This panel seeks to explore the fringes of business history. We are interested in bringing together scholars who work on what we have loosely termed “murky business,” i.e. businesses, professions and industries that operate on the margins of what was considered reputable business in different times, societies and cultures. From hospitality and entertainment to areas such as fringe banking or second hand retailing, numerous - and often small and ephemeral - businesses played a vital role in economic history, yet their histories often remain obscure. While legal, such businesses frequently struggled with questions of legitimacy or respectability. Because of their business model or due to the nature of their services, they appeared as lacking transparency or even “shady” to contemporary observers.
To probe into the world of “murky business”, the papers in this panel seek two interrelated themes. First, we ask about the much-debated interrelationship between markets and morality. How and why did certain businesses face reputational challenges and what strategies did they pursue to respond to perceptions of illegitimacy? Second, we are interested in the opportunities and problems in investigating such “murky businesses” as part of businesses history more generally. As with many small businesses, business records and similar archival sources are frequently hard to come by. Materials from industry associations along with media sources and – in part – records about legal disputes or police investigations offer only indirect windows or specific views into the world of “murky businesses”. What strategies and archives can scholars pursue to better chart and understand these fringes of business history?
The panel offers three different case studies from the 19th and 20th centuries. The paper of Simon Ville looks at a relatively unknown type of business – the global barter trading of “rare and curious” items and artifacts overseen by museums in Australia and elsewhere during the 19th century. Researching this murky business and the opaque deals this entailed helps to illuminate the provenance of cultural items that today is much debated in a postcolonial context. Marcus Böick’s paper analyzes the rise of private security firms in Europe since the early 20th century. Suspiciously eyed by law enforcement and the media, security firms themselves often worried about issues of legitimacy e.g. in selecting their personnel and partially pushed for state regulation of the emerging market. Jan Logemann looks at the funeral business in transatlantic perspective. Funeral homes on both sides of the Atlantic long struggled with questions of legitimacy for at least two reasons: on the one hand because of the culturally taboo character of the service they offered and, on the other hand, because of concerns that their business model took undue advantage of consumers in times of need.
All three papers investigate business strategies of addressing concerns about the morality of their business, addressing different (not always successful) modes of establishing reputability. All papers also draw on a variety of sources and engage the question of how we can better explore the often “murky” fringes of the business landscape.
Panel Program:
Chair: Laura Phillips Sawyer, University of Georgia
Reinventing traditional markets in the first era of globalisation: the international barter trade in natural history specimens, 1860-1900
Simon Ville, University of Wollongong / Harvard University
”A Business with fear”? Private Security Companies and their never-ending struggle for state recognition and public acceptance in the US and Europe during the 20th century
Marcus Böick, Bochum University / Harvard University
“Funeral Trusts” and Pietät: Transatlantic Differences in Establishing Respectability in Funeral Markets since the late 19th Century
Jan Logemann, University of Göttingen
Comment: Vicki Howard, University of Essex