The Trailblazers

Scholars have studied social movements and activism from about the early nineteenth century, but to understand these phenomena, most of the “processes of collective action [have been] lost somewhere between broad, sweeping theories of social change that have obscured the role of human agency …” (Steven M. Buechler, Social Movements in Advanced Capitalism: The Political Economy and Cultural Construction of Social Activism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 17).