Moral entrepreneurship

The work of individuals or small groups who attempt to shift a society's moral norms — abolitionists, suffragettes, gay rights activists, animal welfare advocates — by publicly defying prevailing taboos and absorbing the social cost of being branded a pariah. Coined in sociology by Howard Becker, the term highlights that moral progress is rarely the spontaneous product of a culture; it is driven by people willing to be criticised, ostracised, or worse, in order to drag the Overton window in their direction. The Romantic poets and their circle — Mary Wollstonecraft, the Shelleys, Byron — are an early modern example, taking reputational damage for living and writing against conventional norms around marriage, religion, and gender.