Classifying the corporation: the role of naturalizing analogies in American corporate development, 1870–1930.

This article examines the historical transformation in American legal theory that reclassified corporations from being understood as quasi-public "creatures of the state" to private market actors. It argues that this symbolic privatization was jointly produced by both liberal and progressive legal theorists between 1870 and 1930, who employed "naturalizing analogies"—comparisons likening corporations to natural persons or partnerships—to sever the corporation’s symbolic ties to the state despite its continued legal dependence on government sanction. The study highlights how these analogies were unstable and multivocal, used both to legitimate and critique corporate power, and how their evolving meanings shaped the cultural and legal understanding of corporations as autonomous economic entities. This analysis contributes to sociological literature by emphasizing the role of symbolic and conceptual shifts in corporate privatization alongside institutional and legal changes.