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We explore the simultaneous influence of activist organizations and corporations on institutional change. Focusing on protests, campaign contributions, and lobbyists as the strategies used by activist organizations and corporations to influence institutional change, we study the dynamics between movements and counter-movements and their influence on the probability of institutional change. In the context of the US tobacco industry, the results shed light on the effectiveness of these strategies and uncover potential moderators of this relationship. Overall, we demonstrate the simultaneous and asymmetric effects of activist organizations and corporations that use conspicuous and inconspicuous strategies to change institutions.

Social movements can disrupt existing industries and inspire the emergence of new markets by drawing attention to problems with the status quo and promoting alternatives. We examine how the influence of social movements on entrepreneurial activity evolves as the markets they foster mature. Theoretically, we argue that the success of social movements in furthering market expansion leads to three related outcomes. First, the movement-encouraged development of market infrastructure reduces the need for continued social movement support. Second, social movements’ efforts on behalf of new markets increase the importance of resource availability for market entry. Third, market growth motivates countermovement that reduce the beneficial impact of initiator movements on entrepreneurial activity. We test these arguments by analyzing evolving social movement dynamics and entrepreneurial activity in the US wind power industry from 1992 to 2007. We discuss the implications of our findings for the study of social movements, stakeholder management, sustainability, and entrepreneurship.

This introduction provides an overview of the discourse on alternative agrifood movements (AAMs) to (1) ascertain the degree of convergence and divergence around a common ethos of alterity and (2) context the chapters of the book. AAMs have increased in recent years in response to the growing legitimation crisis of the conventional agrifood system. Some agrifood researchers argue that AAMs represent the vanguard movement of our time, a formidable counter movement to global capitalism. Other authors note a pattern of blunting of the transformative qualities of AAMs due to conventionalization and mainstreaming in the market. The literature on AAMs is organized following a Four Questions in Agrifood Studies (Constance, 2008) framework. The section for each Question ends with a case study to better illustrate the historical dynamics of an AAM. The literature review ends with a summary of the discourse applied to the research question of the book: Are AAMs the vanguard social movement of our time? The last section of this introduction provides a short description of each contributing chapter of the book, which is divided into five sections: Introduction; Theoretical and Conceptual Framings; Food Sovereignty Movements; Alternative Movements in the Global North; and Conclusions.

Purpose – In this paper, we contribute to the study of conservative, reactive mobilization through a study of the ex-gay movement in the United States.

Design/methodology/approach – Using state-level event history analyses over 25 years, we examine the role of threat, resources, and political opportunity in the formation of the first ex-gay organization in each state.

Findings – Our results demonstrate the importance of threat, particularly perceived challenges to traditional definitions of morality, in the formation of ex-gay groups. We find little support for either resource mobilization or political opportunity.

Research limitations/implications – This study indicates a need for further research on sociocultural threat and the ex-gay movement.

Originality/value – It expands scholarship on countermovement emergence, conservative and reactive countermovements, and the role of threat (especially sociocultural threat) in movements.

This case study of a union organizing drive at a Whole Foods Market, the world's largest natural and organic foods supermarket chain, considers the impact of the company's employee participation scheme and the accompanying organizational narrative on the outcome of the unionization effort. By relying on the language and symbolism of the existing organizational narrative, union organizers were able to give meaning to their movement, but not without limiting the movement's potential for significant change and success. Ultimately, their efforts served to reinforce the organizational narrative and the existing employee participation scheme, not transform it. Based on this case study, I argue that organizational narratives are an important location of organizational control.

This paper develops an argument about how contentious changes unfold in organizational fields, focusing on the role of uncertainty – and the networks people use to address uncertainty. We propose that as controversial practice gains traction and spreads, the nature of uncertainty facing organizational decision makers also evolves. This dynamic has important implications for how different actors and networks can influence change. We illustrate our argument with a mixed-methods case study on the diffusion of domestic partner benefits across US Fortune 500 companies. Our findings shed light on how – and when – social activists, corporate elites, and middle managers can influence the corporate decision-making process.

Despite the title of this bibliography, there was not a truly underground press in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. The phrase is amisnomer, reputedly coined on the spur of the moment in 1966 by Thomas Forcade when asked to describe the newly established news service, Underground Press Syndicate, of which he was an active member. The papers mentioned in this bibliography, except for the publications of the Weather Underground, were not published by secretive, covert organizations. Freedom of the press and of expression is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, although often only symbolically as the experience of the undergrounds will show, and most of the publications that fall into the “underground” described herein maintained public offices, contracted with commercial printers, and often used the U.S. Postal Service to distribute their publications.

The scholarship on social movements has focused attention recently on the strategic dimensions of decision-making by movement actors. Much of this work has been rooted in detailed case studies that offer useful analytical windows through which we can view the strategic choices made by individual movement organizations. As valuable as this work is in its own right, equally if not more important questions remain with regard to how the position a movement organization occupies in the broader social movement field impacts strategic decision-making of that organization and those other organizations with which it interacts. In fact, the coalition politics of a social movement is often a key variable in the degree to which a movement succeeds in its goals. Coalition conflicts and politics matter. Today's so-called anti-globalization movement, the peace movement opposing the Iraq War, and the contemporary global environmental movement with its focus on global warming each demonstrate that coalitions are important for social movements.

Social movement organizations increasingly engage directly with companies, rather than using the political process to regulate them. This development has spawned lively new literatures on non-market strategy and on social movements, but the two would benefit from engaging each other more effectively. A common framework and set of shared constructs would allow for collaborative theorizing on how new issues emerge into the public sphere, how interest groups mobilize, and how public opinion is formed; transaction cost analysis, with its primarily verbal theorizing, may prove a helpful starting point. Empirical knowledge is growing rapidly, yet many exciting questions remain open.

The corporate food regime is presented here as a vector of the project of global development. As such, it expresses not only the social and ecological contradictions of capitalism, but also the world-historical conjuncture in which the deployment of price and credit relations are key mechanisms of ‘accumulation through dispossession.’ The global displacement of peasant cultures of provision by dumping, the supermarket revolution, and conversion of land for agro-exports, incubate ‘food sovereignty’ movements expressing alternative relationships to the land, farming and food.