Sociology. Anthony Giddens
Global society 3.1 Rationalization as McDonaldization?
Anyone who has eaten at a McDonald’s restaurant abroad as well as at home will have noticed many similarities. The interior decorations may vary, the language spoken will differ, but the layout, the procedure for ordering, staff uniforms, and ‘service with a smile’ are essentially similar. Compared with many other restaurants, one of the obvious differences at McDonald’s is just how efficient the whole process is. Staff members work on specialized, straightforward jobs: one makes the fries, another flips the burgers, a third puts the burger in a bun and adds the salad. Much of the process is also automated – milkshakes at the press of a button, deep fryers that work at set temperatures, and tills with buttons for each item so staff do not even have to learn food prices.
But why should sociologists be interested in fast food? George Ritzer (1983, 1993, 1998) argues that McDonald’s provides a vivid metaphor of recent economic and cultural transformations. What we are witnessing, he says, is the ‘McDonaldization’ of society: the process by which the basic principles of fast-food restaurants come to dominate other areas of society. Using the four guiding principles of McDonald’s restaurants – efficiency, calculability, uniformity and control through automation – Ritzer argues that modern societies are becoming ever more ‘rationalized’ and that McDonald’s is simply the best exemplar of the process. ‘McDonaldization’, he notes, is catchier than ‘Burger Kingization’ or ‘Starbuckization’.
Like Weber, Ritzer claims that the long-term process of rationalization can, paradoxically, generate irrational outcomes. Weber saw that bureaucracies take on a life of their own, spreading through social life with harmful as well as positive consequences. Similarly, Ritzer argues that the apparently rational process of McDonaldization spawns a series of irrationalities – damage to our health, from a ‘high calorie, fat, cholesterol, salt, and sugar content’ diet, and to the environment, with all the packaging that is thrown away after each meal. Most of all, McDonaldization is ‘dehumanizing’. People file forward in queues as if on a conveyer belt, while staff repeat the same tasks over and over again, like robots.
Ritzer’s thesis has been very influential in sociology, though in recent years McDonald’s has been forced to change its practices to compete in the global economy, tailoring its ‘product’ to fit the local cultures in particular markets around the world – an excellent example of glocalization in practice.
Reflexivity, risk and cosmopolitan theory
The ideas of the classical thinkers – Marx, Durkheim and Weber – were formed during times of great social, political and economic change, which their perspectives sought to understand. Arguably, we are living through a period of global transformation that is just as profound, yet more widely felt across more regions of the world. The need to refresh and update our theoretical perspectives seems increasingly necessary if sociology is to remain relevant. The theory of globalization is discussed extensively in chapter 4, and we will not anticipate that discussion here. Instead, we look at three significant theories which assume that globalization is transforming human societies. These are selected as representative of sociologists who reject the postmodern idea of the death of modernity.
Anthony Giddens on social reflexivity
Giddens has developed a theoretical perspective on the transformative changes happening in the present-day world (Giddens 2002, 2011). We live in what he calls a ‘runaway world’ marked by new risks and uncertainties of the sort outlined by Ulrich Beck (1999). Living in a digital, information age also means an increase in social reflexivity. Social reflexivity refers to the fact that we have constantly to think about, or reflect upon, the circumstances in which we live our lives.
When societies were shaped by custom and tradition, people could follow established ways of doing things in a more unreflective fashion. Today, many aspects of life that for earlier generations were simply taken for granted become matters of open decision-making. For example, for hundreds of years people had no effective ways of limiting the size of their families. With modern forms of contraception, and other forms of technological involvement in reproduction, parents can not only choose how many children they have but even decide what sex those children will be. These new possibilities, of course, are fraught with new ethical dilemmas.
Yet the idea of a runaway world does not imply that we have inevitably lost control of the future. In a global age, nations certainly lose some of the power they used to have. The 2008 financial crash demonstrated that individual governments have less influence over their national economies than once they had. But, as many governments acted collaboratively to formulate strategy and provide funds to assist the worst-hit countries, the crisis also showed that nations can work together to exert some influence.
Voluntary groups and social movements outside the framework of formal politics can also have an important role, but they will not supplant orthodox democratic politics. Democracy is still crucial, because these groups make divergent claims and have different interests – those who actively campaign for more tolerance of abortion and those who believe entirely the opposite, for instance. Democratic governments must assess and react to these varying claims and concerns.
Sociology as a discipline is not unaffected by these social changes, and sociologists are becoming more reflexive about their own research practice and its effects on participants. The divide between academic ‘experts’ and unknowledgeable ‘laypeople’ seems far less rigid today. Those who participate in interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, and so on, are increasingly included in other aspects of the research process – advising on appropriate questions, identifying ethical issues, and reading and commenting on draft research reports. This deeper involvement can enhance the validity of research findings, as sociologists can check their interpretations with participants before arriving at firm conclusions. On present trends it is likely that reflexivity will continue to spread to more areas of social life.
Ulrich Beck – risk in the second modernity
The German sociologist Ulrich Beck (1944–2015) also rejects postmodernism. Rather than living in a world ‘beyond the modern’, we are moving into a phase of what he calls ‘the second modernity’. Beck’s social theory of a ‘second modernity’ refers to the fact that modern institutions are becoming global, while everyday life is breaking free from the hold of tradition and custom. The old industrial society is disappearing and is being replaced by a ‘risk society’.
Beck is not arguing that the contemporary world is more risky than that of previous ages. Rather, it is the nature of the risks we must face that is changing. Risk now derives less from natural dangers or hazards than from our own social development and by the development of science and technology. For example, global warming represents possibly the most serious environmental issue today. Yet the scientific consensus is that this is not a simple natural disaster but the product of excessive greenhouse gases from industrial pollution and modern transportation emissions over the past 250 years. Popular science writers have dubbed such problems the ‘revenges of nature’.
The advance of science and technology creates new risk situations that are very different from those of previous ages. Science and technology obviously provide us with many benefits. Yet they create risks that are hard to measure. Thus no one quite knows what the risks involved in the development of new technologies, such as gene therapy or nanotechnology, might be. Supporters of genetically modified crops, for example, claim that at best they give us the possibility of ending malnutrition in the world’s poorest countries and providing cheap food for everyone. Sceptics claim that they could have dangerous, unintended health consequences.