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 pr.

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• PART 1 WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT THE WAL-MART DEBATE?
  • 1 Constructing Moral Markets
  • 2 Contextualizing the Wal-Mart Wars
• PART 2 COMPETING FRAMEWORKS FOR MARKET MORALITY
  • 3 Individuals and Communities
  • 4 Thrift and Benevolence
  • 5 Freedom and Fairness
• PART 3 MARKET MORALITY IN MEDIA AND POLITICS
  • 6 How Wal-Mart Wins the War of Words
  • 7 Moral Populism in the Twenty-First Century
• Appendix: Methodology
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
  • A
  • B
  • C
  • D
  • E
  • F
  • G
  • H
  • I
  • J
  • K
  • L
  • M
  • N
  • O
  • P
  • R
  • S
  • T
  • U
  • V
  • W
  • Y
  • Z
• About the Author