Mcdonaldization Of Society Summary

McDonaldization of Civil Society

For this book report I chose "The McDonaldization of Society" by George Ritzer. The streamlined nature of McDonald's and other fast food restaurants is contributing to a very straining issue in our modern society. This book makes direct correlations to the way these businesses are dehumanizing our society. George Ritzer also importantly emphasizes how extremely destructive these foods are to people's health. McDonaldization is a metaphor for humans extreme rationalization in every part of life. The principles of these restaurants dominate many different aspects of society, there is a connection drawn to the rationalization of human nature, which is broken into four different parts; efficacy, predictability,

Rationalization is the central component of a rationalizing society. According to Ritzer, "We are in danger of being seduced by the innumerable advantages already offered, and promised in the future, by rationalization," (Ritzer 372). By participating in rationalization, companies are allowing families to spend less money on far more unhealthy foods rather than spending more money at a grocery store to prepare healthier foods. For example, McDonald's give far more effort telling us how many billions of hamburgers they have sold rather than the quality of those billions of hamburgers. There is a connection drawn with this automation process, the advancement of technology has expedited this greed by allowing huge quantities of things to be produced easier than making a quality product. One can compare this to receiving a letter personally addressed to oneself and feeling gratification, but that gratification is gone once it is seen that one was only a part of a giant mailing list orchestrated by a company or marketer. Under these circumstances, one person is merely nothing more than a name on the list of potential clients, and this is an extremely dehumanizing characteristic of our modern

After reading “McDonaldization of Society” I began to question the way our world works. George Ritzer and Max Weber are very intellectual and think way outside the box, and by coming up with these theories they have made it easier to identify the problems with our society. Should food be as easy to access via drive-throughs? This book remained unbiased throughout the whole read and provided facts about every-day living. Ritzer provided a commentary on the aspects of society that humans often do not think about questioning, such as the way food can be put out within two minutes in order to maintain customer satisfaction. This is not an opinion, but rather, it is fact. Businesses that follow the idea of McDonaldization are only destroying the aspects of life that make life liveable. I would recommend this book to anybody that is trying to expand their knowledge about living and how to get the most out of their lives. I would encourage everyone to put an end to the McDonaldization of civil society by going to the grocery store and spending an extra penny in order to prepare hardier, healthier meals that are made of ingredients other than highly processed foods. Afterall, living is more enjoyable when one is energetic and fit rather than stuffed and feeling lazy because they ordered a factory-packaged, frozen, then quickly grilled Big Mac off a