Soc 205: Social Problems

Winter 2010

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McDonaldization--is the world becoming more like a fast food restaurant?

 

Sociologist Max Weber and rationalization – a BIG historical process

  • Societies are becoming more formal, more ordered, more institutional -- why?
  • Think of exceptions (wilderness hiking? Religion? "Slow food" movement? Organic? Burning man?)
  • Self-help books—do they really help anyone but the author and the self-help industry??
  • Modern education, socialization—why does it take industrial societies so long to socialize their young?
  • What about sex (gee, what's on the Cosmo cover this month?)
  • Weber asks, as institutions get bigger, more complex, how to manage them?
  • The bureaucracy is the organizational expression of this—not the ‘red tape’ definition that is synonymous with bad administration, though;
  • Bureaucracies have evolved because they are seen as more efficient, predictable ways to control people and organizations; (think of the organizational chart);
  • Specialization—why?
  • Hitler and the holocaust

McDonaldization--applying rationalization, the principles of fast food

  • Franchising—chains (think of malls—they’re all the same all over, right? Even in Italy)
  • Uniformity of product (same mediocrity wherever you go)
  • Control over production (from spud farmers to trainees), specialization—Weber?
  • Spawned a shift in eating habits
  • Don’t forget profit—most of McDonaldization is done for commercial gain (but not all—efficiency is a powerful motivator)
  • Language—McMansions, McJobs, other McWords
  • Retail and consumption—mainly deals with private sector, capitalism, customers, etc.
  • It’s global

Four principles of McDonaldization (come up with examples outside of fast food)

Efficiency

  • Streamlining processes
  • Simplification (e.g., menu, choices, terror alerts and interpretations)
  • Unpaid work (by customers: busing tables, getting drinks, ATMs)
  • Efficiency isn't NEW . . . but its use in the food sector was novel.
  • Efficiency for whom? (who benefits from McD's efficiency)

Calculability

Control

  • Replacing humans with machines (automation)
  • Controlling humans (consumers, workers, scripts, 'secret shoppers,' surveillance, etc.). Would you like your lecture notes supersized today??
  • Why control? How do humans fit into the scheme of rationalization? What kind of workers are McDonaldized firms looking for?

Predictability

  • Uniformity of product--every quarter pounder with cheddary cheese, every french fry, should taste the same, whether it's made in Sheboygen, Wisconsin, Tokyo, or Guadalajara.
  • The role of branding (what about McDonald's? Here's more commercials)
  • Ultimate goal--predictability of profit, income (by creating uniform products consumers develop some loyalty to)

Try it at home!

 

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