From the perspective of Prof. Naika Foroutan, new hegemonies emerge in a post-migrant society through processes of negotiation:
“The active negotiation of rights and privileges is always accompanied by societal conflicts arising from the discrepancy between acceptance and rejection of the demands made: migrants and their descendants demand more representative, visible positions in politics, culture, sport, public spaces, etc., thereby questioning the privileges of the majority society. Conflictual negotiations increasingly lead to positioning within societies and to the formation of pro- and anti-diversity identities. Concepts of values and norms previously constructed hierarchically are challenged by increasing diversity and especially by hybridity. At the same time, due to radicalising counter-positions, calls for anti-discrimination laws and other measures to protect minorities and plural democracy grow louder. Within this conflict, however, the opportunity also arises to shape new, rival discursive hegemonies based on the promise of equality and thus driving the discourse on a moral level. The struggle to establish the claim to equality, however, must always be regarded as a struggle without a guaranteed outcome, in which minorities fundamentally challenge established structures.” 33
In negotiation research, the concept of “negotiation” (Aushandlung) is distinguished from formal negotiations: in negotiations, the actors are known to each other, the “respectively formulated interests are mutually understood as legitimate, and actors act strategically.”34 In negotiations, the goal is usually fixed at the outset; the negotiation process serves to balance interests and achieve joint capacity to act.
These more open negotiations can be distinguished from classical negotiations. In negotiations (Aushandlungen), the goals need not be predefined; the focus is not necessarily on balancing interests.35 According to Prof. J. Oltmer, the following occurs in discursive negotiations:
“Through negotiation, the discursively processed subject becomes variable, develops its own logic, different meanings gain varying relevance, the negotiation itself shifts the boundaries of what can be said, leads or forces actors to act, albeit against the background of differing resources among the participants, making some products in the context of the negotiation process more likely than others. Nevertheless, neither the trajectory of the substance under negotiation is predictable, nor the timing or forms/mechanisms of stabilisation and thus the provisional halting of a negotiation process. The negotiation leads to an outcome insofar as, in conflict or consensus, a subject of negotiation is produced and meanings of the terms designating the subject or individual sub-subjects are generated. Actors are also assigned a social position. A society or part of a society thus reaches an understanding, offers meanings, orders the present and future.” 36
According to Prof. J. Oltmer, negotiations describe processes in which meanings and interpretations as well as new social positions are developed. This fundamentally calls into question the previous social status quo. Fittingly, Prof. Wimmer sees culture as “the result of a process of negotiating meaning between culturally shaped but reflexively questioning and innovative individuals (…).” 37 Culture changes through new negotiations from previous cultural assumptions.
Negotiation processes involve transformative changes. Woke activists seek to impose their political ideas by redefining societal norms (see Socialisation). The newly negotiated status quo is often simultaneously the starting point for further negotiations. Particularly serious are woke negotiation processes already in the field of science.38
But in many other societal areas, renegotiations are currently taking place without the public being able to consent to the changes (see Democracy, Climate Justice, Decolonisation, Pedagogy, Integration, and Civil Society). This lexicon aims to contribute to recognising these processes by explaining key woke discourses.