The journey into activism and the academy play an important role in the discourse construction of social movement theories. What started as an internship with Farm Sanctuary in 2007 became a critical milestone in an ongoing transformation. The following thesis consists of an autoethnographic study based on a six-week internship with Farm Sanctuary, and examining social movement theories in relation to the animal rights movement. During the internship, it was made explicit that Farm Sanctuary relies heavily on the structural and rhetorical elements of the Movement Action Plan (MAP) by Bill Moyer. However, the MAP Model is nowhere in academic discourse. The examination of the macro and micro components of the MAP Model and two traditional social movement theories provides a useful way to integrate practice and theory. With the hope of fostering a bridge between theory and practice, it was essential for the theorist to gain localized experience within the practice and integrate that into a theoretical framework. This thesis sets to create spaces within multiple discourses for the practical and theoretical, and illustrate many crossroads in which they intersect.

Keywords. Animal rights, social movement theory, vegan, autoethnography, Farm Sanctuary, PETA.