Tuesday, from 10 to 12:50. We'll start with the individual exam, and probably begin the group version between 11:45 and noon. If you need to make arrangements with the testing or learning centers, please do so and let me know, but be back in class by 11:45 or so if you want to do the group version of the exam.

Remember, this is a guide, not a blueprint. At the end are some practice questions to get you thinking about the issues and how to approach them. You'll have more success if you approach these issues--McDonaldization, globalization, social control (1984), from a social problems perspective.

McDonaldization

• Roots of McDonaldization--where did it come from? What makes rationalization such a powerful idea over 100 years later? Why does it seem practically an irreversible trend?
• Understand the four basic principles of McDonaldization, and be able to apply them, distinguish them from one another, and apply them outside the fast food biz.
• How might an increasingly McDonaldized society change the workforce and work? Who might benefit/be harmed?
• Be able to discuss how or whether McDonaldization is a social problem
• How was the cage metaphor used?
• Do companies face pressures to McDonaldize? Why? (go back to what makes McD so revolutionary)
• Why is much of Ritzer's book concerned with the issues of consumption and private gain (that is, profit)?
• Remember we're trying to take this beyond the fast food example, so it would be good--doubleplusgood--to think about how McDonaldization has crept into almost every nook and cranny of American society.
• What can be done, if anything?

Orwell and 1984

• 1984 was a drastic example for showing how different definitions or 'frames' of a problem lead to different measures. The reader and the Ingsoc party are likely to have different views about the big problems Oceania faces. How can a specific 'frame' be used to promote a specific agenda or policy? How does the question of 'who benefits' help to understand how problems are framed? What's the key to influencing how the public perceives the problem?
• You should be able to discuss possible parallels with contemporary US society, but using a social problems analysis. After the paper, this shouldn't be difficult.
• Key concepts include Big Brother (surveillance and the protective leader), information control (over media, for instance, much of what the outer party did), doublespeak (use or abuse of language), perpetual war (the fear factor), torture, the relationship between war and the economy, the class differences and how the ruling class tailored its control, etc. You should think about all of them as elements of social control--how do they work to control the population? How was control of media important, and how different from media bias in our own society?
• The connection with war, terrorism and the military industrial complex. How can a government convince the public to go to war, what is blowback, a false flag operation, does the military industrial complex pose a social problem? Are there any similarities to the Cold War and the 'War on terror?' And are there any parallels with Orwell's dystopian society in 1984?

War and terrorism

• Costs of war, and who benefits/who's harmed; United States in comparison to the rest of the world in military spending; How much of the US budget is spent on defense/security? Why is it so hard to reduce military spending?
• Some concepts
  • blowback (we spent some time talking about the 9/11 attacks as possible blowback from previous operations in which the US military or CIA were involved)
  • Military Industrial Complex
  • false flag operation
  • terrorism
  • weapons of the weak
• We talked about the US as not really being 'just another country.' What does that mean in this case?
• What was Eisenhower warning against in his farewell speech to the nation in 1961?
• How do governments 'frame' war? How do they enlist public support? How was the Iraq War framed?
• Does 'blowback' relate to anything the US Government might be doing in countries like Pakistan, Yemen, Iran (countries where they have targeted terrorist suspects, sometimes with weaponized drones?
• How is oil connected to US foreign policy and war?

Putting it together

• Orwell's book is obviously about social control. But is McDonaldization? How do war and terrorism fit in this picture? If McDonaldization is a form of social control, how is it different from the control described in Orwell;s Oceania? Are the outcomes similar? What are the differences?

Social problems

Remember the point of this class--to give you different ways to analyze social problems. For any of the above content areas of the course, you should be able to go through some of the key questions we ask when doing this (the key questions are littered through various other pages of this web site ... and check out week 1 of the lecture material). I may also ask you how one area (e.g., McDonaldization) might relate to another (e.g., globalization). This won't be covering new ground--it will be things we've either discussed in class, or you've seen in readings or lecture material. Also, if you look at all of the above bullet points as separate, this seems overwhelming. Many of them are connected and were part of the same discussion.

It seems like one of the most difficult parts of the social problems analysis for people is the 'framing,' or 'ownership' -- who 'owns' the debate, who has the power to define the debate and influence public opinion, how do they do it, etc. You can bet that this is tied not only with who is benefiting/being harmed, but what suggestions are for what should be done about it, and who should do it.

Look at the new material on what to do: consumption, climate change, media, McDonaldization

Video

• Why we Fight

A few suggestions . . . just keep in mind, this is a social problems class, so I'm going to ask you about that, probably on the last question, and you might want to run through the topics we've discussed using that pesky framework. I mentioned earlier in the class the reasons I chose these specific issues. McDonaldization is a chance to apply a theory (so you should know the principles and the underlying concept of rationalizaiton), but it's also unique in that we're talking about life becoming like a fast food restaurant, so understanding how a restaurant can be McDonaldized might help you understand how to take it beyond fast food. As for Orwell and war and terrorism, we see and hear about the latter in the news (even if it's no longer referred to as the 'war on terror' by the White House), and there are some concepts in there (like control over information, surveillance, civil liberties during wartime, manipulation of language) you should be familiar with, and the war on terror stuff was really about understanding the mainstream framing of the issue, how in fact that is a frame and not objective reality (and other equally plausible ways to see the issue exist), and some of the contributing factors (military industrial complex, blowback, etc.). There are some comparisons to be made between the book and contemporary society.

As for the matching, the McDonaldization principles and some of the stuff from Orwell would lend themselves pretty well to that, so I would spend some time getting them down, not just memorizing information, but actually trying to come up with your own examples of how they work.

Practice final questions (from a previous term ...)

Just some 'intellectual guidance' for you . . .

Why is McDonaldization such a powerful trend in the world, even if McDonald's the corporation is losing market share in the fast food industry?

Because it's such an unscrupulous business model, it's made lots of executives and investors lots of money, and it really cuts down on labor costs. Your job here would be to fill in the details as to how it does these things. McDonald's business model was so successful, that it's been adopted in most every sector of the economy by some percentage of the businesses (remember, some market themselves as anti-McDonald's, as focusing on quality). Lots of competition, but as society becomes more complex, the process still offers advantages, and certain people or groups will step in to try to seize them. Now we're getting into the social problems arena.

When we say that the world is becoming more like a McDonald's restaurant, what does that mean (include some specific examples here)?

Think about what McDonald's does, what you saw when you went to observe. How workers are treated, how they're expected to behave or to perform on the job, what they're expected to know, how they're paid, how customers are treated, the quality of the standardized products it produces, and perhaps--think about this one--the effects on people (think of 'Supersize Me' or 'Fast Food Women')--does McDonaldization affect people in similar ways, even if what they're consuming isn't high-carb/high-fat food, but something else (e.g., mass-produced art, pop music, or gastric bypass surgery at the local surgicenter)? Use the restaurant model as a way to think about other possible problems with McDonaldization--how workers are treated, controlled, paid, the quality of products or services, the cost and profit issues, predictability, etc. Education, health care, auto repair, hair cutting / manicures, art, music, political campaigns, news . . . lots of ways to practice thinking about this social process.

Could a political party take over in the U.S. the way Ingsoc ruled Oceania? Justify your answer.

Well, possibly not in the near future. But who controls the parties?

Obviously, there are huge differences between the two countries. That's not to say that some of the elements of Oceania don't exist in the US today. What's perhaps more ironic is that, even though information inconsistent with the government's policies exists, an extremely small minority bothers to seek it out, instead depending on information from corporate news media outlets that 'filter' out or gloss over hundreds of news stories that might adversely affect powerful interests.