related high level of debt were key factors in causing the Great Recession, a postconsumption age would bring with it problems of its own, such as fewer jobs and a declining standard of living for many.
Trending The McDonaldization of Society: Into the Digital Age, 9th ed. (Sage 2019)
George Ritzer
As its main title suggests, this book focused, at least originally, on McDonald’s, other fast-food restaurants, and other “brick-and-mortar” consumption sites such as IKEA, Walmart, other chain stores, shopping malls, and amusement parks. However, as is clear in the new subtitle, the focus of the last edition has moved in the direction of consumption sites on the internet, as well as to mixed “bricks-and-clicks” consumption sites (Belk 2013). The prime example of both, and the giant in the world of contemporary consumption, is Amazon.com. Amazon.com is a dominant force on the internet, especially in consumption (with 43 percent of all e-commerce [Wingfield 2017]), but it is also increasingly a force in bricks-and-clicks with the opening in recent years of conventional bookstores and convenience stores and with its purchase in 2017 of the Whole Foods chain of supermarkets. These “brick” sites complement in various ways the “clicks” on Amazon.com, and they are increasingly likely to do so in the future as Amazon creates a more seamless system.
Comparisons between McDonald’s and Amazon.com from the point of view of the McDonaldization thesis demonstrate that Amazon.com is far more McDonaldized than McDonald’s.
Amazon.com makes obtaining a wide array of products highly efficient by eliminating lengthy and perhaps fruitless trips to department stores, big-box stores (such as Walmart), and the mall. What could be more efficient than sitting at home, ordering products online, and having your order delivered in a day or two? While McDonald’s made obtaining a meal in a restaurant more efficient through the drive-through window, it still has the inefficiency of requiring consumers to drive (or walk) to the restaurant to get their food.
Shopping on Amazon.com involves a highly predictable series of online steps that lead to the completion of an order. McDonald’s brought great predictability to eating in a restaurant. There are well-defined steps in obtaining a meal there: join the line, scan the marquee to know what to order when you (finally) get to the counter, order, pay, take the tray of food to a table, eat it, and dispose of the debris on completion of the “meal.” However, there are a series of unpredictabilities at McDonald’s, absent at Amazon.com, such as those associated with inattentive, surly, or incompetent counter people.
There is great calculability involved in shopping on Amazon.com. Prices are clearly marked and consumers know exactly what the total cost of an order is. Before finalizing a purchase customers are able to delete items, thereby reducing the final cost. The marquee at McDonald’s offers preset prices and similar calculability, although unless customers are able to do the math in their heads, the final price is not known until the purchase is completed.
Shopping on Amazon.com is tightly controlled by the nature of the site and its reliance on nonhuman technologies. Consumers can only order what is on the site and cannot ask (there is no one to ask) for products to be modified. In addition, there are no crowds, to say nothing of unreliable and intrusive salespeople, on Amazon.com. Great control is exerted over customers at McDonald’s, but they are able to request some modifications in at least some of the food they order. This is one of the reasons that lines can be long at counters and drive-throughs. Counter people, as well as those who staff the drive-through windows, can adversely affect the process in various ways (for example, food may not be modified as requested; it is not unusual to drive or walk some distance only to find that one’s sack of food does not include exactly what was ordered).
The main irrationality of rationality associated with Amazon.com is its tendency to lead to excessive consumption, while that is not possible at McDonald’s given its limited menu and low prices. However, it is possible, even likely, to consume too many calories, too much fat, and too much sugar at McDonald’s (Spurlock 2005). ●
Visit edge.sagepub.com/ritzeressentials4e to
Watch an interview with Ritzer about his book The McDonaldization of Society.
Examine photographs and learn more about what Smithsonian magazine has identified as the most unique McDonald’s restaurants in the world.
Look at menu items from different McDonald’s restaurants.
Ask Yourself
What would your life be like in a postconsumption age? In what ways might it be better? Worse? Why?
The Digital World
Sociology has always concerned itself with the social aspects and implications of technology, or the interplay of machines, tools, skills, and procedures for the accomplishment of tasks. One example is the assembly line, a defining feature of early twentieth-century factories. Later, sociologists became interested in the automated technologies that came to define factories. However, technologies have continued to evolve considerably since then. Sociologists are now devoting an increasing amount of attention to the digital world that has emerged as a result of new technologies already mentioned in this chapter, such as computers, smartphones, the internet, and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter (Mukherjee 2018).
While we discuss life in the digital world throughout this book, living digitally is not separate from living in the social world. In fact, the two forms of living are increasingly intersecting and creating an augmented world (Jurgenson 2012). The widespread use of smartphones allows people to text many others to let them know they are going to be at a local club. This can lead to a spontaneous social gathering at the club that would not have occurred were it not for this new technology. However, the most dramatic examples of the effect of smartphones on the social world are seen in their use in mobilizing, especially through Twitter, large numbers of people to become involved, and stay involved, in social movements such as the revolutions in Egypt (2011) and Ukraine (2014).
The networking sites on the internet that involve social interaction are the most obviously sociological in character (Aleman and Wartman 2008; Patchin and Hinduja 2010). For example, Hodkinson (2015) has pointed out the similarities between teenagers’ bedrooms and their social networking sites in terms of privacy issues. Both are intimate personal spaces where teenagers socialize and individualize in ways that express their identities. Social networking sites are especially important in North America (Europe is not far behind), where the percentage of those with access to the internet is highest (see Figure 1.4). However, their importance is increasing elsewhere, especially in the Middle East and North Africa, as reflected in the role they played there in recent social revolutions. Protesters used cell phones and the internet to inform each other, and the world, about the evolving scene. To take another example, Facebook.com/yalaYL has become a key site where Israelis, Palestinians, and other Arabs communicate with each other about both everyday concerns and big issues such as the prospect for peace in the Middle East. This social networking takes place online, while peaceful face-to-face interaction between such people, and between their leaders, is difficult or nonexistent, especially in light of continuing violence in and around Israel (Bronner 2011).
Figure 1.4 Internet Access by Geographic Region, 2018
Source: Data from Internet World Stats, Miniwatts Marketing Group.
While social networking sites can bring about greater interaction, they also come between people and affect the nature of interaction. Twitter limits each message to 280 characters, but face-to-face communication has no such limits. On the other hand, face-to-face