In the year 2005, the corporation is most likely the most contested yet the most dominant organization in the world. Few individuals and places are untouched by corporations via the goods and services they produce, the messages they advertise, or the industries they locate. Economists argue that this corporate influence reflects activity that is organized by the market (for products, jobs, and capital investment). Questioning this premise, this senior seminar asks: Does the corporation exert power over politics, culture, citizenship, the environment, 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 activities in policy-making, local community, and global development; the relationships between the public, private, and civic/nonprofit sectors; finance capital's role in coordinating corporate activity and checking corporate abuse; and corporate impacts on public culture and the natural environment.
The goals for this course are threefold. First, we will interrogate the prevailing theories of corporate power. 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 economists' null hypothesis that so-called corporate power is only an legitimate exercise of market action.
Second, we will examine the historical and structural development of the corporation and capitalism. Our readings begin at the 19th century era of competitive capitalism and then turn to cutting-edge 21st-century modes of capitalist organization. Just as important as these evolving macro-structures are the changing contexts for corporate activity: war, financial markets, global 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 develop research skills for studying corporate power, in form of class presentations and a written term paper. These assignments entail archival research, document analysis, data-gathering, and the synthesis of multiple (and sometimes divergent) accounts -- skills that you can hopefully continue to use to understand the stakes and continuing evolution of corporate power long after you have left Vassar.
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