McDonaldization
McDonaldization describes a process in which a society is increasingly adopting the characteristics of a fast food restaurant. It is a term coined by the American sociologist George Ritzer in his book The McDonaldization of Society .
From Ritzer's point of view, McDonaldization is a new development within the concept of rationalization , and in this respect it marks a change from traditional to rational thought models in the direction of an increasingly scientifically structured and well-founded management.
While Max Weber still uses the model of bureaucracy as the direction in which society is developing, Ritzer sees the fast-food restaurant as the paradigm that most closely corresponds to today's development (Ritzer, 2004: 553).
Main aspects
Ritzer characterizes McDonaldization based on four main aspects:
- Efficiency - the optimal way to solve a task
- Calculability - the goal should be quantifiable (e.g. sales figures) rather than just subjectively (e.g. taste) determinable
- Predictability - unified and uniform services
- Control - unified and uniform employees
With the inclusion of these four categories, a strategy that appears rational and promising within a narrow field of vision can lead to harmful and irrational results overall. The process is summarized by Ritzer as a development in which the principles of running a fast food restaurant increasingly dominate different areas of American society and the rest of the world (Ritzer, 1993: 1).
The term, coined in 1993, has been used in many other humanities disciplines since then. The term McDonaldization can also refer to the increasing replacement of traditional catering establishments with McDonald’s branches. The similar term aldization was chosen as the Swiss word of the year 2005.
criticism
Ritzer u. a. by Andrew Potter and Joseph Heath in their book consumer rebels. The myth of the counterculture . You accuse Ritzer of concentrating on the oldest and easiest to criticize fast food restaurant and attack the arc that he (in the American version of his book) draws from Auschwitz to Hamburg . As a counterexample, they mention Subway in particular .
literature
- George Ritzer : The McDonaldization of Society. License issue. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13811-6 ( Fischer-Taschenbucher 13811).
English literature:
- Dennis Hayes, Robin Wynyard (Eds.): The McDonaldization of Higher Education. Bergin & Garvey, Westport CT et al. 2002, ISBN 0-89789-856-7 .
- George Ritzer (Ed.): Explorations in the Sociology of Consumption. Fast Food, Credit Cards and Casinos. Sage, London et al. 2001, ISBN 0-7619-7119-X .
- George Ritzer (Ed.): McDonaldization. The reader. 3rd edition. Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks CA et al. 2010, ISBN 978-1-412-97582-7 .
- Matthew B. Robinson: McDonaldization of America's Police, Courts, and Corrections. P. 85ff.
- Bryan S. Turner: McCitizens: Risk, Coolness, and Irony in Contemporary Politics. P. 229ff.
- George Ritzer: The McDonaldization of Society. Revised new century edition. Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks CA et al. 2004, ISBN 0-7619-8812-2 .
- George Ritzer: The McDonaldization Thesis. Explorations and Extensions. Sage, London et al. 1998, ISBN 0-7619-5540-2 .
- Barry Smart (Ed.): Resisting McDonaldization. Sage, London et al. 1999, ISBN 0-7619-5517-8 .
- James L. Watson (Ed.): Golden arches east. McDonald's in East Asia. Stanford University Press, Stanford CA 1997, ISBN 0-8047-3205-1 .
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter: Consumer Rebels. The myth of the counterculture. 2005. p. 291 ff.