Inconvenient Truths

Social movements are shaped by the stories that activists and organizers tell about them. As movement stories are told and retold, codified into narratives and woven together, they structure collective understanding around a movement's shared history and imagined future. We unpack three prominent narratives of the modern United States environmental movement which are often pegged to the first Earth Day in 1970 as representing: (1) a shifting focus towards “new” issues of pollution and human health, (2) the birth of a new movement amidst a groundswell of extrainstitutional protest, and (3) popular political pressure that induced a wave of national-level policy change. Longitudinal data on environmental organizations and collective action events, along with secondary readings of historical studies, are used to critically assess these narratives. Broad acceptance of these intertwined narratives has transformative potential, influencing how scholars study the movement and revealing how social movements reimagine the past to construct the future

Action (physics) · Construct (python library) · Environmental movement · Environmentalism · Movement (music) · Narrative · Politics · Social movement · Transformative learning · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance