Taking on the McMalls

A McDonalds lies in ruins across from the beach and Highway 90 in Biloxi, Mississippi. (AFP/Getty Images/Barry Williams)

Another piece from a back issue of the Sun is this interview with UMD professor George Ritzer, "Taking on the McMalls: Q&A // George Ritzer". Ritzer is author of the book The McDonaldization of Society. It's a good read and will be up for the rest of the week.

From the interview:

What do you mean by the McDonaldization of society?

It is the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant - efficiency, predictability, calculability and control - are coming to dominate more and more sectors of society and more and more parts of the world. It's not just fast-food restaurants; there is now a book or article about the McDonaldization of almost any social institution: churches, universities, agriculture, newspapers.

The idea is that the principles of the fast-food restaurant can work anywhere. Of course, this goes back long before fast food, to Henry Ford and the assembly line. What was revolutionary about what Ray Kroc did with McDonald's in 1955 was his application of this to a service industry, applying the ideas not just to production but also to consumption. Those principles were then extended to many other sectors of society and many other parts of the world.



But couldn't it be argued that this is a good thing? That not only do these systems bring efficiency but also predictability, so that when you pull off the highway and see a chain restaurant or a chain motel, you know what you are getting - while you would be taking a chance with an unknown local establishment?

I don't need to underscore those sorts of things; McDonald's and all the corporations underscore the advantages. My task as a social critic is to point out the problems associated with it. That gets dealt with under the heading of the irrationality of rationality.

Index Keywords: chain-retail, restaurants


Children peer out the window while eating hamburgers in a Chicago McDonald's restaurant, December 26, 2003. REUTERS/John Gress