“Nothing Personal: Sociology advances the radical idea that much of what individuals take to be “real” or “common sense” is actually socially constructed. That is, reality is real only in the collective imagination, and imaginations can be manipulated. This is a radical idea that is already well accepted by many social movement activists who are keenly aware that reality can be manufactured, and they have a vested interest in contributing to that manufacture. Indeed, social movements hold great relevance to the social construction of reality given their focus on meaning-making in the public sphere. Activists, however, may find themselves distracted by this potential for agency, focusing on their individual experience of social movement mobilization to the exclusion of the wider environment that constrains it. It is certainly the powerful cultural ideology of individualism that encourages the misattribution of social or systemic processes to individual behaviors (or bad luck), but sociology’s structural focus lends to a depersonalization of politics. For activists embroiled in the distressing emotional labor of movement building and the inevitable disagreement that comes with group-level cooperation, [...] sociological analysis [...] should provide a critical understanding that relieves frustration and empowers. Infighting and boundary-making are typical characteristics observed of collective behaviors across most, if not all sectors. It is nothing personal; it is a predictable consequence of people coming together to do the messy business of constructing the social world.” - Corey Lee Wrenn, Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits, page 1