Bargaining uses culturally available materials to build shared traditions of restraint

Evidence

The fundamental psychic and intellectual process is that of participating in the creation of traditions; and the ingredients out of which traditions can be created, or the materials in which potential traditions can be perceived and jointly recognized, are not at all coincident with the mathematical contents of the game. — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 254

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to Gambetta’s private protection markets — how mafiosi signal restraint and enforce bounds through recognizable cultural symbols, and to Milgrom et al. on private judges. — connects to: A people’s survival in struggle depends on its own cultural terms, not borrowed abstractions — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 106; Traditions are mutable and contested rather than fixed and class-bound; Culture names the forms, not the content, of social relationships — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 882
• DEFINE: Defines the core mechanism of how focal traditions form from non-mathematical content — the analytical bridge for the reader’s Gambetta mapping.

Broader Connections

• A people’s survival in struggle depends on its own cultural terms, not borrowed abstractions #expands (0.85) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 106
• Culture names the forms, not the content, of social relationships #complicates (0.75) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 882
• Traditions are mutable and contested rather than fixed and class-bound #expands (0.72)