- Jubilee offer: spend £10 or more on any product sold by Amazon.co.uk on or before June 6 and you can buy The Diamond Jubilee A Classical Celebration Album for just £2.50 Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
The McDonaldization of Society 5
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Students love Ritzer’s McDonaldization!
"My ideas and feelings changed tremendously after reading the text because it really opened my mind up."
"The text opened my eyes up a bit to the world around me."
"[T]his text book is awesome because it really opens up your mind to think. I really love this text book, I think every student should at least read it and understand what McDonaldization is."
"I really enjoyed the writing style of the book. It was not overly technical, gave many practical and real-life examples, and appealed to my interests. I thought of it as a book I would recommend to friends, not as a textbook."
"I loved the book and really enjoyed the way it was written."
"I most enjoyed reading the four chapters explaining and providing examples for the four principles of rationality (Chapters 3, 4, 5 & 6). After reading these chapters, I had an extremely clear idea on what each principle entailed."
"I strongly recommend that this text should be use again in the future. It's a great text book and it helps us as students understand our society more and what our society had become."
"I would definitely recommend that both of my teachers continue to incorporate Ritzer's text into the courses. It is an unpretentious, easy to understand, and thoroughly enlightening text."
"It is an extremely effective and thought-provoking text for a Sociology course." (Student Reviews 20070725)
"The text is eminently readable. Many of my students . . . identify with the themes very rapidly. They see the connections with their own world of experience and gain confidence in thinking sociologically." (Michael Nofz 20070725)
"This book has been a fabulous success with students because it combines elements of critical social theory, readability . . . and popular culture." (Charles R. Frederick, Jr )
"My ideas and feelings changed tremendously after reading the text because it really opened my mind up."
"The text opened my eyes up a bit to the world around me."
"[T]his text book is awesome because it really opens up your mind to think. I really love this text book, I think every student should at least read it and understand what McDonaldization is."
"I really enjoyed the writing style of the book. It was not overly technical, gave many practical and real-life examples, and appealed to my interests. I thought of it as a book I would recommend to friends, not as a textbook."
"I loved the book and really enjoyed the way it was written."
"I most enjoyed reading the four chapters explaining and providing examples for the four principles of rationality (Chapters 3, 4, 5 & 6). After reading these chapters, I had an extremely clear idea on what each principle entailed."
"I strongly recommend that this text should be use again in the future. It's a great text book and it helps us as students understand our society more and what our society had become."
"I would definitely recommend that both of my teachers continue to incorporate Ritzer's text into the courses. It is an unpretentious, easy to understand, and thoroughly enlightening text."
"It is an extremely effective and thought-provoking text for a Sociology course." (Student Reviews 20070725)
"The text is eminently readable. Many of my students . . . identify with the themes very rapidly. They see the connections with their own world of experience and gain confidence in thinking sociologically." (Michael Nofz 20070725)
"This book has been a fabulous success with students because it combines elements of critical social theory, readability . . . and popular culture." (Charles R. Frederick, Jr )
Product Description
'This book has been a fabulous success with students because it combines elements of critical social theory, readability... and popular culture' - Charles Frederick, Jr., Indiana University
One of the most noteworthy and popular sociology books of all time, The McDonaldization of Society demonstrates the power of the sociological imagination to today's readers in a way that few books have been able to do.
Key Features of the new edition:
- brand new chapter examining the Starbucks phenomenon and its relationship to McDonaldization
- updated examples of McDonaldization, including online dating services (e.g. match.com), Viagra, MDMA (ecstasy), text-messaging, Ikea, and megachurches
- an increased focus on globalization, including an examination into the relationship between McDonaldization and the environment
(20070620)
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If we are to agree with Ritzer, McDonalds has completely transformed our lives. To some extent he is right, and this is what is really scary. Ritzer argues how many businesses have emulated the McDonalds model of efficiency, calculability, predictability and control. In essence, McDonaldized businesses offer products and services in an as efficient way as they can by offering a limited choice to their consumers. Standardization and homogeneity is to be vital to McDonaldization but has helped businesses globalise their operations.
Ritzer also goes one step further and shows us how McDonaldization has infiltrated into society as people desire to attain instantaneous gratification- and even how to some extent how our healthcare and education systems now seem to work on McDonald's ethos!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
McDonalds is G. Ritzer's perfect paradigm for explaining the actual structure of our planet. He has built his portrait on Max Weber's rationalization concept. This concept expresses man's search for the optimum means to a given end by rules, regulations and larger social structures. Its driving force is economics (capitalism).
This concept affects virtually all aspects of our society all over the world: work, education, health care, leisure, transport, sports, politics, justice, religion and the family. It shows a planet centered on rational consumerism.
The ingredients of the system are efficiency, calculability, predictability and nonhuman technologies for controlling people. It was greatly helped by technological breakthroughs like automobiles, TV, the computer, internet and lasers (DVD) and by fundamental changes in Western societies (single parent families, working women, higher mobility, increasing disposable income, time savings, mediatization and advertising).
But Max Weber foresaw also the lurking irrationalities, the dehumanization and homogenization, which expressed themselves in environmental and health problems (air pollution), McJobs (disenchantment, false friendliness), traffic jams, bureaucratization.
McDonaldization produces the perfect way of life for people who, as Nietzsche said, use the wrong conjugation: they don't live, they are lived.
For G. Ritzer, McDonaldization is the `grobalization of nothing': a world dominated by the imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations and organizations, whose main intent is growth of their power, influence and profits. `Nothing' is a social form that is generally centrally conceived, controlled and comparatively devoid of distinctive substantive content.
The author would like to see a more deMcDonaldizated world (see the many recommendations at the end of the book), but McDonaldization is still on the march, certainly in developing countries.
This book is a crucial, superbly documented, text for all those who want to understand the world we live in.
A must read.
This concept affects virtually all aspects of our society all over the world: work, education, health care, leisure, transport, sports, politics, justice, religion and the family. It shows a planet centered on rational consumerism.
The ingredients of the system are efficiency, calculability, predictability and nonhuman technologies for controlling people. It was greatly helped by technological breakthroughs like automobiles, TV, the computer, internet and lasers (DVD) and by fundamental changes in Western societies (single parent families, working women, higher mobility, increasing disposable income, time savings, mediatization and advertising).
But Max Weber foresaw also the lurking irrationalities, the dehumanization and homogenization, which expressed themselves in environmental and health problems (air pollution), McJobs (disenchantment, false friendliness), traffic jams, bureaucratization.
McDonaldization produces the perfect way of life for people who, as Nietzsche said, use the wrong conjugation: they don't live, they are lived.
For G. Ritzer, McDonaldization is the `grobalization of nothing': a world dominated by the imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations and organizations, whose main intent is growth of their power, influence and profits. `Nothing' is a social form that is generally centrally conceived, controlled and comparatively devoid of distinctive substantive content.
The author would like to see a more deMcDonaldizated world (see the many recommendations at the end of the book), but McDonaldization is still on the march, certainly in developing countries.
This book is a crucial, superbly documented, text for all those who want to understand the world we live in.
A must read.
7 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Being a business studies undergraduate student I had to read this text for an assignment. Most texts that I am forced to read put me to sleep. This one didn't. Ritzer is the founder of the idea of McDonaldization and in this book he puts forward his arguments in an interesting and easy to understand manner. I can honestly recommend this book if you have any interest in big corporate culture, even if you aren't studying this subject you'll enjoy the read. I didn't agree with everything Ritzer said, but I still enjoyed reading what he had to say. Also a good book if you are studying Max Weber or any form of rationalization. Overall an interesting book with good examples that should keep you reading and thinking for hours.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
