Enterprise and Society Advance Access originally published online on December 7, 2007
Enterprise and Society 2007 8(4):777-783; doi:10.1093/es/khm103
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The Soul of the Service Economy: Wal-Mart and the Making of Christian Free Enterprise, 1929–1994
BETHANY MORETON completed her history dissertation in 2006 at Yale University. She is an Assistant Professor of History and Women's Studies at the University of Georgia. Contact information: 220 LeConte Hall, Athens, GA 30602
E-mail: moreton{at}uga.edu
"The Soul of the Service Economy" explains the rise of Christian corporate globalism in the twentieth century, that always unfinished task of sanctifying capitalism and consumption under Christianity. As the biography of the Sunbelt service sector's "free enterprise" ideology, "The Soul of the Service Economy" is not an examination of Wal-Mart itself but an analysis of Wal-Mart's world—the interconnected commercial, religious, and educational institutions which both produced the world's largest company and then depended upon its patronage. This culture united Southwestern entrepreneurs, service providers, middle managers, students, missionaries, and even waged employees in an ethos of Christian free enterprise. On the basis of archival research in local and ephemeral sources, "The Soul of the Service Economy" uses the stories of people linked through Wal-Mart and its philanthropies to understand the shift to post-Fordist regimes in work, gender relations, education, and geography.
Perhaps more than most dissertations, this one depended heavily on the generosity of friends and colleagues in Arkansas, mentors in New Haven, and funders that included several programs at Yale as well as the Social Science Research Council, the Louisville Institute, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Mellon Foundation, the Baker Library at Harvard Business School, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. My hope is that this product of so many people's contributions will meet with their respect if not always their agreement.