Workshop „Praktiken, Konventionen, Multinormativität. Historische Perspektiven“, Munich 21/22 June 2018

Rainer Diaz-Bone (Lucerne)

Thomas Duve (director at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt) and Marian Füssel (fellow at Historisches Kolleg, Munich) organized a workshop „Praktiken, Konventionen, Multinormativität. Historische Perspektiven“ which took place 21/22 June 2018 at Historisches Kolleg Munich. Marian Füssel presented the approach of practice theory, Thomas Duve introduced the notion of multinormativity and Rainer Diaz-Bone introduced economics of conventions. It was inspiring to realize that all three concepts could be easily related to ongoing research in the field especially of legal history, focusing on pluralism of legal reasoning, emphasizing the importance of social practices, materiality, objects and opening new research perspectives.

Round about a dozen scholars from history, legal history, law science, sociology and psychology were invited to present ongoing research and relate it to the three concepts of practices, conventions and multinormativity. (See Program Multinormativity)

From left to right: T. Duve, A. Brendecke, D. Erben, S. Rüther, T. Neu, H. Sonkajärvi, G. Bender, C. Behrmann, D. Damler, M. Füssel, A. Collin, R. Diaz-Bone

Stronger applications of EC were presented by Tim Neu (Bochum), who argued about the methodological advantages, using convention theory in the analysis of the emergence of a regional constitution (landständische Verfassung) in Hessen in the 17th and 18th century. Also Hanna Sönkarjärvi (Rio de Janeiro) applied convention theory in her study of the practices of commercial justice in the 19th century in Brazil. Participants critically evaluated convention theory as an approach in the field of legal history. It was interesting to attend to other research presentations in the intersection(s) of history, law science and legal history. The atmosphere at the Munich Kolleg was supporting this intense exchange.