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Resisting McDonaldization
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Resisting McDonaldization

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April 1999 | 272 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
George Ritzer's McDonaldization thesis argued that contemporary life is succumbing to the standardization, flexibility and practicability of fast-food service. This book brings together specially commissioned papers by leading social and cultural analysts to engage in a critical appraisal of the thesis.

The contributors discuss the roots of the thesis, the rationalization of late modern life, the effects of increasing cultural commodification, the continuing prominence of American cultural and economic imperialism and the impact of globalization on social and cultural life. The strengths and weaknesses of the McDonaldization thesis are clearly evaluated and the irrational consequences of rationalization are pinpointed and critically developed. The book enlarges our understanding of how everyday life is structured by new standards of bureaucratic control and performance-related criteria and plays a major role in illuminating how identity and practice are structured today. The volume concludes with a response from George Ritzer.

Barry Smart
Resisting McDonaldization
Theory, Process and Critique

 
Christiane Bender and Gianfranco Poggi
Golden Arches and Iron Cages
McDonaldization and the Poverty of Cultural Pessimism at the End of the Twentieth Century

 
John O'Neill
Have You Had Your Theory Today?
Deena Weinstein and Michael A Weinstein
McDonaldization Enframed
Joanne Finkelstein
Rich Food
McDonald's and Modern Life

 
Bryan Turner
McCitizens
Risk, Coolness and Irony in Contemporary Politics

 
Alan Bryman
Theme Parks and McDonaldization
David Jary
The McDonaldization of Sport and Leisure
Richard M[um]unch
McDonaldized Culture - The End of Communication?
Gary Alan Fine
Art Centres
Southern Folk Art and the Splintering of a Hegemonic Market

 
Norman K Denzin
Dennis Hopper, McDonald's and Nike
Douglas Kellner
Theorizing/Resisting McDonaldization
A Multiperspectivist Approach

 
Keith Tester
The Moral Malaise of McDonaldization
The Values of Vegetarianism

 
Peter Beilharz
McFascism? Reading Ritzer, Bauman and the Holocaust
George Ritzer
Assessing the Resistance

`An impressively wide-ranging collection of critical responses to, and applications of, Ritzer's thesis, including contributions by some of the world's leading social theorists and held together by Barry Smart's comprehensive introduction and Ritzer's own detailed response to his admirers and critics. The 'Ritzer thesis', as it has come to be know, has of course found a massive response, admirably captured in this volume' - William Outhwaite, University of Sussex

`Consumer capitalism may be spreading everywhere, but not without opposition. As Resisting McDonaldization shows, a wide variety of people and movements struggle to maintain the local, to combine economic development with greater equality and justice, and to pursue alternative visions of the global future. The essays are trenchant and timely' - Craig Calhoun, New York University, USA

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