Walmart sells protection from the precariousness it generates

Evidence

Walmart promises a sort of protection from the forms of neoliberal precarious life it actually helps create. As investors are discovering, not even the state is as secure, as reliable and as benevolent as Walmart, with its sanitized ecologies and iconic smiley-faced brand icon. The cultural and spatial politics of the firm orbit around the mobilization of risk management to promise a shelter from the terror of financialized everyday life. The fact that, at present, a greater proportion of the American adult population shops at Walmart than votes (Sasseen 2008) illustrates the tendency towards a new cultural, economic and political dynamic in an age of securitization. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 303

Categorization

• XREF: This is exactly deWaard’s thesis about finance colonizing everyday life — securitization as a cultural mode of promising refuge from financialized terror. Also pairs with the shoopping-voting statistic as a strong example of citizenship displaced by consumption. — connects to: Walmart shapes workers and shoppers into financialized risk-managing subjects. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 47; Walmart’s dominance rests partly on cultural politics of insecurity it also feeds — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 249; Walmart sells consumers the spectacle of security amid manufactured chaos — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 251 (+4 more)
• DEFINE: Defines securitization as a cultural/spatial logic — promising a risk-free zone — not merely a financial instrument technique.

Broader Connections

• Walmart functions as a vector stitching financialization and risk management into everyday life. #expands (0.85) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 272
• Walmart’s security serves capital reproduction, not human autonomy #expands (0.82) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 560
• Walmart’s power operates through securitization linking financial risk management to surveillance #expands (0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 558