This talk examines the commercial reach of a major American corporate power in the first third of the twentieth century. With the Ford Motor Company (FMC) and its social and economic programs at the center of the study, I trace the paths of commercial images and forms of spatial organization that were essential to the workings of Fordism. As a lesser-known aspect of the company’s global dealings, I look at the FMC’s interest in and depiction of the people and regions of the greater Middle East, just on the cusp of the First War. The creation of Ford’s advertising department, from where its in-house publications, newsletters, photographs and films were disseminated, coincided with the mechanization of the assembly line and resulted in the rapid rise and mass circulation of Fordist imagery. These images visualized, made, and remade, global geographies of consumption and production and were as instrumental in selling Ford commodities at home and abroad as they were in associating civility and modernity with the spread of American technology.
Mi. 24 Juni 2015
