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Small Towns and Big Business
Challenging Wal-Mart Superstores
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Publisher:
2009
Summary
During the 1990s, a new type of controversy began occurring across the United States: controversies over the siting of superstores, also known as big box stores. In these disputes, which often involve Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, local citizens mount organized opposition to the proposed siting of a superstore in their town or neighborhood. Opponents criticize Wal-Mart superstores for putting local independent merchants out of business, siphoning money from the local economy, providing substandard jobs, disrupting residential neighborhoods, contributing to the 'McDonaldization' of society, inducing sprawl, destroying downtowns and Main Streets, and undermining local uniqueness and small town charm. More generally, these David-and-Goliath controversies represent particularly stark examples of the conflict of interests between local communities and large corporations that have become common in contemporary society. Small Towns and Big Business uses fieldwork and archival sources to comprehensively examine these controversies and the underlying issues. While Wal-Mart is usually able to site its stores at its preferred locations, in some cases local opponents have been able to thwart its plans. Using detailed case studies of anti-superstore controversies in six small cities in five states, Halebsky employs a comparative-historical approach to construct an explanation of how some of these local social movements managed to prevail against Wal-Mart. This explanation is then extended to provide the basis for a model of the general conditions under which local communities may be able to constrain unwanted corporate action. Thus, this is both a study of social movement outcomes and an investigation of community-corporate conflict. Small Towns and Big Business provides insight into the potential of the local state to control large corporations, the inherently problematic nature of corporate retailing, the possibilities for resisting McDonaldization, and the fate of local anti-corporation activism.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2009
ISBN-Print
978-0-7391-2240-2
ISBN-Online
978-0-7391-3347-7
Publisher
Lexington, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
236
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
Tables and Figures No access
Acknowledgments No access
Chapter 01: Introduction No access Pages 1 - 26
Chapter 02: Big Retailers, Aggressive Retail Development, and the Roots of Local Protest No access Pages 27 - 50
Chapter 03: How Superstores Affect Small Towns No access Pages 51 - 70
Chapter 04: Gig Harbor, Washington, and Petoskey, Michigan No access Pages 71 - 98
Chapter 05: West Bend, Wisconsin, and Ottawa, Ohio No access Pages 99 - 128
Chapter 06: Ashland, Wisconsin, and Eureka, California No access Pages 129 - 164
Chapter 07: Explaining Success No access Pages 165 - 186
Chapter 08: The Local State, Corporate Retailing, McDonaldization, and Local Anticorporate Activism No access Pages 187 - 210
