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Between war and implicit arrangement, compromise creates a special kind of social relations. It creates a space and a time in which the actor who engages in it accepts himself or herself as belonging to a plural world and being a party to a history that exceeds him or her. He or she is neither alone nor omnipotent, and neither subjected nor powerless. It is therefore important, beyond the description of exchange and negotiation processes, to emphasize what most profoundly characterizes compromise. It is a work of identity reconfiguration and a device for a joint orientation of a common future between opposite partners.