Recently, I made an off-the-cuff statement about how due to my condition, which has been debilitated by anxiety, I have been simplifying my blog articles by posting serialized segments at a time. My friend Noel has joked that I am unwittingly adopting the format of Fox News. His implication being that Fox News’s now classic style is to air sanitized info-tainment broadcasts in the form of McDonaldized “nuggets.”
I’d hate to think that was happening to me. With that, I give you an analysis I made several years back:
Joe Lehman
Senior Liberal Arts Seminar
Professor Pender
12 June 2005
One thing that makes McDonaldization such an interesting concept is that, as it is relatively new, it has yet to be completely defined. Therefore whatever passes for the concepts actual meaning can still be manipulated and constructed. McDonaldization according to the book The McDonaldization of Society can be applied to nearly every product or institution of global society. Ritzer not only covers familiar ground, discussing globalization and its effects on restaurants and services he expands to include movies, media and childcare. His theme is that McDonaldization is an abstract concept that implies that any staple of society can now be marketed on a global scale, and thusly as a cheaper, watered-down imitation of its original self. The true irony that Ritzer unfortunately does not admit awareness to is that the same can be said for this particular book. The book is essentially formatted in a textbook version. It is not a monograph of very high quality. Over the past few years several superior books have been published. These books deserve the label of having been professionally written. One, for example is Benjamin Barber’s classic Jihad vs. McWorld or even Thomas Friedman’s popular The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Released in the early 1990s, written in profound narrative form, this book predicted the coming struggle between fundamentalism and modernity. This Ritzer book is basically a cheap cookie-cutter rendition, clearly designed for textbook use. In essence, Ritzer’s book is itself a McDonaldized version.
It is not as though Ritzer’s book is actually “bad” in any way, nor is his research sloppy, it is mostly the format of the book that reflects negatively. The majority of Ritzer’s ideas are original, he indicates himself to be more than fairly intellectual. As stated before the problem lies in the format. The book was clearly published with a classroom readership in mind. The language has been simplified for the average reader. Ritzer tones down on making poetic or literary analogies or allusions. A more professional-seeming monograph would likely take more esoteric licenses. He makes clear his points nakedly and dryly. The text itself as it is printed is laid out in very partitioned margins. These margins have unnecessary headings in large bold lettering between each section. They are unnecessary because they consume a great deal of space. Their purpose appears to be to mark lines dividing different topics that Ritzer is covering. He hardly needs to do that; he could just as easily discard these margins consolidate each portion together. Ritzer is essentially following the same process of divided pieces of information into easily readable “nuggets” that he claims is the case with the McDonaldization of newspapers like USA Today. Taking the same written material covered more thoroughly in the New York Times and translating it to a reader-friendly language (11). If chapters are divisions, these margins are subdivisions. The width of space between each line indicates the appearance of an attempt to fill the pages as expediently as possible, the length of content not being of too much concern.
While the majority of his ideas are original, Ritzer exhibits a weakness when he pieces together facts and data previously conceived in Barber’s and Freidman’s books, making his book effectively into secondary material. When Thomas Friedman originally wrote The Lexus and the Olive Tree in 1999, the ideas he espoused were largely his own. It is he that coined the so-called “golden arches theory,” that supposedly no two developed countries that each have a McDonald’s will engage each other in war. Ritzer would be considered unoriginal enough had he simply paraphrased his reference to Friedman’s theory, but he does not even do that. He devotes a large portion of page seven in his book to directly quoting a long passage from Friedman’s book. To be fair to Ritzer, he does manage to stick an insight of his own in there afterward. He points out that the NATO air bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 which occurred shortly after publication of Friedman’s book does contradict the golden arches theory (7). That earns Ritzer points. But it is still a recycling of ideas not his own all the same. Similarly, Ritzer borrows the theories of a fundamentalist/modern conflict from Benjamin Barber’s Jihad vs. McWorld (184). There is nothing actually wrong in Ritzer’s approach, but it does convey the appearance that he is not entirely speaking from his own ideas. It is thankful then that most of the time that he cites other works, he does bother to include his personal analysis. That compensates for the weakness.
The question that would be most interesting to ask is whether Ritzer deliberately intended to present his book as a “McDonaldized model” of a book on the subject of McDonaldization. He does not make any statement of such a kind at any point. On the contrary, he writes as if he is oblivious to the irony. Perhaps he is, or perhaps he is merely testing the readers’ deductive abilities. It should be remembered that Ritzer himself implies that McDonaldized versions are inferior in quality to the original, so to say the same for this book would be an accurate statement. It is of course up to the opinions of every individual reader whether or not this book’s status as a McDonaldized version is necessarily a negative thing. It can just as easily be interpreted as a positive thing. It depends on the personal needs of the reader. For a college class consisting of students with average intelligence this book is in a suitable format. Students with above average intelligence may not be satisfied and wish to be exposed to a higher standard of reading material. If anything, the choice of this book for class use can be seen as a compromise.
Professor Pender
12 June 2005
The McDonaldization of McDonaldization
One thing that makes McDonaldization such an interesting concept is that, as it is relatively new, it has yet to be completely defined. Therefore whatever passes for the concepts actual meaning can still be manipulated and constructed. McDonaldization according to the book The McDonaldization of Society can be applied to nearly every product or institution of global society. Ritzer not only covers familiar ground, discussing globalization and its effects on restaurants and services he expands to include movies, media and childcare. His theme is that McDonaldization is an abstract concept that implies that any staple of society can now be marketed on a global scale, and thusly as a cheaper, watered-down imitation of its original self. The true irony that Ritzer unfortunately does not admit awareness to is that the same can be said for this particular book. The book is essentially formatted in a textbook version. It is not a monograph of very high quality. Over the past few years several superior books have been published. These books deserve the label of having been professionally written. One, for example is Benjamin Barber’s classic Jihad vs. McWorld or even Thomas Friedman’s popular The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Released in the early 1990s, written in profound narrative form, this book predicted the coming struggle between fundamentalism and modernity. This Ritzer book is basically a cheap cookie-cutter rendition, clearly designed for textbook use. In essence, Ritzer’s book is itself a McDonaldized version.
It is not as though Ritzer’s book is actually “bad” in any way, nor is his research sloppy, it is mostly the format of the book that reflects negatively. The majority of Ritzer’s ideas are original, he indicates himself to be more than fairly intellectual. As stated before the problem lies in the format. The book was clearly published with a classroom readership in mind. The language has been simplified for the average reader. Ritzer tones down on making poetic or literary analogies or allusions. A more professional-seeming monograph would likely take more esoteric licenses. He makes clear his points nakedly and dryly. The text itself as it is printed is laid out in very partitioned margins. These margins have unnecessary headings in large bold lettering between each section. They are unnecessary because they consume a great deal of space. Their purpose appears to be to mark lines dividing different topics that Ritzer is covering. He hardly needs to do that; he could just as easily discard these margins consolidate each portion together. Ritzer is essentially following the same process of divided pieces of information into easily readable “nuggets” that he claims is the case with the McDonaldization of newspapers like USA Today. Taking the same written material covered more thoroughly in the New York Times and translating it to a reader-friendly language (11). If chapters are divisions, these margins are subdivisions. The width of space between each line indicates the appearance of an attempt to fill the pages as expediently as possible, the length of content not being of too much concern.
While the majority of his ideas are original, Ritzer exhibits a weakness when he pieces together facts and data previously conceived in Barber’s and Freidman’s books, making his book effectively into secondary material. When Thomas Friedman originally wrote The Lexus and the Olive Tree in 1999, the ideas he espoused were largely his own. It is he that coined the so-called “golden arches theory,” that supposedly no two developed countries that each have a McDonald’s will engage each other in war. Ritzer would be considered unoriginal enough had he simply paraphrased his reference to Friedman’s theory, but he does not even do that. He devotes a large portion of page seven in his book to directly quoting a long passage from Friedman’s book. To be fair to Ritzer, he does manage to stick an insight of his own in there afterward. He points out that the NATO air bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 which occurred shortly after publication of Friedman’s book does contradict the golden arches theory (7). That earns Ritzer points. But it is still a recycling of ideas not his own all the same. Similarly, Ritzer borrows the theories of a fundamentalist/modern conflict from Benjamin Barber’s Jihad vs. McWorld (184). There is nothing actually wrong in Ritzer’s approach, but it does convey the appearance that he is not entirely speaking from his own ideas. It is thankful then that most of the time that he cites other works, he does bother to include his personal analysis. That compensates for the weakness.
The question that would be most interesting to ask is whether Ritzer deliberately intended to present his book as a “McDonaldized model” of a book on the subject of McDonaldization. He does not make any statement of such a kind at any point. On the contrary, he writes as if he is oblivious to the irony. Perhaps he is, or perhaps he is merely testing the readers’ deductive abilities. It should be remembered that Ritzer himself implies that McDonaldized versions are inferior in quality to the original, so to say the same for this book would be an accurate statement. It is of course up to the opinions of every individual reader whether or not this book’s status as a McDonaldized version is necessarily a negative thing. It can just as easily be interpreted as a positive thing. It depends on the personal needs of the reader. For a college class consisting of students with average intelligence this book is in a suitable format. Students with above average intelligence may not be satisfied and wish to be exposed to a higher standard of reading material. If anything, the choice of this book for class use can be seen as a compromise.
Work Cited
Ritzer, George. The McDonaldized of Society. Revised New Century ed. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press, 2004.
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