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This article explains how regulators use categorization, quantification, and labeling to change how corporations manufacture commercial products. The Food and Drug Administration wanted to create an incentive for manufacturers to replace trans fats by requiring food labels to disclose trans fat content. The Food and Drug Administration initially proposed categorizing trans fats as saturated fats and quantifying both substances with one number on labels, but industry actors largely favored quantifying trans fats separately from saturated fats. Industry actors argued that such an approach would show consumers which products had been reformulated to contain 0 g of trans fats, thus allowing manufacturers to market reformulated products as 'healthier' and rewarding investments in alternative technologies. The Food and Drug Administration ultimately decided to categorize and quantify the two fats separately, specifically designing the disclosure of quantitative information in order to encourage technological change. Thus, I argue that quantifying information on commercial product labels was not only intended to govern individual consumption but was also intended to govern production in anticipation of individuals governing their consumption. Regulators used their capacity to quantify as a means to govern industrial production.

Many scholars assume that industry meddles in scientific research in order to defend their products. But this article shows that industry meddling in science can have a variety of consequences. American food manufacturers long denied that trans fats were associated with disease. Academic scientists, government scientists, and activists in fact endorsed trans fats as a healthier alternative to saturated fats. But in 1990, a high-profile study showed that trans fats increased risk factors for heart disease more than saturated fats did. Industry funded a U.S. Department of Agriculture study that they hoped would exonerate trans fats. But the industry-funded U.S. Department of Agriculture study also indicated that trans fats increased risk factors for heart disease more than saturated fats. Industry quickly began developing trans fat alternatives. This confirms that corporations get involved in science in order to defend their products. But involvement in science can be the very means by which corporations persuade themselves to change their products.

This chapter addresses how small businesses resist city regulations by using material things, by making craft knowledge claims about material things, and by letting material things organize their political activity. Chefs successfully resisted a foie gras ban in Chicago, where political resistance shaped the production and use of material things. Bakers successfully resisted a trans fat ban in Philadelphia, where material properties of things structured political resistance. We bring together analytic tools from the sociology of culture and science and technology studies to demonstrate how materiality can be both an instigator and an instrument of legal and political resistance. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

Participatory budgeting (PB)—a democratic process where ordinary residents decide directly how to spend part of a public budget—has gained impressive momentum in US municipalities, spreading from one pilot project in Chicago's 49th ward in 2009 to 50 active PB processes across 14 cities in 2016–2017. Over 93,600 US residents voted in a PB process in 2015–2016, deciding over a total of about $49.5 million and funding 264 projects intended to improve their communities. The vast majority of US PB processes take place in large urban centers (e.g., New York City, Chicago, Seattle, Boston), but PB has also recently spread to some smaller cities and towns [1]. Figure 1 illustrates the growth of PB processes in the USA, and within New York City and Chicago council districts specifically. PB constitutes a rare form of public engagement in that it typically comprises several distinct stages that encourage residents to participate from project idea collection to project implementation (see Fig. 2). The decisive public vote in US PB is practically binding as elected officials commit to implementing the public decision at the outset of the process. Moreover, all current PB processes in the USA have expanded voting rights to residents under 18 years old and to non-citizens. Under President Obama, the White House recognized PB as a model for open governance. Participatory Budgeting Project, a nonprofit organization that advocates for PB, won the 2014 Brown Democracy Medal, which recognizes the best work being done to advance democracy in the USA and internationally. PB has been lauded for its potential to energize local democracy, contribute to more equitable public spending and help reduce inequality [2, 3]. Social justice goals have been explicit in US PB from the start. Grassroots advocates, technical assistance providers, and many elected officials who have adopted it emphasize that PB must focus on engaging underrepresented and marginalized communities [2, 4, 5]. PB steering committees have specified equity and ...