Book Review: The McDonaldization of Society

"Little boxes on the hillside,
little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
little boxes, little boxes, little boxes
little boxes all the same"
- Malvia Reynold




Until I devoured George Ritzer’s book The MacDonaldization of society, I was thinking everything is very normal in our society, but now I realized we all are enchanted by the process called McDonaldization. Otherwise you tell me, whenever you get in to a McDonald’s or any fast-food restaurant, have you ever (I never) surmised why the guys in work are ‘acting’ very buzy, why in the shop only a few seats to sit but why more tables, why not any newspaper but only a TV above? Why not there is any kitchen inside and why they show their messy kitchen out? Why only a few menu and limited choice to offer? Why always young and energetic chaps are appointed there and why not old or middle aged? Why always the workers are replaced with others and why they have a uniform? And most often the employee asks us whether you eat it here or should he packs? Why the burger or any fast-food shows quantity rather quality? Or at least why the workers are wishing us ‘it’s my pleasure to help you or have a nice day?

To me, these questions were very stupid until I thumped through George Ritzer. Everything is beyond our expectations and our calculations, the book says.

George Ritzer is an American sociologist and he published this book in 1983 when nobody, even in India, envisioned about our today’s 20-20 cricket. He has not mentioned the term cricket anywhere in the book. Definitely he is not a Malayalee, and he does not know our Malayala Manorama and there is a least chance he visited in Hyderabad. But surely he has hinted at least three things, 20-20 cricket and Malayala Manorama and Hyderabad Tour Packages!

You read these paragraphs I quoted from his book,

"In the past few decades, the leadership of collegiate and professional (cricket) decided that fans raised in the McDonald’s era wanted to see faster games and many more (runs). In other words from (Cricket) what they got from their fast food restaurant- great speed and large quantities. It was believed, apparently correctly, that faster and higher scoring games would mean greater attendance and higher profits.  Instead of the often the defender taking his turn at his bat, someone whose main (and sometimes only) skill is hitting replaces him. Designated hitters will get more hits, hit more runs, and help produce more runs that defender who are allowed to bat. (quote continues...)"

"Stories in (Malayala Manorama) usually do not jump from one page to another; they start and finish on the same page. To meet this need, long, complex stories often have to be reduced to a few paragraphs. Much of a stories context, and much of what the principles have to say, is severely cut back or omitted entirely. With its emphasis on light news and graphics, the main function of the newspaper seems to be entertainment". 

Thousands of words are emerged prefixing McDonald’s or at least two simple letters ‘Mc’. McDentists, McDoctors, McChild, McStables, McPaper, McSex are some of these words.

So this term seems nothing to do with our eating habit. He explains in the book

"This is not a book about McDonald’s, or even the fast-food business, although both will be discussed frequently throughout these pages. Rather, MacDonald’s serves here as the major example, the ‘paradigm’ of a wide ranging process I call McDonaldization, that is

The process by which the principle of the fast food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world".

Why McDonald? Four alluring dimensions lie at the heart of the success of this model and more generally, of McDonaldization. McDonald’s has succeeded because it offers consumers, workers, and managers efficiency, calculability, predictability and control.

It offers the best available method to get from being hungry to being full. Calculability or an emphasis on the quantities aspects of products sold. Quantity has become equivalent to quality; a lot of something, or the quick delivery of it, means it must be good. As a culture, we tend to believe deeply that in general ‘bigger is better’. Predictability: the assurance that their product and services will be the same over time and in all locales. The people who eat in fast-food restaurants are controlled, albeit subtly. Lines, limited menus, few options, and uncomfortable seats all lead diners to do what managers wishes to do- eat quickly and leave.

After this point Ritzer goes far and compares all most all our social institution and checks how all these are McDonaldized. His extreme comparison of McDonald’s with Holocaust is worthwhile which seems he has such a strong disgust against the system called McDonald’s. McDonaldization and Holocaust show the same process, effectiveness, calculability, predictability, controlling and irrationality of rationality. The holocaust is an ‘efficient’ means for the destruction of massive numbers of human beings and it’s quite calculable that how many people could be killed in the shortest period of time (calculability) was effort to make mass murder predictable. Victims were controlled by a huge non human technology including the camps, the train system, the crematoria, and the bureaucracy that managed the entire process. He uses Weberian concept of bureaucracy and he shows if we examine the beurocrartization and McDonazation both share the same things. If we extend the McDonazation methods we can apply this theory to Shopping malls, entertainment, health care system, education and even pregnancy and death.

For instance when we hear Americans are hardly doing abortion, don’t think it a very positive thing rather they have already made everything possible to avoid the ‘abortion’, such as the selection of preferred gender, semen for a healthy and non diseased child, keeping a tentative pregnancy, doing all medical check up to see the ‘product’ called child in a ‘factory’ called hospital. Even death today becomes very McDonaldized, you can now compare all the leading point of McDonaldability of death also. Death becomes a rather entertaining business. Read this adv.

‘You will now have a choice! Louiseville’s affordable funarel home is your best choice; professional services $995; metal caskets as low as $160; opening May 1, 1994’

After all McDonaldization is nothing but the Americanization of society in a bad way.

This letter to the boss of McDonalds from a very passionate consumer when the main shop was in a verge of closing down: ‘Please don’t teare it down! Your company’s name a household word, not only in the United states of America, but all over the world. TO destroy this major artefact of contemporary culture would, indeed, destroy part of the faith the people of the world have in your company. (ER. Ship).

Like many of our scholars, Ritzer does not end up the book without any creative suggestion, but from the very first page he is telling how to lead a unMcDonaldized life today, in the concluding chapter he puts forwards a number of practical solution to escape from the McDonaldization, but the million dollar question is whether we learn a half lesion from it?