Assignment 08/ George Ritzer
McDonaldization is the term George Ritzer uses to describe the traits that modern American society finds itself acquiring as it moves towards revamping rationalization. Our capitalist society’s main goal is to achieve maximum cheap production through speed and efficiency. In doing so it starts to mirror the fast food industries principles of operation. As per George Ritzer, there are five principles that make up McDonaldization and our modern society seems to be moving more in that direction.
The first principle is Efficiency, which is the emphasis on looking for the best and fastest route to reaching the set goal. An example of this is how the fast food restaurants want to produce the fastest way to feed it’s customers by cutting corners in production. This is also true, with the busy modern families who want to find the fastest way to feed their families when they are on the go; therefore they find themselves either eating at a fast food restaurant or having frozen TV dinners.
The second principle is Predictability: It is to always know what you are getting. Fast food restaurants only offer a limited menu, as they don’t want to take chances in making any changes on the tastes of their menu items. Our society wants to know what to expect that is why TV dinners are so popular, as they tend to consist of the same entries; they are either Chicken with mash potatoes, turkey with roasted potatoes or something very similar.
The third principle is Calculability: It is the emphasis of quantity rather than quality. This is seen as how McDonalds advertises how many billions of hamburgers they have served versus telling us how delicious their hamburgers are. We see this in our modern school system as it places it’s emphasis on the standardized exams and the students are then reduced to their scores.
The fourth principle is Substitution of Nonhuman Technology: In the effort to limit human error, companies take away the human skills and build them into technology. For example most cash registers now have the prices of their menus items already program into them. Most individuals now days can’t seem to live without their smart phones. There is no need to call for the operator as they can use their phones for assistance.
The fifth principle is Control: It is to standardize a set of rule. This is used as companies / fast food industry want to control how their employees do their jobs to maximize their productivity. We also see how control comes into play as parents set many different rules to try to keep their unruly children in line.
Max Weber and George Ritzer both explain economic rationalization in their own terms. Max Weber explains the spirit of capitalism as the ideas and set values of hard work that derived from the protestant reform as the major contributors to the rational pursuit of economic gain. The Protestant work ethic influenced their people to work hard that in return contribute to the accumulation of wealth and the growth of capitalism. As per George Ritzer, McDonaldization is based on the principles that thrive in a vast consumption based economy that is goal oriented and in return fuels Capitalism.
