OXFORD, Miss. – Love it or hate it, Wal-Mart is one of the largest corporations in the world. \u00a0
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\nHow the company grew from a small, Arkansas-based five-and-dime
\nstore into the international behemoth it is today is the subject of a
\npresentation Wednesday (Oct. 14) at the University of Mississippi.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe free, public program, featuring University of Georgia
\nhistorian Bethany Moreton, is set for noon in Barnard Observatory
\nlecture hall. Moreton’s presentation, “Wal-Mart, Evangelicals and
\nExtreme Capitalism,” is part of the Southern Studies Brown Bag Lunch
\n& Lecture series in the Center for the Study of Southern Culture.\n<\/p>\n
\nAn Oxford native, Moreton is author of the book “To Serve God
\nand Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise” (Harvard
\nUniversity Press, 2009), in which she argues that the financial success
\nand growth of Wal-Mart is the product of Christian networking.\n<\/p>\n
\n“Many Americans who worked or shopped at Wal-Mart understood it to be a
\nChristian company, its success a sign of God’s blessing,” Moreton said.
\n“A new Christian emphasis on service offered both a pattern for
\norganizing the service workplace and an ethos for valuing that work.
\nThe free-enterprise faithful represented by Wal-Mart drew much of their
\nstrength from faith itself.”\n<\/p>\n
\nMoreton is an assistant professor of history and women’s studies
\nat the University of Georgia. Before joining the Georgia faculty, she
\nspent a year as a visiting scholar at the American Academy of Arts and
\nSciences in Cambridge, Mass. She is the author of several articles on
\nglobalization, conservative Christianity and the feminization of work
\nin the service economy. She holds a doctorate from Yale University,
\nwhere her dissertation won the universitywide Theron Rockwell Field
\nPrize, the Southern Historical Association’s C. Vann Woodward Prize,
\nthe Business History Conference’s Herman E. Krooss Prize and the Labor
\nand Employment Relations Association’s Kochan-Sleigh award. It was also
\nselected the best dissertation in the humanities or fine arts by the
\nYale graduate school for a two-year period.\n<\/p>\n
\nShe holds the 2009 Emerging Scholar’s Prize from the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan.\n<\/p>\n