Summary
Contents
Subject index
George Ritzer's McDonaldization thesis argued that contemporary life is succumbing to the standardization, flexibility and practicability of fast-food service. This book brings together specially commissioned papers by leading social and cultural analysts to engage in a critical appraisal of the thesis. The contributors discuss the roots of the thesis, the rationalization of late modern life, the effects of increasing cultural commodification, the continuing prominence of American cultural and economic imperialism and the impact of globalization on social and cultural life. The strengths and weaknesses of the McDonaldization thesis are clearly evaluated and the irrational consequences of rationalization are pinpointed and critically
McFascism? Reading Ritzer, Bauman and the Holocaust
McFascism? Reading Ritzer, Bauman and the Holocaust
What have we done? What have we achieved in the century of modernity, and what will we be remembered for? The hamburger has become a symbol of it all, the strength and the corruption of America and the West. Much craved and much despised, it now replaces the globe on the back of Atlas. Utopia, as I have argued elsewhere (Beilharz, 1992), has become a hamburger, an icon of satisfaction to the deprived, and a sign of global madness to ecologists and others on the left. George Ritzer's stroke of genius, in this, our, context, is to seize upon that symbol and use it as a way in to the labyrinth which ...
- Loading...
