At the dawn of the 21st century, the corporation stands uncontested as the dominant form of economic organization. Few individuals and places in the world 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 commodities, 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, 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, corporate influence in mass media and culture, and the increasing importance of place in corporate organization.
The goals for this course are threefold. First, we will become intimately familiar with the prevailing theories of corporate power. These theories offer a focused approach to 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, depression, inflation, high-technology, 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 promotes.
Finally, we will research case studies of corporate power in society, in the form of a term paper. For this assignment, you will select an example 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.