Antje Wiener visits University of Southern DenmarkProf. Wiener discusses Norm Contestation as a Social Theory at research visit
20 September 2023
When studying normative change, the question of ‘Whose Practices Count’ is key - one of this central takeaways of Antje Wieners research sparked the interested of the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), which invited her for a research visit. On the 20th and 21st September 2023, Prof. Antje Wiener PhD visited the University of Southern Denmark in Odense and presented the paper ‘Norm Contestation as a Social Theory’. A workshop on norms and normativity with members of the International Politics section at SDU and a joint dinner rounded up the visit.
In her presentation, Antje Wiener highlighted key insights of norm contestation: If a norm lies in the practice, and practice is always norm-generative, the repertoire of practices that count towards norm change seems vast in global society. When studying normative change, therefore, the question of Whose Practices Count is key. To include the agency of the many in the constitution and contestation of international order I propose following the quod omnes tangit principle (i.e., what touches all must be approved by all). Read against this principle, the legitimacy of order depends on the conditions for engagement of those touched by this order’s norms. While these conditions are rarely equal, in a global context the imbalance of equal access to contestation of the rules and norms that govern a society increases with scale. Therefore, in an effort to identify and address causes of global inequality, we need to take better account of culturally diverse agents that act under plural conditions of engagement at different local sites in global society.
For further reading, an overview of Prof. Wieners publications is provided via https://www.wiso.uni-hamburg.de/en/fachbereich-sowi/professuren/wiener/team/wiener-antje/publikationen.html