Victoria Hattam

Political Creativity: Reconfiguring Institutional Order and Change

Introduction: Beyond Dualist Social Science: The Mangle of Order and Change PART I. RELATIONALITY Chapter 1. Processes of Creative Syncretism: Experiential Origins of Institutional Order and Change -Gerald Berk and Dennis C. Galvan Chapter 2. Ecological Explanation -Chris Ansell Chapter 3. Governance Architectures for Learning and Self-Recomposition in Chinese Industrial Upgrading -Gary Herrigel, Volker Wittke, and Ulrich Voskamp Chapter 4. Reconfiguring Industry Structure: Obama and the Rescue of the Auto Companies -Steven Amberg PART II. ASSEMBLAGE Chapter 5. Animating Institutional Skeletons: The Contributions of Subaltern Resistance to the Reinforcement of Land Boards in Botswana -Ato Kwamena Onoma Chapter 6. Creating Political Strategy, Controlling Political Work: Edward Bernays and the Emergence of the Political Consultant -Adam Sheingate Chapter 7. Accidental Hegemony: How the System of National Accounts Became a Global Institution -Yoshiko M. Herrera Chapter 8. The Fluidity of Labor Politics in Postcommunist Transitions: Rethinking the Narrative of Russian Labor Quiescence -Rudra Sil PART III. TIME Chapter 9. From Birmingham to Baghdad: The Micropolitics of Partisan Identification -Victoria Hattam and Joseph Lowndes Chapter 10. The Trouble with Amnesia: Collective Memory and Colonial Injustice in the United States -Kevin Bruyneel Chapter 11. Interest in the Absence of Articulation: Small Business and Islamist Parties in Algeria -Deborah Harrold Conclusion: An Invitation to Political Creativity Notes List of Contributors Index Acknowledgments

Ethnicity & the boundaries of race: rereading Directive 15

gories current in American life can be traced to an obscure government edict: Statistical Policy Directive No. 15, promulgated by the Of1⁄2ce of Management and Budget (omb) on May 12, 1977.1 Although the directive was of1⁄2cially limited to federal statistics and administrative reporting, its categories quickly became the de facto standard for American society at large, setting the terms ever since for racial and ethnic classi1⁄2cation in the United States. The omb categories–speci1⁄2cally the Census Bureau’s use of them–are currently being renegotiated. Stripped of important particulars, the question on the table is whether Hispanics, to use the Census Bureau term, will continue to be classi1⁄2ed as an ethnic group and not as a race. Ethnicity has long served to establish the boundaries of race by marking the dividing line between black and white. Where that line is drawn, who is designated as an ethnic, establishes the terms within which racial politics is waged in the United States.2 To comprehend the political choices at hand, we need to recover the somewhat arcane history of Directive 15. Retracing the omb race categories is no simple antiquarian delight; it is required currency for following contemporary debates over racial classi1⁄2cation and politics in the twenty-1⁄2rst-century United States. Directive 15 was initially created as a means of standardizing the racial and ethnic categories used in government statistics. These data took on new political import after the passage of several civil rights laws. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the Equal

Imperial designs: Remembering Vietnam at the US–Mexico border wall

Portable helicopter landing mats designed for Vietnam have been reused to build large sections of the US–Mexico border wall. The Army Corps of Engineers provided institutional links between these two geographically distant imperial projects. After documenting the historical connections between war and wall, I shift the analytic lens to show how mid-century modernism and imperial foreign policy were entangled aesthetically. General Westmoreland, Agnes Martin, Sol LeWitt, and Richard Serra all draw from the same social imaginary. Substantive political disagreements notwtihstanding, geometric grids animated aesthetic affinities that have made it more difficult to perceive, let alone critique or dislodge, the long tentacles of American imperialism.

The whiteness of capital

Everyday language anticipates capital mobility. Capital flows and liquid assets are invoked at every turn. But language deceives. There is nothing inherently mobile about capital: it is made mobile through an extensive network of structures and policies that enable capital to move. SWIFT codes, financial passporting, cross-border sweeping, and laser visas create conditions under which capital moves. As long as the mahouts of capital remain out of sight, capital mobility is naturalised and removed from political scrutiny. Following whiteness studies, I examine a wide array of facilitation policies that allow capital to move and in so doing uncover the linkages forged between race and class established through mobility and immobility (Alcoff, 2015; Baldwin, 1984; Du Bois, 1999; Harris, 1993; Morrison, 1981; Roediger, 1991). Once mobility policies that allow capital to cross international borders so readily are brought into view, new political possibilities also appear. Support for open borders expands once capital and labour mobility are considered simultaneously. Capital, not labour, needs to be brought ‘out of the shadows.’ Over the past four years, I have returned many times to the US-Mexico border, especially to the Rio Grande Valley.1 Initially, I was drawn to the region because of the extensive border wall construction underway there. I wanted to bear witness to what was being built in my name. After several visits, the wall’s allure began to fade. My attention shifted from the wall to the vibrant border economies along the Rio Grande. Cross border shoppers from Mexico filled the McAllen malls; long, long cargo trains passed through Laredo day and night; and ports of entry were being expanded and upgraded all along the valley. And I learned that 2000 managers cross daily from McAllen, Texas to Reynosa, Mexico. Focusing on border walls seemed insufficient – it seemed to miss where the action was taking place. To understand how capital moves, I visited expediting zones, interviewed customs brokers and bridge directors, talked with journalists, academics, city officials, Fish and Wildlife employees, economic development corporations, border patrol agents, and political activists. In September of 2017, I attended the impressive Manufacturing and Logistics Conference in Laredo in where 350 people gathered at Texas A&M International to discuss cross border production and the impending revisions of NAFTA. I wanted to understand how capital moves.

Labor Visions and State Power: The Origins of Business Unionism in the United States.

Why has labor played a more limited role in national politics in the United States than it has in other advanced industrial societies? Victoria Hattam demonstrates that voluntarism, as American labors policy was known, was the American Federation of Labors strategic response to the structure of the American state, particularly to the influence of American courts. The AFLs strategic calculation was not universal, however. This book reveals the competing ideologies and acts of interpretation that produced these variations in state-labor relations.Originally published in 1993.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.