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McDonaldization of Society PDF

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Added on  2022-01-20

McDonaldization of Society PDF

   Added on 2022-01-20

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Theorizing/Resisting McDonaldization: A Multiperspectivist Approach
Douglas Kellner
(http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/kellner.html)
George Ritzer's The McDonaldization of Society has generated an unprecedented number of sales
and scholarly interest, as demonstrated by highly impressive sales figures, new editions of the
book, and the growing critical literature dedicated to the phenomenon of which this book is a
part (see also Alfino, Caputo and Wynard 1998 and Kincheloe and Shelton, forthcoming).
Ritzer's popularization of Max Weber's theory of rationalization and its application to a study of
the processes of McDonaldization presents a concrete example of applied social analysis which
clarifies important developments in the present moment, calling attention to their costs and
benefits, their positive and negative sides. The wide-spread reception -- and the controversy it
has evoked -- suggests that Ritzer has touched upon some vital nerve centers of the
contemporary era which I suggest have to do with discontents over modernity and ambivalent
attitudes toward the rapid transformation of the present for which the term "postmodernity" has
been coined.
The choice of McDonald's restaurants as an example of defining problematical aspects of our
contemporary world is a felicitous one. The phenomenon of "McDonaldization" which Ritzer
elicits from his analysis of McDonald's fast-food restaurants encompasses both production and
consumption, and is applied to a broad scope of economic, political, social, and cultural artifacts
and mechanisms. Ritzer is able to apply his concepts to phenomena ranging from work to leisure,
from food to media, from education to politics. Encompassing such a diverse field of topics and
artifacts exemplifies the sociological moment of illuminating abstraction, of generating a concept
so broad as to conceptually grasp and interpret a wealth of data in a way that theorizes defining
and constitutive features of the present moment. Such a mode of theorizing -- now under attack
by some modes of postmodern theory -- helps us critically view key social dynamics, institutions
and problems, thus exemplifying the major strength of classical social theory.[1]
In this study, I will attempt to illuminate both the strengths and weaknesses of Ritzer's theory of
McDonaldization and will suggest some alternative perspectives. I will first discuss how Ritzer
theorizes McDonaldization, focusing on his mode of social analysis and will argue that Ritzer
fails to adequately explicate its cultural dimensions. Drawing on contemporary cultural studies, I
accordingly add a cultural perspective to Ritzer's analysis and discuss whether McDonaldization
is properly a phenomenon of modernity or postmodernity, and whether it is better grasped by
modern or postmodern theory. I then take on the issue of the standpoint and strategy of critique
of key phenomenona like McDonald's, or McDonaldization, and sketch out some critical
perspectives and strategies of resistance that explicate and supplement Ritzer's normative stance.
My argument is that Ritzer does not adequately distinguish between McDonald's and the
broader phenomenon of McDonaldization, that his taking the infamous fast-food company
McDonald's as the paradigm of McDonaldization skews his analysis negatively, missing the
dialectics of McDonaldization, its positive and negative features. Yet I also want to argue that
Ritzer does not develop an adequate standpoint of critique to evaluate either McDonald's or
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McDonaldization and this this problem results from excessive dependence on Weber's theory
and that a multiperspectivist method can overcome these problems. Accordingly, I argue for a
multiperspectivist approach to capture the complexity of McDonald's and McDonaldization so as
to better critically evaluate its multifarious aspects and effects.
McDonaldization, Social Theory, and Cultural Studies
The McDonald's fast-food restaurants certainly provide a useful example of a familiar
sociological artifact that can be analyzed to generate a more general and macro level of
conceptualization. Few artifacts and institutions of the contemporary world are as well-known
and ubiquitous as McDonald's with its Big Macs, Golden Arches, Ronald McDonald's,
promotional tie-ins with popular films and toys, its charities, and saturation advertising. Both the
rationalization of production and consumption in McDonald's is unparalleled in the
contemporary era, and serves as a model for what Ritzer calls the "McDonaldization of society"
defined by increased efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control through substitution of
human labor power with technology, all of which constitute a quantitative and to some alarming
growth of instrumental rationalization.
Ritzer's project combines use of Weber's sociological theory to generalize about McDonald's
with a wealth of empirical data to illustrate and flesh out the points. His research method follows
what Alvin Gouldner called "newspaper sociology" (1976), assembling information and news on
McDonald's through gathering and citing newspaper articles to illustrate his arguments -- as
opposed to historical sociology, ethnography, phenomenology, cultural studies, and so on.[2]
This perspective combines a theoretical optic with empirical illustration to enable the reader to
see how the general theoretical points are embodied in concrete phenomena that can be observed,
confirmed, and discussed.
Ritzer privileges Weber's conception of rationalization to theorize the phenomenon of
McDonaldization which he sees as "coming to dominate more and more sectors of American
society as well as of the rest of the world" (1996, 1). Ritzer extends Weber's analysis to a wealth
of phenomena, demonstrating that the principles of McDonaldization are restructuring a vast
array of fields, ranging from the food, media, education, and health care industries,
encompassing fundamental life processes from birth to death (1996, 161ff). The strength of the
analysis is the light that such strong perspectives shed on general social dynamics and the
mapping of the macro structures of contemporary social organization. The limitation of the
analysis is that the Weberian-inspired perspectives often generate a one-sided and limited optic
that needs to be supplemented, corrected, and expanded by further critical perspectives.
We might, for instance, deploy a Marx/Weber synthesis to theorize McDonaldization as a
combination of instrumental rationalization of production and consumption with a sustained
corporate attempt to increase profit.[3] Indeed, McDonaldization seems to equally involve
commodification and rationalization, to commodify food production and to rationalize its
production and consumption so as to increase profitability. While Ritzer applies the
McDonaldization model to production and consumption, he largely emphasizes consumption and
thus downplays the ways that McDonaldization has revolutionized production -- despite some
references to Taylorism and Fordism (Ritzer 1996, 24-27, passim). Likewise, although he
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stresses the role of profit in driving McDonaldization (1996, 44, 62f, 87f, passim), Ritzer could
better contextualize the phenomenon within the framework of a restructuring of capitalism,
aiming at the increase of productivity and profit through rationalization of production and
consumption. For in addition to being part of a rationalization process, McDonaldization is part
of a new global form of technocapitalism in which world markets are being rationalized and
reorganized to maximize capital accumulation.[4]
Equally, while Ritzer's largely sociological analysis illuminates key features of McDonald's fast-
food chains and the applicability of its principles to a variety of other phenomenon is striking, he
neglects the cultural dimensions of the McDonald's phenomenon and in particular the ways in
which the corporation mobilizes advertising campaigns and promotional stunts to create an
experience of fun, of family togetherness, of Americanization itself which is associated with the
McDonald's experience. Thus, when one bites into a Big Mac s/he is consuming the sign values
of good times, communal experience, consumer value and efficiency, as well as the (dubious)
pleasures of the product. McDonald's is not just selling fast-food, but a family adventure of
eating out together, intergenerational bonding, and a communal experience, as their advertising
campaigns reiterate over and over in various ways. Purchasing and ingesting a specific food
product is only one part of this experience, which includes the consumption of sign values such
as inexpensive food, a family outing, Americana, or modernity (see the detailed analyses in
Goldman 1992: 85ff. and Kincheloe 1997: 249ff.).
McDonaldization is thus an ideology as well as a set of social practices, a cultural construct with
its myths, semiotic codes, and discourses. McDonald's itself projects an ideology of the U.S. as a
melting pot in which all citizens participate equally in its democratic pleasures, irregardless of
race, class, gender, and age. It furnishes a model of the United States as a land of consumer
innovation and technical rationality which produces inexpensive and desirable goods for all,
serving its customer's needs and providing a valuable product. McDonald's associates itself with
traditions like the family, national holidays, patriotism, Christian charity, and the icons of media
culture. Going to McDonald's for denizens of the U.S. is thus joining the consumer society,
participating in the national culture, and validating common values.
Ritzer thus underplays the ways that McDonald's is an ideological and cultural phenomenon, as
well as an economic and sociological set of practices. Although he applies his analysis of
McDonaldization to a wide range of cultural phenomena (the media, education, travel, food,
etc.), Ritzer does not really engage the specifically cultural dimension of the operation. In
Weberian terms, he neglects the charisma of the Golden Arches, Ronald McDonald's and
McDonaldland, the tie-ins and promotions, and the ubiquitous advertising, aimed at a variety of
gender, race, class, and national subject positions.[5]
Consuming McDonald's
Ritzer also excessively generalizes his analysis of the homogenization, massification, and
standardization of McDonaldization, neglecting the variety and diversity of consumer practices
in different regions and parts of the world and the various uses to which consumers can put
McDonaldization, using its products and procedures to serve their own needs. British cultural
studies has stressed the importance of analyzing the ways that audiences or consumers create
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their own meanings and experience. The McDonald's fast-food chains and other aspects of what
Ritzer calls McDonaldization generate a variety of ways specific pleasures, meanings, and
effects which a micro analysis of particular forms and experiences of McDonaldization can
interrogate. As I suggest below, people in different countries no doubt experience both
McDonald's and McDonaldization in a variety of ways and there are different gender, race, class,
and regional differences in the phenomena of fast-food and societal rationalization that Ritzer
fails to explore in much detail.
By largely privileging Weber's theory of rationalization in his analysis of McDonaldization,
Ritzer thus misses the subjective aspects of the process and the ways that various individuals and
groups deploy McDonaldization to serve their own needs and interests. His privileging of the
category of rationalization is thus too objectivistic and fails to articulate the subjective and
cultural complex of McDonaldization. Indeed, I am not sure that Weber's metaphor of the "iron
cage" that Ritzer suggests, nor the alternative metaphors he proposes of the "velvet" or "rubber"
cage, are the best ways to interrogate the McDonald's phenomenon. In the case of McDonald's --
and many other fast-food emporiums, sites of mass entertainment and consumption, and media
culture --, perhaps something like "the plastic fun house" is more appropriate. Whereas societal
rationalization accurately describes aspects of the socio-economic roots of McDonaldization,
there is a more hedonistic and fun-oriented cultural side that metaphors of a "cage" do not
adequately capture.
It is, for example, unlikely that many McDonald's customers see themselves as trapped in a
cage, although no doubt most of its workers feel enclosed and encaged in their constrictive labor
conditions, as evidenced by their especially high turnover rates (see below). On the cultural side,
McDonaldization hides the conditions of rationalization with a colorful environment, often
decorated with images from current films and icons of popular entertainment to provide a
funhouse experience and to entertain the customer as well as to fill their stomachs. Beneath the
glitzy and kitchsy appearance, inexorable conditions of rationalization (and attempts to maximize
profits) work behind the backs of the customers, masked by the facade of the promised
experience of McDonald's restaurants as providing fun and pleasurable fast eating for a fast-
paced consumer society.
McDonald's Between the Modern and the Postmodern
Rationalization is itself equated with modernization in standard interpretations of Weber, and
one might raise the question of whether McDonaldization is properly interpreted as an
expression of modernity, as Ritzer argues (1996, 148f.), or of postmodernity. Clearly, the
rationalization or industrialization of food production constitutes a rupture with traditional life
(For earlier analyses of the mechanization of agriculture, food, labor, house-cleaning, the objects
of everyday life, and death, see Giedion 1969). As Ritzer argues, following Weber's model,
increased rationalization of everyday life involves ruptures with tradition and the substitution of
new "modern" forms, thus creating tensions between the modern and the premodern. Claims that
we are now leaving modernity behind for a new postmodernity would suggest that we are
leaving modern social and cultural forms like McDonaldization behind in favor of new
postmodern conditions.
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