The world of Wal-Mart : discounting the American dream

Resource Information

The work The world of Wal-Mart : discounting the American dream represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The world of Wal-Mart : discounting the American dream

Title remainder

discounting the American dream

Statement of responsibility

Nicholas Copeland and Christine Labuski

Creator

• Copeland, Nicholas

Contributor

• Labuski, Christine

Subject

• Consumption (Economics) -- United States
• Corporate culture -- United States
• Discount houses (Retail trade) -- United States
• History
• United States -- Social life and customs
• Wal-Mart (Firm) -- History
• Business anthropology -- United States

Genre

• History

Language

eng

Summary

"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."--Publisher's website

Member of

• Routledge series for creative teaching and learning in anthropology

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

381/.1490973

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

HF5429.215.U6

LC item number

C68 2013

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

Routledge series for creative teaching and learning in anthropology