Female genital mutilation (FGM) has been the target of significant transnational activism over the past several decades, prompting the development and promotion of a strong international norm against the procedure. However, groups that perform FGM generally view it as a requirement of their culture—they are subscribing to a strong local norm in favor of the practice. What happens when the international and local norms collide? Under what conditions are individuals and communities most likely to abandon the local norm and embrace the international one? The article lays out a theoretical framework for thinking about local-level norm change. I argue that the normally high barriers to defecting from the local norm supporting FGM are more likely to be overcome when there are non-circumcising groups living nearby and when there are local elites among the group of first movers. To evaluate this argument, I administered an original representative survey about FGM among Maa-speaking peoples in three rural Kenyan communities