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Du Pont Turns 150: Corporate Culture as Public Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2019

TAYLOR ALEXANDRA CURRIE
TAYLOR ALEXANDRA CURRIE*
Affiliation:
Taylor Alexandra Currie is a doctoral candidate in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, under the supervision of Dr. Jeffrey Brison and Dr. Blaine Allan. Her research explores the construction of corporate image and culture through public relations during the twentieth century. E-mail: 12tac5@queensu.ca
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Abstract

This article details the ways in which the executives of Du Pont used the chemical company’s 150th-anniversary festivities in 1952 and its associated sponsored media as an opportunity to explicitly link the history of the company with the history of the nation. This was an attempt to legitimatize the company’s existence and its ultraconservative worldview, espouse free trade, and fight antitrust litigation. This article explores the conflation of private and public history in Du Pont-sponsored anniversary materials to illustrate how corporate public relations meant for private corporate consumption reverberated into a shared American public culture.

Type
Article
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 445 - 474
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2019. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved. 

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References

Bibliography of Works Cited

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Suddaby, Roy, Foster, William M., and Quinn Trank, Chris. “Rhetorical History as a Source of Competitive Advantage.” Globalization of Strategy Research (March 2015): 147–173. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0742-3322(2010)0000027009Google Scholar
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Alpers, Benjamin L. Dictators, Democracy & American Public Culture: Envisioning the Totalitarian Enemy, 1920s–1950s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Bird, William Jr. “Better Living”: Advertising, Media and the New Vocabulary of Business Leadership, 1935–1955. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Brayman, Harold. Corporate Management in a World of Politics: The Public, Political, and Governmental Problems of Business . New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967.Google Scholar
Christiansen, Erik. Channeling the Past: Politicizing History in Postwar America. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Cross, Gary. An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America. New York: Columbia University, 2002.Google Scholar
Davis, Clark. Company Men: White-Collar Life and Corporate Cultures in Los Angeles, 1892–1941. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Du Pont Company. Du Pont: Autobiography of an American Enterprise. New York: Simon & Scribner, 1952.Google Scholar
Engelbrecht, H. C., and Hanighen, F. C. Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1934.Google Scholar
Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth. Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945–1960. Champaign: University of Illinois, 1994.Google Scholar
Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth. Waves of Oppositions: Labor and the Struggle for Democratic Radio. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Grams, Martin Jr. The Official Guide to the History of the Cavalcade of America presented by Du Pont. Kearney, NE: Morris Publishing, 1998.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Translated by Burger, Thomas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Hariman, Robert, and Lucaites, John Louis. No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture and Liberal Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Harris, Howell John. The Right to Manage: Industrial Relations Policies of American Business in the 1940s. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Horne, Donald. The Public Culture: The Triumph of Industrialism. London: Pluto Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Hounshell, David A., and Smith, Kenly Jr.. Science and Corporate Strategy: Du Pont R&D, 1920–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1988.Google Scholar
Kinnane, Adrian. Du Pont: From the Brandywine to the Miracles of Science. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University, 2002.Google Scholar
Marchand, Roland. Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940. Berkley: University of California Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Marchand, Roland. Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business. Berkley: University of California Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Miller, Karen S. The Voice of Business: Hill & Knowlton and Postwar Public Relations. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Ndiaye, Pap A. Nylon and Bombs: DuPont and the March of Modern America. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Nye, David E. Image Worlds: Corporate Identities at General Electric, 1890–1930. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1985.Google Scholar
O’Connor, Kaori. Lyrca: How a Fabric Shaped America. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2011.Google Scholar
Olins, Wally. The Corporate Personality: An Inquiry into the Nature of Corporate Identity. London: Design Council, 1978.Google Scholar
Phillips-Fein, Kim. Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009.Google Scholar
Raucher, Alan R. Public Relations and Business: 1900–1929. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins Press, 1968.Google Scholar
Reed Myers, Polly. Capitalist Family Values: Gender, Work, and Corporate Culture at Boeing. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaffer, Marguerite S., ed. Public Culture: Diversity, Democracy, and Community in the United States. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2012.Google Scholar
Tedlow, Richard S. Keeping the Corporate Image: Public Relations and Business, 1900–1950 . Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Wall, Wendy L. Inventing the “American Way:” The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement. Oxford: Oxford University, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitfield, Stephen J. The Culture of the Cold War, 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University, 1996.Google Scholar
Foster, William M., Coraiol, Diego M., Suddaby, Roy, Kroezen, Jochem, and Chandler, David. “The Strategic Use of Historical Narratives: A Theoretical Framework.” Business History 59, no. 8 (2017): 1176–1200. https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2016.1224234CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hariman, Robert. 2016. “Public Culture.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.32Google Scholar
Kupiec Clayton, Mary. “What Is Public Culture? Agency and Contested Meaning in American Culture—An Introduction.” In Public Culture: Diversity, Democracy, and Community in the United States, edited by Shaffer, Marguerite S.. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Mordhorst, Mads. “Arla and Danish National Identity—Business History as Cultural History.” Business History, 56, no. 1, (October 2013): 116–133. https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2013.818422CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheehan, Steven T. “Better Citizens through Better Living: Consumer Culture and Corporate Capital in Employee Communications and Public Relations at Du Pont Chemical, 1945–1960.” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies 12 (2010): 55–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suddaby, Roy, Foster, William M., and Quinn Trank, Chris. “Rhetorical History as a Source of Competitive Advantage.” Globalization of Strategy Research (March 2015): 147–173. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0742-3322(2010)0000027009Google Scholar
Better Living MagazineGoogle Scholar
Du Pont MagazineGoogle Scholar
Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, DEGoogle Scholar