#AcademicRunPlaylist - 9/1/24

Author

Ben Waber
September 01, 2024

A view of the Connecticut Sun basketball court from the upper deck of the Mohegan Sun Arena. Female basketball players wearing black are scattered across the wooden floor taking practice shots, while the red seats are partially filled

I got to catch the Connecticut Suns game (they won!) today, and while driving the family to and from the arena I was able to listen to a great book for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

Today I listened to "Franchise" by Marcia Chatelain, a sweeping account of how the fast food industry, with the franchise model as its business model, first spurned, then partially embraced/co-opted Black America to further its growth. Chatelain covers this from multiple angles - the strategy of the large corporate fast food companies, the franchisees who invest in and run the restaurants, and the socio-political changes happening in the decades since the advent of fast food.

What emerges is a complex story - of how franchising made a small number of Black Americans extremely rich and provided establishments that Black Americans could enter without fear, while at the same time providing politicians and society with market-driven success stories that obscured the lack of broader economic growth in the Black neighborhoods where fast food restaurants proliferated. The fights of Civil Rights organizations to open up franchising to Black owners, while laudable, similarly led to only limited macro changes while inoculating companies from further criticism.

My one nitpick is that I would've liked more quantitative analysis of the economic effects of these establishments to further reinforce the impressive historical and qualitative analysis here. But this is minor.

Overall this book is an important and frank look at the ability of business to bring social change as well as the power of social movements to shape business.