Chair: Benjamin Waterhouse, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“Shady Dealings: Deception and Fraud in Nineteenth-Century U. S. Business”
Stuart Anderson-Davis, Columbia University
“Oil Horizons: Monopoly Capital in the Texas ‘Petroleum Complex,’ 1900-1940”
Reinhold Martin, Columbia University
“The Folklore of Free Enterprise: Thurman Arnold’s New Deal”
Richard R. John, Columbia University
“Power Move: How Law and Public Policy Reshaped
the Late-Twentieth-Century U. S. Firm”
Laura Phillips-Sawyer, University of Georgia
Commentator: Christoper McKenna, Oxford University
This panel highlights four different kinds of “boundary maintenance” in U. S. business history. For Anderson-Davis, the boundary separates legitimate business from fraud; for Martin, different theories of labor; for John, contrasting understandings of an influential concept; and for Sawyer, the firm and the market.
The panelists are at different stages in their careers and rely on different methods. Anderson-Davis hails from communications; Martin from architecture; John from history; and Sawyer from law.
Our chair and commentator are well-known in the field.