This paper examines the phenomenon of conflict escalation in business relations. A theory of when conflict between firms will proceed from informal relationship-preserving norms to more formal and destructive end games involving litigation is developed and tested. The central theoretical claim is that substitution costs serve as an impediment against the escalation of conflict. Data on market concentration and dollar flows between aggregate markets in the economy are used to develop measures of substitution costs. Measures of substitution costs and trade figures are also used to describe power advantages in markets. The theory is tested through a series of regression models. The main findings are that (1) when substitution costs are high, parties are less likely to escalate conflict and (2) asymmetric market relations result in less conflict escalation than symmetric ones. Empirical analysis indicates that substitution costs are related in predictable and meaningful ways to conflict escalation and business litigation.

“Telling the Difference” focuses on two legal opinions from the nineteenth century that carefully distinguish between those who should be racially marked as nonwhite and those who should not. In the first instance, a Michigan judge decides the appropriate “blood fraction” of African-American heritage that would prohibit a free man from voting. In the second, a New Mexico judge rules that the Native Americans of Cochiti Pueblo are not legally “Indians,” and therefore not entitled to federal protection of their land. The article uses these examples to advance two central claims: that we must pay close attention to the narrative logic of racial identification in order to understand the powerful contradictions still at the heart of our conversations about race, and that in doing so we should consider that race has always been multiply constructed in the United States.

This work examines how a particular response of Stalin's victims had the effect of transforming them from mere pawns to participant agents in the system of repression. The disenfranchised (in Russian lishentsy, or literally, the deprived) were identified as anti-Soviet elements shortly after the revolution, and in the Stalin years of 1929–31 were stripped of all political and economic rights. Some wrote petitions to Soviet authorities and appealed for the reinstatement of rights. The newly opened Soviet archives contain hundreds of thousands of petitions from the disenfranchised, and they are the only widely accessible Soviet source that reveals the voice of Stalin's victims at the time of their persecution as they directly engaged state agents, formulated appeals, created personal identities, and offered testimonies of defense. The denunciations that appear in these petitions reveal how victims can be-come victimizers, and demonstrate that the damaging social identity of the enemy exploiter was ascribed and propagated not only by the regime and those who occupied society's favored roles. Damaging accusations against others were also made in the process of victim talk, as the disenfranchised invoked the official image of an enemy in order to enhance their own self-image as an innocent.

In thinking about justice in a pluralistic world, there are a number of potential theoretical resources. Derrida's thoughts on justice provide some tools with which to support social movements while avoiding the political and theoretical problems of identity politics, I argue; but the antihistorical frame-work of the philosophical ethics used and refined by Derrida is unhelpful to anyone working in social movements. By contrast, Foucault's later work on the ethics of freedom offers tools useful for thinking about embodiment, desire, and the historical specificity of ethical life. And yet, by remaining focused almost solely on liberté–backgrounding égalité, fraternité, and solidarité–Foucault's ethical reflections also remain open to supplementation. Thus, both thinkers'reflections on justice, freedom, and history have elements that are potentially very useful to those social movements that are unhappy with essentialist identities; but along the way we will have to invent our own additional, site-specific tools, in particular insofar as we are interested in building networks of solidarity.