The World of Wal-Mart

Discounting the American Dream

Nick Copeland, Christine Labuski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415894883
• eBook ISBN: 9781135098506
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book demonstrates the usefulness of anthropological concepts by taking a critical look at Wal-Mart and the American Dream. Rather than singling Wal-Mart out for criticism, the authors treat it as a product of a socio-political order that it also helps to shape. The book attributes Wal-Mart's success to the failure of American (and global) society to make the Dream available to everyone. It shows how decades of neoliberal economic policies have exposed contradictions at the heart of the Dream, creating an opening for Wal-Mart. The company's success has generated a host of negative externalities, however, fueling popular ambivalence and organized opposition.

The book also describes the strategies that Wal-Mart uses to maintain legitimacy, fend off unions, enter new markets, and cultivate an aura of benevolence and ordinariness, despite these externalities. It focuses on Wal-Mart's efforts to forge symbolic and affective inclusion, and their self-promotion as a free market solution to social problems of poverty, inequality, and environmental destruction. Finally, the book contrasts the conceptions of freedom and human rights that underlie Wal-Mart's business model to the alternative visions of freedom forwarded by their critics.

Index

References to illustrations/photographs will be in italics.

• ABP (Dutch investor group) 73
• adaptation of stores 90
• advertising 55, 56, 60
• affective stakeholders 12
• African-Americans 30, 57
• Akter, Kalpona 99, 111
• Allen, Nick 76
• ambivalence towards Wal-Mart 3, 5, 94–95
• America, Wal-Mart representing 3, 4, 35
• American Dream 5, 9, 12, 15, 33, 34, 35, 50, 52, 55, 84, 97
  • contradictions 6–8, 13, 116, 118–119, 120
  • failure 114, 122
  • redefinitions 10
  • and Wal-Mart 12–14, 128
• American South 114
• Anderson, Benedict 36
• Annual Shareholder’s Meeting (AGM) 17, 32, 34, 39–41, 103
• anthropology 4
• anti-union strategies 64–80, 87
  • competing visions of labor and rights 77–78
  • Early Warning Signs (of union activity) 71, 72
  • Manager’s Toolbox (anti-union training kit) 71
  • new organizing efforts 74–76
  • reshaping political and legal field 78–80
  • Wal-Mart approach to union busting 70–74
  • zero tolerance to unionization 68–70
• anti-Wal-Mart culture 15, 127
• Arab Spring (2011) 68, 127
• Arkansas, origins of Wal-Mart 2, 3, 17, 18
• ASDA store 104
• Asset Protection (AP) 67, 68
• associates, employees as 37–38, 39, 42, 43
• asymmetrical globalization, alternatives to 111–112
• automobile, rise of 18

• BALW (business assisted living wage) 94
• Bangladeshi National Garment Workers Federation 100
• Basker, Emek 87
• behemoth retailers 26
• belonging, sense of 36
• Ben Franklin variety stores 18, 19
• benevolence 34, 60
  • reframing exploitation as 101
• Benson, Peter 33, 115, 120, 125
• Bentonville town/Bentonville-Rogers area 82, 83 see also Wal-Mart Visitor Center, Bentonville (Arkansas)
• Berlant, Lauren 13, 119
• betrayal, sense of 44
• Bianco, Anthony 87
• Bielby, William 61
• Black Friday stampede, Long Island Wal-Mart (2008) 2
• blogs 54–55
• bottom lines 31–32, 33, 69, 78
• boycotts 69, 120
• Brewer, Rosalind 60
• bribery allegations 2, 33, 34, 111
• Brown, Wendy 125
• Bud Walt...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Foreword
• Preface
• Wal-Mart's Cultural Politics
• From the Ozarks to the Planet
• Wal-Mart Nation
• The People of Wal-Mart
• Wal-Mart's Anti-Union Strategies
• The Space of Wal-Mart
• Wal-Mart at Large
• Wal-Mart and Freedom
• Notes
• reference
• Index