The changing meanings of “social movement” sketch a history of the past quarter-millennium of popular struggles to change the world: how people have organized themselves and understood their activity. The term appeared in mid-nineteenth century Europe to grasp the French Revolution, the pan-European revolutions of 1848, and the rise of democratic, nationalist and socialist organizations. Contemporary elites were experiencing a disconcerting shift, mapped in the changing meanings of “society” away from the small world of those who counted, as in the capitalized usage of “Society”, when others (the vast majority) could be expected to “know their place” (Williams 1983). Earlier elites, then, could understand the human world purely in terms of political theory or economics. Our use of “society” to refer to all human beings and their interrelationships came into being as those others stepped out of “their place”, raising “the social question”.