walmart
While we are still experimenting with this teaching guide ourselves, there are several ways in which this study could be used in numerous social science classes. Some instructors may find it useful for students to divide up the areas and have students directly read the entries in or out of class, using the questions at the end of each section to initiate discussion. Using this technique will take one to several weeks, depending on the pace of the discussion, to cover the entirety of the case. The advantage to this approach is that students have the time to elaborate on the intricate social and ethical dimensions of eachWal-Mart policy area. Regardless of the way in which instructors use this study, “Wal-Mart or World-Mart?” should make economic theories more tangible and available to students. For example, ideas of how corporations affect problems of the working poor as a class can be brought home to students in the case of Wal-Mart by looking at the loss of health benefits and low wages despite the value they add to the corporation. Also, theories of capitalistic development can be exemplified by the Wal-Mart case, especially where grassroots community values are demonstrably secondary to profit and economic growth. Another potential use that has received favorable responses from students exposed to the study is to take a particular issue area, such as urban growth, and apply Wal-Mart as a factor. Here, Wal-Mart can be presented in the context of corporations as political actors compared to organized resistance efforts, city/county preferences for growth, and the problems with “distancing” political economies as in the importing of sweatshop products (Conca, Princen, and Maniates 2001).2 Or, sociological, anthropological, and environmental classes could use Wal-Mart as a specific case to depict structural problems of overconsumption or capitalist growth. The case may also be used as a pilot for students doing their own research on corporations, using the areas of inquiry highlighted in this case to provide ideas in building their own investigation of large corporations. Finally, using a store familiar to all students because it sells commodities defining their lifestyles (clothes, music, accessories), the case study links the daily lives of students to global political economy issues. “How can the Wal-Mart pair of jeans be so much cheaper than that pair?