Author: Rebekah Peeples Massengill
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814763332
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
Wal-Mart is America’s largest retailer. The national chain of stores is a powerful stand-in of both the promise and perils of free market capitalism. Yet it is also often the target of public outcry for its labor practices, to say nothing of class-action lawsuits, and a central symbol in America’s increasingly polarized political discourse over consumption, capitalism and government regulations. In many ways the battle over Wal-Mart is the battle between “Main Street” and “Wall Street” as the fate of workers under globalization and the ability of the private market to effectively distribute precious goods like health care take center stage. In Wal-Mart Wars, Rebekah Massengill shows that the economic debates are not about dollars and cents, but instead represent a conflict over the deployment of deeper symbolic ideas about freedom, community, family, and citizenship. Wal-Mart Wars argues that the family is not just a culture wars issue to be debated with regard to same-sex marriage or the limits of abortion rights; rather, the family is also an idea that shapes the ways in which both conservative and progressive activists talk about economic issues, and in the process, construct different moral frameworks for evaluating capitalism and its most troubling inequalities. With particular attention to political activism and the role of big business to the overall economy, Massengill shows that the fight over the practices of this multi-billion dollar corporation can provide us with important insight into the dreams and realities of American capitalism. Rebekah Peeples Massengill is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Princeton University.
Author: Daniel Diermeier
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781473977396
Category : Crisis management
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
In early 2004, residents of Inglewood, California voted on a referendum that would change the city charter to allow Wal-Mart to build a supercentre on a huge, undeveloped lot in the city. Wal-Mart had put forward the measure after the city council refused to change the zoning of a plot on which it held an option to build. Numerous community and religious groups opposed Wal-Mart's entry and campaigned against the referendum. Walmart promised low-priced merchandise and jobs, but these groups were skeptical about the kinds of jobs and compensation that would be offered. This case examines the divisive issues.
Author: Bethany Moreton
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674054296
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 391
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Book Description
This extraordinary biography of Wal-Mart's world shows how a Christian pro-business movement grew from the bottom up as well as the top down, bolstering an economic vision that sanctifies corporate globalization.
Author: John Dicker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101143444
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
An irreverent, hard-hitting examination of the world's largest-and most reviled-corporation, which reveals that while Wal-Mart's dominance may be providing consumers with cheap goods and plentiful jobs, it may also be breeding a culture of discontent. It employs one of every 115 American workers. If it were a nation-state, it would be one of the world's top twenty economies. With yearly sales of nearly $260 billion and an average way of $8 an hour, Wal-Mart represents an unprecedented-and perhaps unstoppable-force in capitalism. And there have been few corporations that have evoked the same levels of reverence and ire. The United States of Wal-Mart is a hard-hitting examination of how Sam Walton's empire has infiltrated not just the geography of America but also its consciousness. Peeling away layers of propaganda and politics, investigative journalist John Dicker reveals an American (and, increasingly, a global) story that has no clear-cut villains or heroes-one that could be the confused, complicated story of America itself. Pitched battles between economic progress and quality of life, between the preservation of regional identity and national homogeneity, and between low prices and the dignity of the American worker are beginning to coalesce into an all-out war to define our modern era. And, Dicker argues, Wal-Mart is winning. Revealing that the company's business practices have been shaping American culture, including the nation's social, political, and industrial policy, The United States of Wal-Mart provides fresh insight into a controversy that isn't going away.
Author: Nelson Lichtenstein
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1595587462
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 472
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Book Description
A collection of essays that “do an incredible job of balancing the wonders and horrors of the force that is Wal-Mart” (Booklist, starred review). Edited by one of the nation’s preeminent labor historians, this book marks an ambitious effort to dissect the full extent of Wal-Mart’s business operations, its social effects, and its role in the United States and world economy. Wal-Mart is based on a spring 2004 conference of leading historians, business analysts, sociologists, and labor leaders that immediately attracted the attention of the national media, drawing profiles in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the New York Review of Books. Their contributions are adapted here for a general audience. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Pennsylvania Railroad declared itself “the standard of the world.” In more recent years, IBM and then Microsoft seemed the template for a new, global information economy. But at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Wal-Mart had overtaken all rivals as the world-transforming economic institution of our time. Presented in an accessible format and extensively illustrated with charts and graphs, Wal-Mart examines such topics as the giant retailer’s managerial culture, revolutionary use of technological innovation, and controversial pay and promotional practices to provide the most complete guide yet available to one of America’s largest companies. “Like archaeologists who pick over artifacts to understand an ancient society, the scholars here [are] examining Wal-Mart for insights into the very nature of American capitalist culture.” —The New York Times “Stimulating perspectives on the world’s largest corporation.” —Publishers Weekly
Author: Charles Fishman
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781594200762
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
An award-winning journalist breaks through the wall of secrecy to reveal how the world's most powerful company really works and how it is transforming the American economy.
Author: Bill Quinn
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
ISBN: 0307814769
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
After carving up the once lovingly cared-for downtowns of Small Town America, Wal-Mart launched a frontal assault on mom-and-pop businesses all over the globe. With 1.5 million employees operating more than 3,500 stores, Wal-Mart is now the world's largest private employer. In this third edition of How Wal-Mart Is Destroying America (and the World), intrepid Texas newspaperman Bill Quinn continues the fight. Featuring detailed accounts of Wal-Mart's questionable business practices and the latest information on Wal-Mart lawsuits, vendor issues, and efforts to stop expansion, Quinn shows why Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., is arguably the most feared and despised corporation in the world. Whether you're a customer fed up with Wal-Mart's false claims, a vendor squeezed by strong-arm tactics, a worker pushed to increase the Waltons' bottom line, or a concerned citizen trying to save your hometown, this book will show you how to get Wal-Mart off your back and out of your backyard. BILL QUINN is a World War II veteran, retired newspaperman, and certified anti-Wal-Mart crusader. He lives with his wife, Lennie, in Grand Saline,Texas.
Author: John Jakes
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453255990
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1588
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Book Description
DIVThe Main and Hazard families clash on and off the Civil War’s battlefields as they grapple with the violent realities of a divided nation /divDIV America’s master storyteller continues his reign with Love and War, a story steeped in passion and betrayal. With the Confederate and Union armies furiously fighting, the once-steadfast bond between the Main and Hazard families continues to be tested. From opposite sides of the conflict, they face heartache and triumph on the frontlines as they fight for the future of the nation and their loved ones. With his impeccable research and unfailing devotion to the historical record, John Jakes offers his most enthralling and enduring tale yet./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of John Jakes including rare images from the author’s personal collection. /div
Author: Neil Dahlstrom
Publisher: BenBella Books
ISBN: 1953295746
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
"Mr. Dahlstrom...has written a superb history of the tractor and this long-forgotten period of capitalism in U.S. agriculture. We now know the whole story of when farming, business and the free-market economy diverged, divided and conquered." —Wall Street Journal Discover the untold story of the “tractor wars,” the twenty-year period that introduced power farming—the most fundamental change in world agriculture in hundreds of years. Before John Deere, Ford, and International Harvester became icons of American business, they were competitors in a forgotten battle for the farm. From 1908-1928, against the backdrop of a world war and economic depression, these brands were engaged in a race to introduce the tractor and revolutionize farming. By the turn of the twentieth century, four million people had left rural America and moved to cities, leaving the nation’s farms shorthanded for the work of plowing, planting, cultivating, harvesting, and threshing. That’s why the introduction of the tractor is an innovation story as essential as man’s landing on the moon or the advent of the internet—after all, with the tractor, a shrinking farm population could still feed a growing world. But getting the tractor from the boardroom to the drafting table, then from factory and the farm, was a technological and competitive battle that until now, has never been fully told. A researcher, historian, and writer, Neil Dahlstrom has spent decades in the corporate archives at John Deere. In Tractor Wars, Dahlstrom offers an insider’s view of a story that entwines a myriad of brands and characters, stakes and plots: the Reverend Daniel Hartsough, a pastor turned tractor designer; Alexander Legge, the eventual president of International Harvester, a former cowboy who took on Henry Ford; William Butterworth and the oft-at-odds leadership team at John Deere that partnered with the enigmatic Ford but planned for his ultimate failure. With all the bitterness and drama of the race between Ford, Dodge, and General Motors, Tractor Wars is the untold story of industry stalwarts and disruptors, inventors, and administrators racing to invent modern agriculture—a power farming revolution that would usher in a whole new world.
Author: Leigh Phillips
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 178663516X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Are multi-national corporations like Walmart and Amazon laying the groundwork for international socialism? For the left and the right, major multinational companies are held up as the ultimate expressions of free-market capitalism. Their remarkable success appears to vindicate the old idea that modern society is too complex to be subjected to a plan. And yet, as Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue, much of the economy of the West is centrally planned at present. Not only is planning on vast scales possible, we already have it and it works. The real question is whether planning can be democratic. Can it be transformed to work for us? An engaging, polemical romp through economic theory, computational complexity, and the history of planning, The People’s Republic of Walmart revives the conversation about how society can extend democratic decision-making to all economic matters. With the advances in information technology in recent decades and the emergence of globe-straddling collective enterprises, democratic planning in the interest of all humanity is more important and closer to attainment than ever before.
