When and how do corporations change
the products they manufacture?This
dissertation explains how oils containing trans
fats entered the American food system and how companies are replacing those
substances, which are now associated with heart disease.Rather than assuming that industry resists
change by dominating other institutions, or that industry consents to change
only when social or political pressures become insurmountable, the case of trans fats illustrates the mutually
constitutive relationships among corporate behavior, social movement activism,
academic science and federal regulation.Corporations do not act
unilaterally.Social movements,
scientists, government and industry jointly develop goals and approaches to
achieving those goals that can result in the comprehensive reform of risky
technologies.
The
project contributes to the emerging macro-orientation in the social study of
science, but extends the field by focusing on industrial technology.Sociologists have used two related models to
characterize how industry acts with science and technology.The corporate hegemony model tends to show
corporations manipulating science and technology in order to produce goods, such
as food, with minimal regulation.The
risk society model tends to argue that inherently uncertain scientific
knowledge renders industrial technology unavoidably hazardous.But the corporate hegemony model erroneously
implies that corporate interests are inflexible.The risk society model erroneously implies
that technologies themselves are inflexible.I draw from actor-network theory to challenge both of those models.Based on interviews, archival research and
policy analysis, the empirical chapters discuss activist groups targeting
industry; engagement between academic and industry scientists; the development
of federal labeling regulation meant to promote technological change; and the
ways in which industry developed trans fat
alternatives.
Scholars who see
corporations as hegemonic might describe the food industry’s turnarounds –
using saturated fats in the mid-twentieth century but replacing them with trans fats in the 1980s, only to replace
trans fats with new oils in the 2000s
– as an example of conspiratorial manipulation of scientific knowledge and
technology.But my research shows that
in the 1980s, health-oriented activist groups vigorously campaigned against
food manufacturers’ use of saturated fat and promoted trans fats as a healthy alternative.Corporations were able to respond quickly
because oils containing trans fats
had gradually become available and viable over the course of the 20th
century.In the 1990s, however, a food
industry coalition funded government scientists whose research confirmed studies
by academic scientists showing trans fats
were probably worse than saturated fat.Activist
groups eventually reversed their position and petitioned for federal trans fat labeling in 1994.Many sociologists assume that labeling only individuates
risk.But the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) specifically designed trans
fat labeling rules to create incentives for firms to change the content of
foods. In comments to the FDA, trade
groups, corporations and other industry actors argued that manufacturers would
be most likely to reformulate if they could tell consumers that their products
had become trans fat free.Many industry actors began developing trans fat alternatives long before the
FDA finalized labeling rules. Many major manufacturers replaced trans fats before labeling rules took
effect in 2006, and many others did so soon thereafter.
The widespread replacement of trans fats illuminates the conditions under which corporations’ interests
shift toward cleaning up hazardous technologies.Firms in a variety of industries may be less
likely to resist evidence that their products are risky and may be less likely
to resist regulation when they can find ways to reformulate products and to promote
reformulated products as safer.These
developments cannot be attributed simply to scientific persuasion, activist
agitation, corporate manipulation, or the endogenous impact of regulation.Instead, institutions in interaction develop
interests that lead to the emergence of new scientific consensuses and to the
stabilization of new technologies.
Curriculum Vitae
