1 ACTIVISTS, CATEGORIES AND MARKETS: RACIAL DIVERSITY AND PROTESTS AGAINST WALMART STORE OPENINGS IN AMERICA

Identity movements rely on a shared we-feeling amongst a community of participants. In turn, such shared identities are possible when movement participants can self-categorize themselves as belonging to one group. We address a debate as to whether community diversity enhances or impedes such protests, and investigate the role of racial diversity since i t is a simple, accessible, and visible basis of community diversity and social categorization. We focus on American communities ‟ protests against Wal-Mart‟s entry from 1998 until 2005 and ask whether racial diversity affects protests after accounting for a community‟s sense of pride and attachment to their town. We use distance from historical monuments as a proxy of a community‟s pride and attachment, and after controlling for it, we find that community‟s racial homogeneity significantly increases protests against Wal-Mart. 3 A basic proposition in the literature on social movements is that collective action is more likely when members share common collective identities- a „we-feeling ‟ sustained through interactions among movement participants, and expressed through cultural materials such as names, narratives, symbols, and rituals (Taylor and Whittier 1992). The premise is that identification with a group help