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by Sena Thoradeniya

"McDonaldization of Society" (Revised Edition: 1996) is the title of an interesting and excellent book written by George Ritzer, Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, who has served as Chair of the American Sociological Association's Section on Theoretical Sociology and Organizations and Occupations.

This book presents an insightful sociological critique of contemporary American society, culture and modernity, merging classic sociological theory with observations on current society. The book is based on Max Weber's theory of rationalization and deals with problems created and the dangers posed by McDonaldization. It is a warning that the seductions and attractions of McDonaldization should not blind us to its many dangers.

Ritzer says that McDonalds had revolutionized not only the restaurant business, but also American society and ultimately the world and McDonaldization was spreading around the world. McDonaldization extends its boundaries. It has spread throughout the US and beyond. It has much or more business overseas than in the US. Many other types of organizations have adapted the McDonald's model.

The purpose of this article is to identify the process of McDonaldization in our own society and culture and its many elements in a nutshell.

What is McDonaldization? Certainly, it is not dining at a McDonald's fast food restaurant. According to Ritzer it is a "wide ranging process" "by which the principles of the fast food restaurant are coming to dominate more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world." McDonaldization influences not only the restaurant business, but also education, work, health care, travel, leisure, politics, the family and virtually every other aspect of society.

McDonald's first began franchising in 1955. By the end of 1993, it had almost 14,000 restaurants worldwide. Over one-third of McDonald's restaurants were overseas and at the beginning of 1995 about half of McDonald's profits came from its overseas operations. McDonalds have even opened a restaurant in Mecca.

The McDonald model has been adopted by other hamburger franchises such as Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), Pizza Hut and Domino's etc. Some nation have developed their own variants of the American McDonald's. MacMashalla is the Iranian equivalent of McDonald's - "Great Satan's capitalist icon". In addition to the various franchises we have in Sri Lanka, our own "Kottu Roti" and other fast food outlets are examples for the Sri Lankan variants.

Popular culture

McDonald's and other variants of fast food restaurants occupy a central place in popular culture. Foreigners export popular culture also through fast food restaurants. Look at the McDrive at Rajagiriya. It resembles a motorcar show in any evening. For some, these places have become "sacred institutions" or modern "cathedrals of consumption" to which people go to practise their "consumer religion" as Ritzer describes.

Paying a visit to McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut or MC (Majestic City) has been elevated to a sacrosanct act as a "middle class haj", a "post-modernist" behaviour in the under developed periphery. But in reality these are the meeting places of the agents of popular culture and those immersed in it.

For many years America has been exporting its popular culture, first as images in motion pictures, magazines, cartoons, comics, music and TV, now as commercial enterprises, Coca-cola, its icon and logo, and Levi's jeans. Even replicas of American leisure, the Disneyland and various other theme parks were exported. Then came the McDonald's. The most noteworthy event was the opening of McDonald's in Moscow in January 1990. More than 30,000 Russians stood in line almost two hours to get their first taste of Big Macs, French fries, and chocolate and strawberry, say Wilson and Wilson (1998). In early 1992 world's largest McDonalds was opened in Moscow, with 700 seats, 29 cash registers, and nearly 1000 employees. On its first day of business it set a new one-day record for McDonalds by serving about 40,000 customers.

The icon that was considered as the cause for its success, Ronald McDonald according to a poll of schoolchildren, showed that 96% of them could identify Ronald McDonald second only to Santa Claus in name recognition.

McDonald's success has entered the American management textbooks as case studies that are used to teach management also in our universities and institutes of higher learning. As the company Chairman said, McDonalds wanted "to be more than a leader". He wanted to dominate, quite contrary to American theories of leadership expounded in their own textbooks.

Cultural norms

Our TV commercials play a major role in McDonaldization of our society and culture. This cannot be fully explained in a short article like the present one. Some of them completely overhauls our society, social and cultural norms and above all else our Sri Lankanness.

A particular brand of a malt drink has engulfed the whole society spreading its tentacles from the TV news readers' - desk. The toiling masses quench their thirst by drinking a "yeast extract". A peasant woman takes a popular brand of instant noodles to the paddy field as our traditional muttettuwa. A grand child accompanies his village grandparents to a KFC outlet. Grandmother murmurs whether the "white man's food" is agreeable to them. Seeing the buriyani served the grandfather enters into a trance like dance to the amusement of other diners.

After consumption the elated grandmother says that, "the buriyani denoted by the three English letters" is fantastic. A yuppie, who brought food in a Tiffin carrier to a hotel, was not allowed to eat inside the hotel by the waiter complaining that he has brought "outside food". The yuppie argues, "is this outside food?" He says that all these people who are inside the hotel were grown and nurtured by eating a particular brand of sausages. So he wants to share his food with all the other diners. The hotel manager allows him to continue with his antic. We ask a simple question. Do hoteliers allow their guests to bring food cooked outside and willingly lose other customers?

The most "McDonalidized" advertisement in the recent times is the one telecast by the enterprise having a chain of super markets. It penetrates into the all aspects of our agrarian society. The village children catch live fish and put them in a particular kind of empty jam jar. They fly kites made out of 'sili sili' bags carrying the name of the super market.

The scarecrow gets its eyes from the same source. Empty ice cream containers are floated in the river waters. Even throwing a handful of rice to the domestic foul, was facilitated by the entry of this company to the village, it shows. These advertising men and company bosses should be reminded that our ancient villagers before cooking rice took a fistful of raw rice and kept it in a special vessel to feed the needy, which was known as "miti haal" (a fistful of rice)

In Sri Lanka also the franchise holders have started home delivery services of fast food. Now our compounds are littered by promotional material indicating the services provided by and the food available at the outlets of these franchise holders. Frozen, microwavable and prepared food has come to stay in urban and sub-urban households. Other than fast food outlets and advertising there are many examples for McDonaladization of our society and culture. All Sinhala and English weeklies carry tabloid size supplements spiced with "colour graphics", "fun facts" and "cute features".

The main function of the newspaper is entertainment. In the main newspaper the editorials and feature articles lament the erosion of cultural values etc.; but the supplements added as "spices" are composed of the opposite. This exhaustive list include, FM radios and TV programmes with hybrid names, music TV, porno films and magazines, chat shows, intimate and sexually explicit conversations, escort services and sex industry.

Televangelism or propagating religions through TV and proselytization are two more elements. Buying kawum and kokis from various outlets during the festive season and Vesak lanterns has become another aspect of this culture. Erecting cadjan huts in front of mega stores they employ women clad in the dress of village damsels to make kawum and kokis and to play the rabana. The list is too long. As Ritzer says "no aspect of people's lives is immune of McDonaldization".

Dimensions

Ritzer identifies four dimensions of McDonaldization. They are efficiency, calculability, predictability and control. Space does not permit us to explain these four dimensions in detail. Scriptured behaviour is one aspect of predictability. That is workers of McDonald's behaving in predictable ways.

What they do and what they say at McDonald's are highly predictable. Ritzer says that McDonald's organizations have scripts that its employees are supposed to memorize and follow whenever the occasion rises. Similarly in Sri Lanka, NGOs, peaceniks, and certain literary critics who write to Sinhala papers display scriptured behaviour. The latter cannot escape parroting the words of the so-called post-modernists.

Phenomenon

A number of writers has viewed McDonald's as a post-modern phenomenon. Among them is Jean Franois Lyotard. Some writers such as Allen Shelton has concluded "McDonald's as an emblem of post modernism" acting as a "signpost for the times". But Ritzer says, "McDonald's cannot be the symbol of both modernity and post-modernity".

He sees a "phenomenon like McDonald's as having both modern and postmodern characteristics". Shelton says that McDonald's have succeeded in automating the customer. When a customer enters a fast food restaurant he enters a kind of automated system. In his view McDonald's thus looks more like a factory, than a restaurant, a "high-tech factory".

McDonaldization of the society and culture influences the steps leading up to birth, birth process, living, process of dying and its aftermath as well. High-tech pregnancies, or baby making are used to produce designer babies or designer pregnancies, facilitated by impotence clinics, artificial insemination, surrogate mothers, pregnancy tests, sex selection, (gender choice) and tests for genetic deformity of the baby.

Childbirth

Routinization the procedure for handling childbirth, viewing childbirth as a 'disease", decline of midwifery, use of scalpel and unnecessary caesareans are elements of McDonalidization at childbirth. In Sri Lanka, choice of doctors, channeling, choice of maternity homes, restricting visitors, baby needs and mother care shops are being considered as important aspects. DNA tests for suspected adultery is the newest elements of the McDonaldized society.

To describe schooling education, employment and marriage it needs separate chapters under each heading. In our society schooling and marriage have become two lucrative industries with associated sub-contracting. Even private lives are not spared. Sex also has undergone McDonaldization. Sex change operations have become widespread in the West. Experiencing orgasm without going through the sexual intercourse is made possible and a patent orgasm device that involves an implant in the spine has been invented for women who have never experienced an orgasm. More women marry "toy boys".

Arranging of non-human technologies designed to keep people alive, 'designer deaths" (as described by Jean Baudrillard), death taking place in hospitals, pre-arranged funerals, having control over the expenses, giving instructions to what to do and how to do after death, honouring wishes of the deceased, donating (harvesting) organs such as eyes are elements of arranging death. After death it has become fashionable to take the body to a funeral parlour. Ownership of several parlous increases the business of undertakers.

Recently a leading undertaker in a TV discussion requested the government to allow them to own and maintain private cemeteries as in the West. Funeral services, instalment payment plans, advertising funeral packages are other elements associated with McDonaldization. Now in Sri Lanka your final journey can be made in style in a super luxury Volvo custom-built hearse-the only one of its kind in Asia-with a mounted guard on thoroughbred horses imported from India and trained in Nuwara Eliya. Video coverage of the ceremony and an album of photographs are parts of the package. A VIP funeral service!

Suicide societies, books giving instructions on how to commit suicide, growing interest in euthanasia, and even freezing dead bodies are popular in the West. A Japanese undertaker has planned a death amusement park modelled after Disney World.

The coffin on an electronically operated cast moves down a hill bathed in the light of laser beams accompanied by chanting monks. When it reaches the end of the hall the coffin enters a tunnel enveloped in thick fog of dry ice and disappears into the "other world".

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