiar demonstrations and direct-action efforts to include activism within political institutions. It challenges left and liberal activism to negotiate their relationship with mainstream political institutions. The Trump presidency and Resistance also challenge the flexibility and stability of American institutions to respond to defiance of previously accepted political norms. This chapter concludes by outlining potential different futures.

The American ‘impulse to impose Locke everywhere’ on a world presumed to be eagerly waiting to receive it has by no means expired. It becomes more articulate as America moves gropingly, sometimes inadvertently and sometimes by design, toward becoming an empire. The question is, will America’s encounter with the other in the Middle East and elsewhere give Americans that ‘sense of relativity’, that ‘spark of philosophy’, which will enable them to recognize and negotiate with the unfamiliar and the strange it finds in other peoples and polities? Or will it merely intensify, as it often has, a liberal absolutism indifferent to difference?

This chapter addresses the problems that the genealogy of gender poses for feminist theory and politics, arguing that gender is an important element facilitating the fusion of feminist ideas with neoliberal practices and rationalities. It calls for reassessing the value of the idea of gender itself to feminist politics. Through rereadings of Mary Wollstonecraft and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the chapter highlights the shared genealogy of feminism and liberal governmentality, where feminism can be understood as a countermovement to liberalism, but one that has consistently taken up liberal discourses in the struggle against the oppressions of liberalism, discarding them later for other more timely ones. The chapter then initiates an exegesis of Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto to consider the extent to which the gender concept is still useful or necessary for feminist theory and politics.