Paula de la Cruz-Fernández

2020 Charlotte, North Carolina

Abstract: This study focuses on the multinational Singer Sewing Machine Company from a gender and cultural perspective. Though multinationals’ operations capacity to influence and structure the global marketplace is undeniable (Coffin 1983, Domosh 2005, de Grazia 2006, Arnold 2011, Gordon 2012), I argue that ideas and perceptions of women’s work and evolving domesticity ideologies had a central role in shaping economic transformation and global business in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Feminist and gender historians have examined the place and role of women in business, arguing not only that a history of the corporation without considering women was incomplete, but also demonstrating that women were front runners of companies in a varied and extensive list of industries (Kwolek-Folland 1994, Gamber 1997, Gálvez Muñoz & Fernández Pérez, 2007, Lewis 2009). My analysis goes deeper by looking at the financial and cultural strategies that women used to support their families and the economic and cultural well-being of their homes, and how these made them participants and makers of capitalism as they were so intimately related to the growth of one of the largest US multinational companies. This paper explores credit opportunities, sewing and embroidery practices, cultural practices in relation to work and home production, and women’s consumption and production activities using Singer sewing machines in Spain and Mexico between 1860 and 1940. These are all factors that demonstrate the reaches of business into the private sphere; an important perspective that also brings back the study of the multinational enterprise as a culturally embedded organization, an approach mostly ignored within the scholarship of international business history.

2020 Charlotte, North Carolina

Abstract: The online index Inquire Capitalism is a searchable database with over 500 entries of companies in United States that have, in some way, dealt with their historical archives or pursue a project to write a history of the company whether online or in print. The database seeks to grow in the coming months to include at least all entries mentioned in the German Historical Institute resource “Business History in the United States: A Guide to Archival Collections” (Snyder, 2010) and Hagley’s finding aids (https://findingaids.hagley.org/). As research continues, the entries from these resources also become updated and complete, including all digital initiatives that archives have conducted and scholarship on the company. While my presentation will introduce the audience to the online database and the options that it offers to researchers and companies as well as the challenges that have come up as we produced what is available at the moment, I also focus on how business historians are key in making archival and finding resources meaningful. Inquire Capitalism follows library and archival standards to align with ongoing outlines for information management and discoverability, but it also includes specific keywords and bibliographies that require experience in the field. This presentation also examines the ways in which digital technology transforms archives, historical narrative and how this is presented to the public, and also the work of business historians. The next step of this project is to uncover unused, hidden, or not online-available collections, which as we move internationally will increase even more. The ultimate goal is foster connections and research from around the world as we create an international database that can connect historians, archives, and companies in creative ways.

2023 Detroit, MI, United States

2026 London