The Transnational Activist: An Introduction

Abstract

The identity and association of the ‘transnational activist’ so far have not been the subject of detailed historical scholarship. And although historians lately have begun to explore social movements in a global historical perspective, their descriptions of figures of global activism appear ideologically too narrow to describe all forms of transnationalism connected to social movements. This volume therefore proposes the term ‘transnational activist’ and approaches the history of this actor by examining five central controversies: those of periodisation (is this activist a figure mainly of the twentieth century?); context (what are the historical contexts that nurtured the emergence of trans..