Lyn Spillman - Solidarity in Strategy

Lyn Spillman is the author of Nation and Commemoration: Creating National Identities in the United States and Australia. She teaches sociology at the University of Notre Dame.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

2012 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 2012.

Printed in the United States of America

21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-76956-1 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-76957-8 (paper)

ISBN-10: 0-226-76956-9 (cloth)

ISBN-10: 0-226-76957-7 (paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-76955-4 (e-book)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Spillman, Lyn.

Solidarity in strategy : making business meaningful in American trade associations / Lyn Spillman.

pages ; cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-76956-1 (cloth : alkaline paper)

ISBN-10: 0-226-76956-9 (cloth : alkaline paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-76957-8 (paperback : alkaline paper)

ISBN-10: 0-226-76957-7 (paperback : alkaline paper) 1. Trade associationsUnited States. 2. Business anthropologyUnited States. 3. EconomicsUnited StatesSociological aspects. 4. CapitalismSocial aspectsUnited States. I. Title.

HD2425.S65 2012

381.0684dc23

2011050359

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

LYN SPILLMAN

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO AND LONDON

This book explores how economic interests are meaningful by examining American business associations. Both the general question and the specific focus open new territory, and so my argumentsthat solidarity is as important as strategy for the pursuit of economic interests, and that business associations many and various activities are fundamentally about meaning-makinghave been built up through many iterations. Clifford Geertzs observation that every serious cultural analysis starts from a sheer beginning and ends where it manages to get before exhausting its intellectual impulse captures a truth about this process but elides the support sustaining its ambition.

The sheer beginning of this work was made possible by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Their reputation for supporting intellectual innovation is well deserved, and as a beneficiary I am grateful. Also important for stimulating the project were extended visits to the Sociology Departments of Northwestern University and the University of Arizona, and the conversation and hospitality of Al Bergesen, Ron Breiger, Bruce Carruthers, Mark Chaves, Lis Clemens, Wendy Espeland, Gary Fine, Joe Galaskiewicz, Wendy Griswold, Kieran Healy, Carol Heimer, Paul Hirsch, Patricia Ledesma Libana, Peter Levin, Linda Molm, Ami Nagle, William Ocasio, John Sherry, Joel Stillerman, Art Stinchcombe, Susan Thistle, Marc Ventresca, and Katie Zaloom.

The ASA/NSF Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline helped support my census of national business associations, now publically available at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. The Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts (ISLA) in the College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame, provided a Research Materials Grant toward that work and also helped in several ways at later stages of the project. I appreciate their support and all the good work ISLA does by offering practical resources for furthering research agendas.

The association census relied heavily on the collaboration of Rui Gao, whose impressive command of the abstract issues and empirical detail involved are evident in the coding protocols she developed. Brian Miller and Georgian Schiopu also contributed smart work on the census data. Xiohong Xu helped complete that work and skillfully prepared the preliminary data analysis. As excellent scholars with their own interesting projects in cultural and historical sociology, they bore with good humor reminders of Webers admonition that no sociologist... should think himself too good... to make tens of thousands of quite trivial computations. Joe Rumbo and Lisa Sustman provided research assistance as the project took shape, and Hyae Jeong Joo, Dan Pasch, and Sarah Shafiq helped with later work. Elizabeth Blakey Martinez provided extensive research that was especially helpful for the new analytical history of American business associations in , and offered smart theoretical reflections on deeper issues they raised.

Midway in what turned out to be the arc of the study, I was welcomed as a Visiting Fellow of the Center for Cultural Sociology in the Sociology Department at Yale University. I want to thank Jeff Alexander for that opportunity and for his patient support of the work from its beginning.

The centers seriousness of purpose and commitment to the power of cultural explanation made welcome space for thinking through and organizing my larger argument. Presentations to responsive audiences at several of the centers conferences and colloquia helped that process. Julia Adams, Ates Altinordu, Scott Boorman, Hannah Brueckner, Phil Gorski, Nadya Jaworsky, Karl Ulrich Meyer, Philip Smith, and Frdric Vandenberghe were helpful interlocutors there. Lisa McCormick provided a valuable critique, and Isaac Reed and Matthew Norton managed the publication of an early version of what later expanded to become : A Special Camaraderie with Colleagues: Business Associations and Cultural Production for Economic Action, in Meaning and Method: The Cultural Approach to Sociology, ed. Isaac Reed and Jeffrey C. Alexander (Boulder and London: Paradigm Publishers, 2009). (Thanks to Matt Norton, too, for reports of the Fetish Priest and Traditional Healers Association of Ghana.)

Many other scholars offered thoughtful responses to various parts of the work. Im grateful to participants in the Culture and Society Workshop at Northwestern University; the Georgia Workshop on Culture, Power, and History; the Emory Bogardus Colloquium Series of the Sociology Department at the University of Southern California; and the International Research Conference on Culture and Power at the Institute for Social Research, Oslo. Audiences at several annual meetings of the American Sociological Association as well as meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society, the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, the Social Science History Association, and the International Sociological Associations XVII World Congress of Sociology also helped improve the work. Thanks to Howard Becker, Fredrik Engelstadt, Marion Fourcade, Joan Hermsen, David Johnson, Alexandra Kalev, Terry McDonnell, Aaron Pitluck, Bill Roy, Sheryl Skaggs, and David Smilde for comments and critique.

Ann Swidler helped with important contributions and suggestions at several critical stages of the project, as well as with her friendly, optimistic interest. Nina Eliasoph, Kim Hays, Paul Lichterman, Isaac Reed, and Susan Thistle read and responded to early versions of some chapters, and Im grateful for both their thoughtful reactions and their friendship.

A long-term project like this inevitably accrues more intellectual debts than are easily remembered, even by some of my helpful creditors. Among those to whom Im indebted for discussion and help are Mabel Berezin, Gerald Berk, Denise Bielby, Mark Chaves, Paul DiMaggio, Greg Ellis, Christine Ellis, Tiago Fernandes, Bai Gao, Robert Fishman, Roger Friedland, David Hachen, Mark D. Jacobs, Felicia LeClere, Daniel Levy, Michael Lounsbury, John Mohr, Michael Moody, Penny Moore, Calvin Morrill, Chuck Myers, Peggy ONeill, Lauren Rivera, Abigail Saguy, Marc Schneiberg, Michael Schudson, Barry Schwartz, Abbee Smith, Ken Spillman, Erika Summers-Effler, Richard Swedberg, Jan Thomas, Fred Wherry, and JoAnn Yates. Thank you.