Walmart - (Globalization in Everyday Life) by Eileen Otis

About the Book

"This book tells the story of Walmart's expansion in China, making the case that it is the story of a major shift in the structure of global capitalism. Walmart, argues Eileen Otis, is a leading actor in the rise of merchant capitalism, wherein the role of the merchant has changed from operating at the whim of industrialists, to leveraging control over large consumer markets. As Walmart's retail business grew at unprecedented rates across the globe, so too did this business model. Walmart: Made in China documents the business's expansion into China not as a tale of seamless market entry, but as a case of frictions, improvisations, and labor struggles that reveal deeper transformations in global economic power. Drawing on years of fieldwork in Walmart stores across China, Otis traces an internal supply chain--from warehouse to checkout--where workers stock, promote, explain, and process goods under varying regimes of control. These labor regimes, structured by gender, migration, surveillance, and corporate rules and culture, as well as managerial oversight, reveal how capitalist value is realized, and how it can be contested. At the heart of her analysis is the rise of a new system--merchant capitalism--in which control over consumer markets, rather than production, drives profit. Thus, Walmart: Made in China offers a compelling account of this shift in global capitalism, as it gets made and remade, on the retail floor"--

Book Synopsis

This book tells the story of Walmart's expansion in China, making the case that it is the story of a major shift in the structure of global capitalism. Walmart, argues Eileen Otis, is a leading actor in the rise of merchant capitalism, wherein the role of the merchant has changed from operating at the whim of industrialists, to leveraging control over large consumer markets. As Walmart's retail business grew at unprecedented rates across the globe, so too did this business model.

Walmart: Made in China documents the business's expansion into China not as a tale of seamless market entry, but as a case of frictions, improvisations, and labor struggles that reveal deeper transformations in global economic power. Drawing on years of fieldwork in Walmart stores across China, Otis traces an internal supply chain--from warehouse to checkout--where workers stock, promote, explain, and process goods under varying regimes of control. These labor regimes, structured by gender, migration, surveillance, and corporate rules and culture, as well as managerial oversight, reveal how capitalist value is realized, and how it can be contested.

At the heart of her analysis is the rise of a new system -- merchant capitalism -- in which control over consumer markets, rather than production, drives profit. Thus, Walmart: Made in Chinaoffers a compelling account of this shift in global capitalism, as it gets made and remade, on the retail floor.

Review Quotes

"Otis is a marvelous ethnographer whose resourceful and daring research illuminates the heretofore hidden world of Walmart's Chinese retail workers and their stores in a fashion no other journalist or scholar has ever attempted. Evocative interviews and the author's own personal observations allow us to follow the corporate commodity chain from loading dock to shelf to shopping bag, all the while keeping a tight focus on the techno-managerial sources of surveillance and oppression, as well as the creative and covert resistance of thousands of cashiers and sales workers. This is an excellent book!" --Nelson Lichtenstein, author of The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created A Brave New World of Business

About the Author

Eileen M. Otis is Associate Professor of Sociology at Northeastern University. She is the author of Markets and Bodies (Stanford, 2011).