Week 11 - Corporation as People

8/7/2019 Week 11 - Corporation as People

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CORPORATIONS

AS PERSONSWeek 11, G205 - Gendered Ads & Global Consumer IdentityBose and Lyons and The Corporation

Upcoming, Week 12Read Naomi Klein:Ch. 16 on Tues./18 on Thurs.

No Blog #5 ± Please turn in all outstanding work and extra credit by the end of nextweek or no credit.



Corporations as ³Natural´ Persons� In the United States, corporations were recognized as having rights to

contract, and to have those contracts honored the same as contractsentered into by natural persons, in Dartmouth College v. Woodward ,decided in 1819.

� In the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad ,

118 U.S. 394, the Supreme Court recognized that corporations werepersons for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment.� The Corporation asserts the initial legislation interpreted by the

court in 1819 was intended to apply to f reed slaves. ³307 lawsuits were br ought before the court: 19 by f reed slaves and 288by corporations.´

� Some critics of corporate personhood, such as Thom Hartmann inhis book "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance andthe Theft of Human Rights," claims this history was an intentionalmisinterpretation of the case inserted into the Court record by reporter J.C. Bancroft Davis. Bancroft Davis had previously served aspresident of Newburgh and New York Railway Co.



What is a person?� A human beingregarded as anindividual;

� a category to denote aspeaker (example first,second, third personwriting)

Oxford English Dictionary

� Category used todenote a corporationwhich is an artificial

person.1 Bl. Com. 123; 4 Bing. 669; C. 33Eng. C. L R. 488; Woodes. Lect. 116;Bac. Us. 57; 1 Mod. 164.



Definition of Corporation

A corporation is a legal entity created by state law toaccomplish a stated purpose.

Three Types:1. Corporations for profit

2. Corporations not for profit

3. Government owned corporations



Privileges of Corporate Personhood

� Corporations are distinct legal entities which existseparate from shareholders as shareholders have limitedliability.

� Corporations can engage in civil litigation.� Corporations can own property (called ³islanding´ in

transnational real estate interactions, Bose and Lyons).

� Corporations are immortal.

Is this an ultimate way to escape gender?

How have we understood personhood (subjectivity) thusfar?



Ponderous

� How have we understood personhood (subjectivity) thusfar?� Binary opposition

�Body as visible proof of difference (inherent/innate/essential)

� Sexed as male/female

� Sexed body experienced through adherence to gender norms.

� Gender is experientially different for males and females via their various embodiment of and associations with masculinity and

femininity.� Sex, Gender are assumed to be dimorphic and mutually

exclusive, invariant, fixed, and constant across time andspace. Heterosexuality or a sexual attraction to the³opposite sex,´ is a condition of this norm.



The Corporation (QW#6) Discussion

� What role do corporations play in your life?

� What kind of person is the corporation, according to thefilmmakers?

� Do you agree/disagree?� Should corporations have the same rights as

individuals?

� Other questions from your worksheet?

� Other questions in general?



Madonna¶sAf r ican Char ity Displaced Villagers and Wasted $3.8Million

March 28, 2011Source: The Atlantic

It seemed like a wonderful plan. Madonna would build a $15 million academy for 400 impoverished girls inMalawi. Her charity, Raising Malawi, collected $18 million and the project had the support of elite Hollywoodcircles and the Jewish mysticism group Kabbalah Centre International. Unfortunately, it ended up doingmore harm than good, reports The New York Times. According to a damning audit, the manager¶s of the school pr oject, which was abandoned in Januar y, wasted $3.8 million on lavish pur chases such as cars, chauff eurs, golf course memberships and f ree housing.

³The project has not broken ground, there was no title to the land and there was, over all, a startling lack of accountability on the part of the management team in Malawi and the management team in the UnitedStates,´ said Trevor Neilson, a philanthropist recruited by Madonna to examine problems at the charity. ³Wehave yet to determine exactly what happened to all of that $3.8 million. We have not accounted for all thefunds that were used.´

� Making matters worse, The Guardian notes that the 117-acre constr uction site had for ced Malawian villagers f r om their ancestral land for what they thought would be a thr iving school.

Upon lear ning that the pr oject had been scrapped in Januar y, village elders were fur ious and the Malawian gover nment summoned Madonna to explain herself .

At the time, Madonna said her plans changed because ³I want to reach thousands, not hundreds of girls´referring to a new plan to build high schools across the country. But, according to the Times, that¶s not whather adviser, Trevor Neilson, is recommending she do. ³He told her that building an expensive school inMalawi was an ineffective form of philanthropy, and suggested instead using resources to finance educationprograms though existing and proven nongovernmental organizations,´ writes the Times.

In response to the audit, Madonna issued the following statement:There¶s a real education crisis in Malawi. Sixty-seven percent of girls don¶t go to secondary school, and this is simply unacceptable. Our team is going to work hard to address this inevery way we can«While I¶m proud of these accomplishments, I¶m frustrated that our education work has not moved forward in a faster way.



de Certeau

Strategies of Producers

(1) The "proper" is a triumph of place over time.

(2) It is also a mastery of places throughsight. The division of space makespossible a panoptic practiceproceeding from a place whence theeye can transform foreign forces intoobjects that can be observed andmeasured, and thus control and"include" them within its scope of vision. To be able to see (far into thedistance) is also to be able to predict,

to run ahead of time by reading aspace.

(3) The power of knowledge is the abilityto transform the uncertainties of history into readable spaces.

Tactics of Users of Products

� procedures that gain validity inrelation to the pertinence they

lend to time--to thecircumstances which theprecise instant of anintervention transforms into afavorable situation, to therapidity of the movements thatchange the organization of a

space, to the relations amongsuccessive moments in anaction, to the possibleintersections of durations andheterogeneous rhythms,etc.(38)



MULTINATIONAL

& TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS

� First MNC was Dutch East India Co (1602),granted monopoly in colonial trade. Today,UN estimates about 62,000 MNCs with900,000 affiliates.

Review:� Moder nity in America occurred over

several hundred years and is most oftenassociated with the rise of industry (factories, urbanization, etc.) in the 19th andearly 20th centuries.

� Globalization describes an ongoing process by which regional economies,societies, and cultures have becomeintegrated through globe-spanningnetworks of communication and trade; a process whereby an increased portion of economic or other activity is carried outacross national borders.

Discussion Questions:

� Why do nations trade goods and services?What are gains from specializedproduction?

� How economically important are foreigndirect investments of multi- and

transnational corporations? Who benefitsmost from FDI (Foreign DirectInvestments)?

� Is a sinister network of interlocked firmsdominating the world economy, using itspolitical power to oppress?

� Who can compel MNCs to become moreaccountable corporate citizens?



Where¶s the Gender?

Producers Consumers



Bose and Lyons,

Critical Corporation Studies



MODERNITY & GLOBALIZATIONCITIZENSHIPCONSUMERISM

IDENTITYGENDER

Review from first eight weeks (A. Berger, Peiss, Rooks)



Gender

Personhood

� Peiss and gendered

spaces: women at home,men = work, thenshopping = Woman asconsumer = Leisure(feminized, docile, not

work)

� Women as a mass

Citizenship

� ³way of life´ or

´lifestyle´=class status=respectability =consumer citizenship (p1, Peiss)

� Corporate Citizens?



Racialized Spaces / Gendered Spaces

(Lutz & Collins)First world� ³Real´ people� Machine usage

� White� Active

Third World� Space of ³fantasy´� Ritual practices

� Passive� Colorism by activity(dark skin=more labor,poor, infantile)

� Women represent

³women of the world´� Women signify³Universal Humanpowers´



Corporation for President?

� On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court overturned a20-year-old ruling that had previously prohibitedcorporations and unions from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaignads.



The Corporation

Board notes� Modernity ± Industry

� Productivity - Capitalism� 1st v. 3rd World

� Democracy ?³a form of government in which the people have a voice in theexercise of power, typically through elected representatives.´ (OED)

� Subjectivity/Citizenship

� How do we understand economics as a gendering or genderedprocess?



Gender

� Established psychological, social, and representationaldifferences between men and women.

� The socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and

attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women, often approached through masculinityand f emininity.

� Gender is far more than a synonym or euphemism for thebiological distinction between the sexes. It is a

fundamental framework for how we view, know, andcategorize the world in general.



Citizenship

� ³Way of life´=classstatus=respectability=feminine identity throughleisure=consumer citizenship (KathyPeiss)

� Peiss argues thatwomen held uprespectability as apart of their identitythrough class status,

however, she fails tonote the ways in whichracial constructs areconstitutive of that³respectability.´

� Black elites' response and challenge to whitesupremacy. It was a seemingly contradictory

position as both an aspiring social class and a

racially subordinated caste denied all politicalrights and protections, struggling to definethemselves within a society founded on whitedominance.

� accompanied by a practical methodology of self-help. Self-help sought to refute the view that African Americans were biologically inferior andunassimilable by incorporating "the race" intoostensibly universal but deeply racializedideological categories of Western progress andcivilization.

� black elites claimed class distinctions -- indeed,the very existence of a "better class" of blacksserved as evidence of what they called raceprogress. They believed that the improvementof African Americans' material and moralcondition through self-help would diminish white

racism.

Rooks & Racial Uplift



Citizenship

& Citizens

Citizenship

� a native or naturalized member of a state or other political community

� the status of a citizen with rights and dutiesconduct as a citizen; "award for good citizenship"

Citizen

� A person that is a legally recognized as a

member of a state, with associated rights andobligations;

� A member of a state that is not a monarchy; usedas antonym to subject;

� A person that is a legally recognized resident of a city or town; A resident of any particular placeto which the subject; a native or naturalizedmember of a state or other political community



Consumer and Consume� What is a consumer?� ±noun� 1. a person or thing that consumes.� 2. Economics . a person or organization that uses a commodity or service.� 3. Ecology . an organism, usually an animal, that feeds on plants or other animals.

�� To consume:� ±verb (used with object)� 1. to destroy or expend by use; use up.� 2. to eat or drink up; devour.� 3. to destroy, as by decomposition or burning: Fire consumed the forest.� 4. to spend (money, time, etc.) wastefully.

� 5. to absorb; engross: consumed with curiosity.� ±verb (used without object)� 6. to undergo destruction; waste away.� 7. to use or use up consumer goods.



WhiteHouse aims to 'install' democracy inLibyaThe White House is shifting toward the more aggressive goal in Libya of ousting PresidentMoammar Gadhafi and "installing a democratic system," actions that fall outside the UnitedNations Security Council resolution under which an international coalition is now acting,according to a conversation between President Obama and Turkey's prime minister.

Obama and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke late Monday and "underscored their shared commitment to the goal of helping provide the Libyan people an opportunity totransform their country, by installing a democratic system that respects the people's will,"

according to a White House report on the phone call.The rhetoric matches Obama's reiteration on Monday that it is still U.S. policy that "Gadhafineeds to go.³

But it is a marked contrast to the U.S.-led military mission as defined by the U.N. resolution.

"There's not a U.N. Security Council resolution mandating regime change in Libya that we're

acting to enforce," national security aide Ben Rhodes said Monday. "We're acting to enforce aresolution that has the immediate goal of protecting civilians."

http://washingtonexaminer.com/print/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/03/white-house-aims-install-democracy-libyaBy H ayley PetersonCreated Mar 22 2011 - 11:32am

Published on Washington Examiner (http://washingtonexaminer.com)

Week 11 - Corporation as People

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