George Ritzer (born October 14, 1940) is an American sociologist, professor, and author who has mainly studied globalization, metatheory, patterns of consumption, and modern/postmodern social theory.
[4] In an interview, Ritzer noted a formative experience that occurred while he attended the Bronx High School of Science, he felt that he was “a pretty average kind of student” as he was among incredibly intelligent individuals.
He noted in an interview regarding consumption how the success of his books has “allowed him to acquire things, mostly houses” and gives him the ability to live life the way he wants to.
[10] Ritzer graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1958,[11] stating to have "encountered the brightest people I have ever met in my life".
[4] While at Bronx High School of Science, Ritzer received a New York State Regents Scholarship which would follow him to whichever college he chose to attend.
Ritzer stated in an interview that he was a student at CCNY when he first stepped inside a McDonalds, which greatly juxtaposed the distinct culture of restaurants and stores in New York.
[4] After graduating from The University of Michigan in 1964,[11] Ritzer began working in personnel management for the Ford Motor Company, however, this proved to be a negative experience for him.
[15] Ritzer's idea of McDonaldization is an extension of Max Weber's (1864–1920) classical theory of the rationalization of modern society and culture.
Weber famously used the terminology "iron cage" to describe the stultifying, Kafkaesque effects of bureaucratized life,[16] and Ritzer applied this idea to an influential social system in the twenty-first century: McDonald's.
Ritzer argues that McDonald's restaurants have become the better example of current forms of instrumental rationality and its ultimately irrational and harmful consequences on people.
For example, supermarkets and large grocery stores offer variety and availability unlike smaller farmer's markets from generations past.
[24] First coined by Alvin Toffler in 1980, the term prosumption is used by Ritzer and Jurgenson,[25] to break down the false dichotomy between production and consumption and describe the dual identity of economic activities.
Various online activities require the input of consumers such as Wikipedia entries, Facebook profiles, Twitter, Blog, Myspace, Amazon preferences, eBay auctions, Second Life, etc.
"Nothing" is "a social form that is generally centrally conceived, controlled and comparatively devoid of distinctive substantive content" [26] "Nothing" usually aims at the standardized and homogenous, while "something" refers to things that are personal or have local flavor.
He defines it as involving a worldwide diffusion of practices, relations, and forms of social organization and the growth of global consciousness.
Insight into Ritzer's distinctive approach to globalization is available via a special review symposium in the Sage journal Thesis Eleven (Number 76, February 2004).
[32] Grobalization, a term coined by Ritzer himself, refers to "imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations, organizations, and the like and their desire, indeed need, to impose themselves on various geographic areas".
[24] Based on his original article appearing in the American Sociologist,[42] this book provides a foundation for Ritzer's other works on metatheory.
[44] In this provocative book, George Ritzer explores how Weber's classic thoughts on rationalization take on new vitality and meaning when applied to the process of McDonaldization.
He describes this as the process by which the principles of the fast food restaurants are coming to dominate more and more sectors of society in the United States as well as the rest of the world.
[45] Ritzer shows how Weber's central characteristics of rationalized systems - efficiency, predictability, calculability, substitution of non-human for human technology and control over uncertainty - have found widespread expression in a broad range of organized human activity, including travel, consumer products and services, education, leisure, politics and religion as well as in the fast food industry.
[3] Guide to thirteen leading social theorists: Robert K. Merton, Erving Goffman, Richard M. Emerson, James Coleman, Harold Garfinkel, Daniel Bell, Norbert Elias, Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean Baudrillard, Judith Butler.
By drawing upon salient examples from everyday life, Ritzer invites the reader to examine the nuances of these concepts in conjunction with the paradoxes within the process of the globalization of nothing.
Ritzer continues to explore this book's central thesis: that our society has undergone fundamental change because of the way and the level at which we consume.
The third edition demonstrates how we have created new "cathedrals" of consumption (places that enchant us so as to entice us to stay longer and consume more) while continuing to take capitalism to a new level.
These places of consumption, whether in our homes, the mall, or cyberspace, are in a constant state of "enchanting the disenchanted," luring us through new spectacles because their rational qualities are both necessary and deadening at the same time.
Making extensive use of maps and with a glossary of key terms, this book offers the reader not only a descriptive, but also acritical, analysis of globalization.
As in previous editions, the book has been updated and it offers new discussions of, among others, In-N-Out Burger and Pret a Manger as possible antitheses of McDonaldization.
Part One goes into specific details about the early years of sociological theory, focusing on Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel.
The book includes accessible and rigorous material on the key theories and major topics in globalization, as well as modern developments like the rise of populism and far-right political groups, Brexit, migration and backlash to it, trade negotiations, social media and the spread of misinformation, climate change, social justice issues, and COVID-19.