The McDonaldization of Society

The McDonaldization of Society

The McDonaldization of Society

Introduction

The McDonaldization of Society 5 is the fifth edition of George Ritzer's provocative analysis of the forces underlying the global success of McDonald's. Engaging such diverse themes as space, consumer choice, advertising, and labour practices, Ritzer seeks to identify and explain the particular institutional logics of the company's business model. The key, Ritzer suggests, is that the McDonald's model is predicated on a particular set of rationalizing forces, which he identifies as McDonaldization. Specifically, Ritzer identifies such processes as homogeneity, predictability, efficiency, and calculability as the core elements of these McDonaldization processes. These elements endow McDonald's with a reliability and familiarity that both enforces the iconic status of this brand and appeals to customers throughout the world. It is these qualities that have contributed to McDonald's success as a global force in addition to the company's association with Western or American culture.

Discussion

Ritzer's central thesis is that Max Weber's “iron cage” of depersonalized procedural regularization has come together with Frederick Winslow Taylor's enforced optimizations of production efficiency, and then spread inexorably and from the workplace to saturate consumption, home, and leisure. Ritzer takes as his paradigmatic example the production and consumption rubrics pioneered and instituted relentlessly by the McDonald's fast food chain but is careful to demonstrate that the phenomena he analyzes are in no way limited to hamburgers alone. In a wealth of examples ranging from Levittown to campgrounds, the coffeehouse to the lecture hall to the hospital operating room, Ritzer demonstrates empirically the extent to which all our lives are now conditioned by an emphasis on, and even expectation of, access to standardized menus of consumables delivered with the utmost expediency (but often little else).

Ritzer organizes his many empirical examples according to four themes, or perhaps values, he takes as central precepts of McDonaldization: efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control. Taken together, Ritzer argues that the infusion of these values into first production and then consumption has not been without benefits, permitting ever wider and more affordable access to an expanded range of goods and services. An additional strength is that Ritzer consistently provides clear outlines of the key debates and theorists that he is engaging. He also writes in a clear and compelling manner, making excellent use of rich examples drawn from current American social life. This is a volume that undergraduate students and general readers can engage, as well as scholars. What Ritzer does so persuasively is not only remind readers of the continuing endurance of key issues in social theory, but he also demonstrates that social theory can be accessible and is applicable to the everyday lives of ordinary people.

The very cover of the book itself though—a depiction of Ronald McDonald's oversized red boot squashing down on the globe—makes clear Ritzer's central argument: The benefits of McDonaldization do not compensate for the mounting costs. He argues that under cover of cheap convenience, McDonaldization entails dehumanization for both worker and consumer, the decline of standards and ...