Cultural Critique and the Global Corporation

Purnima Bose is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Cultural Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington. She is author of Organizing Empire: Individualism, Collective Agency, and India.Laura E. Lyons is Associate Professor of English at the University of Hawai'i.

"Corporations and their CEOs are in the position of Scheherazade. As long as they have a story to tell that is at least captivating enough they can keep themselves alive for one more day. But there is increasing demand that these narratives be reliable and have some mimetic accuracy. Within the complex web of social, political and economic relationships that constitute 'the world of business,' some stories are getting harder to sell."—from the introduction

• ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Toward a Critical Corporate Studies \ Purnima Bose and Laura E. Lyons1. General Electric, Corporate Personhood, and the Emergence of the Professional Manager \ Purnima Bose2. Dole, Hawai'i, and the Question of Land under Globalization \ Laura E. Lyons3. "To Build a Better World": Bechtel, a Family Company \ Heather Zwicker4. Diamonds, IDBism, and De Beers \ Barbara Harlow5. Necessity and Desire: Water and Coca-Cola in India \ S. Shankar6. Mind Your Own Business: Cisco Systems in the Power/Knowledge Network \ John ZuernAfterword \ Christopher NewfieldContributorsIndex