"Creatures of the State": Metaphor and Personhood in Legitimizing the American Corporation
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"Creatures of the State": Metaphor and Personhood in Legitimizing the American Corporation The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Knight, Carly R. 2018. "Creatures of the State": Metaphor and Personhood in Legitimizing the American Corporation. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41121208 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA “Creatures of the State”: Metaphor and Personhood in Legitimizing the American Corporation A dissertation presented by Carly Renee Knight to The Department of Sociology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Sociology Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts July 2018 © 2018 – Carly Renee Knight All rights reserved Dissertation Advisor: Professor Frank Dobbin Carly Renee Knight “Creatures of the State”: Metaphor and Personhood in Legitimizing the American Corporation Abstract How did corporations become seen as natural market actors? When large, bureaucratic business organizations first began to consolidate in the 19th century, corporations were still largely considered “creatures of the state”—unnatural social organizations which, rather than being endowed with “natural rights,” were instead extended a series of revocable privileges by legislative fiat. Likened to monsters rather than men, only gradually did corporations become seen as natural market actors. In this dissertation, I trace the naturalization of corporations both in legal theory and in public media discourse. Contra institutional theories that posit corporate naturalization as automatically following on the heels of legal change, I focus on the role of language, metaphor, and moral discourse in naturalizing and legitimating growing corporate power. I show how legal theorists and politician increasingly conceptualized corporations as moral agents, and inadvertently symbolically severed corporations from the state. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the metaphor of the corporation as like a person continues to operate today: personifying corporations in speech—treating these collective institutions as moral agents and endowing them with mental states—has the power to alter our moral intuitions regarding corporate wrongdoing. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................... v! Introduction: Creatures of the State ................................................................................................ 1! Chapter 1. The Equivocal Category of the Corporation: Metaphor, Legal Theory, and the Symbolic “Disembedding” of the State, 1870-1930 ......................................................... 19! Chapter 2. Legitimating Big Business: Moral Discourse and the Construction of the Corporate Actor by the Press ............................................................................................................. 77! Chapter 3. Personifying the Corporation in Ordinary Language: Embodiment and Moral Attitudes .......................................................................................................................... 127! Conclusion: A Moral Corporate Economy ................................................................................. 157! Appendices for Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................... 161! Appendix for Chapter 3 .............................................................................................................. 174! References ................................................................................................................................... 175! iv Acknowledgments My dissertation is an attempt to grapple with a simple yet vexing theoretical puzzle: how is a collective entity constructed from the joint action of individuals? It is perhaps appropriate, then, that what emerged from this project is so thoroughly a joint construction. This dissertation would simply not exist if not for the collective wisdom of so many invisible co-authors. First and foremost, I must thank my committee, without whose intellectual guidance this initially unwieldly project would have surely never made it off the ground. Greta Krippner’s work has been an inspiration to me long before she joined my committee and remains the first place I turn for a model of how one should do theoretically compelling, historically sensitive sociology. Her conversations, guidance, and encouragement to push the project deeper helped me throughout this process more than she can know. Jason Beckfield has been a mentor since my first years of graduate school. Jason sharpens any project that he advises, and I constantly find myself marveling at his ability to shine a light through even the thickest of theoretical or empirical morasses. Bart Bonikowski has been a mentor, theoretical fellow traveler, and friend. Bart has that rare ability to see the potential in a project no matter how deeply it is buried, and I’m very grateful he has consistently seen the potential in mine. And finally, in Frank I could not have found a better advisor. Frank combined his sharp (sometimes seemingly endless) critiques with an unmatched generosity with his time in deliberating with me how to address them. Throughout this project, Frank held me to the highest of standards and offered unwavering kindness in pushing me to reach them. Frank, thank you for believing me in me no matter how seemingly crazy or undoable a research proposal I presented to you. In graduate school, I have learned that behind any committee stands a “shadow committee.” In my case, I likely involuntarily enlisted the greater part of Harvard’s graduate v student body into such a group. My fellow economic sociologists in Frank’s research group provided a consistent source of feedback and support. I thank Curtis Chang, Alicia DeSantola, Vince Feng, Leroy Gonsalves, Gru Han, Dong Ju Lee, Ben Snyder, Nathan Wilmers, and LT Zhang for their years of insights. In the final year of writing, our dissertation writing group added words of encouragement and structure. I thank Aaron Benavidez, Hope Harvey, Charlotte Llyod, Katie Morris, Cassie Robertson, Alix Winter, and Xiaolin Zhuo for their feedback and support. My “Social Studies” community provided theoretical insight and a secondary departmental home: I thank Don Tontiplaphol, Rebecca Ploof, Daragh Grant, Kate Anabele, and Katie Greene for their friendship and warmth. I benefitted from the help of many working groups along the way: The Tobin Project, the workshop on History, Culture, and Society, the Economic Sociology Seminar, and the Harvard History of Capitalism Seminar. Research cannot exist without communities to foster its development, and these groups have been essential to mine. Finally, a number of friends and colleagues have talked through the ideas in these chapters since their nascence. I thank Stefan Beljean, Yascha Mounk, Allie Feldberg, Emma Saunders-Hastings, Adam Goldstein, Jeremy Levine, Matt Launder, Kristin Perkins, David Pedulla, Jack Spencer, Mathieu Desan, Jonah Stuart-Brundage, Nick Wilson, Damon Mayrl, Kinga Makovi, Dan Schrage, and Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan for being not only the best of intellectual interlocutors but the dearest of friends. My family has been a source of unwavering support from the beginning of my declaration that I was giving up the lucrative path of management consulting to pursue a “life of the mind.” Mom and Dad, I have been able to take risks in life only because I know that you will support me no matter how things turn out. Thank you for giving me the most precious gift a vi parent can give to their child: the freedom the find their own way. And, finally, Nikki, you know that I have no other partner in this craziness but you. Thank you for always picking up the phone. Finally, I wish to return to friendship. Writing a dissertation can, at times, feel like balancing on the razor’s edge of loneliness, and this was particularly true in the final stages of this project. In a season of loss, my friends were unfaltering. Carl, you’ve been an intellectual companion, best friend, and co-conspirator since the beginning of our shared love for corporate history. I could not be more excited about our future projects together. And I must end by thanking the women in my life who saw this project through from start to finish. They showed up every single time I reached out—to talk through ideas, to read chapters, to build and rebuild framing—and many, many more times when I did not. I trust no one’s opinion more than that of these brilliant, irreverent, and sharp-witted women. Jordan Kyle, Vanessa Williamson, Ekedi Mpondo-Dika, Kim Pernell-Gallagher, Eleni Arzoglou, Laura Adler, Jasmin Sandelson: I am endlessly thankful to count you as my colleagues and as my friends. Finally, Barbara Kiviat has had a hand in this project from the very beginning. She’s been my biggest champion, read chapters more times than I care to recall, has struggled alongside me over wording, and never blinked in her belief that this project was worthwhile. Every dissertator