In the year 2002, the corporation is perhaps more contested, yet no less dominant as the preeminent form of economic organization in the world. Few individuals and places remain untouched by corporations through the goods and services they produce, the messages they advertise, or the industries they locate. Arguably, such corporate influence reflects activity that is contained within the market (for its products, jobs, and capital investment). By contrast, the question that this senior seminar takes up is: Does the corporation exert power over politics, culture, communities, and other spheres of society outside of the market?
To answer this question, we will examine various theories and case studies of corporate power across several disciplines, such as sociology, political science, economics, and geography. Substantive topics that we address include corporate elite activity in policy-making, philanthropy, and business organizations, finance capital's role in coordinating corporate activity, the state's relationship to business, and corporate influence in mass media and culture.
The goals for this course are threefold. First, we will encounter the prevailing theories of corporate power, which focus in diverse ways the long-standing sociological concern for the relationship between economy and society. Not all of these theories are compatible; our task is to understand the issues and methods that produce such divergent accounts and the ways they contradict or supplement one another. Furthermore, we will scrutinize each theory against the null hypothesis that the apparent power of corporations in fact reflects only an appropriate exercise of economic action.
Second, we will examine the history of the corporation in relation to society. Our readings begin at the 19th century era of competitive capitalism and then turn to the various 20th century modes of capitalist organization: Fordism, post-Fordism, and globalization. Just as important as these evolving macro-structures are the changing contexts for corporate activity: war, financial markets, urban development, and so on. We will use this history to understand how corporate power has changed in both the forms it takes and the interests it advances.
Finally, we will research corporate power in society, in the form of a term paper. For this assignment, you will select a case study of corporate activity and employ the theory, history, and methods presented in the readings to analyze how the example reflects (or not) the workings of corporate power.