PART V:

THE BIG PICTURE

World System & World Polity
Globalization & Regionalization
 Ritzer’s hierarchy of Globalization
• Globalization encompasses Americanization
• McDonaldization is a
component of Americanization
• But, “McDonaldization” is becoming
autonomous.
 So, much of our social life is – whether we
intend it or not – “nested” in places devoted to
making us overconsume.
As in other domains,
we always have to be
attentive to the
differences between
globalization in
principle or in theory
and globalization in
actuality or in practice.
 Cathedrals of Consumption
• The new means of consumption are the
“settings that allow, encourage, and even
compel us to consume so many goods and
services” (p.2).
They have a quasi-religious, “enchanted”
nature.
Importantly, while they are highly regulated and
controlled, they give the impression precisely of
freedom, uninhibited fun, endless pleasure…
 Globalization of consumption?
• Is the globalization of culture mostly about
– the spread of consumerism?
– the spread of U.S. patterns of consumption?
– the spread of “cathedrals of consumption”?
Is it an issue, for instance, that shopping malls outnumber high
schools?
That 93% of teenage females rank shopping as their favorite
pastime?
That Americans spend $1.2 trillion annually on nonessential
goods—in other words, items they do not need?
 Consumer Freedom or Consumer
Craziness?

• The average 10-year-old American owns 238 toys but plays with just 12 daily;
• Americans spend more on shoes, jewelry, and watches ($100 billion) than on higher education;

This is what Ritzer calls the “consumer religion.”

Children Consumers

The “Nag” Factor

 The Challenge: Tedium
• The trouble with our cathedrals
of consumption is that people
get bored very easily and
quickly.
“The challenge for today’s
cathedrals of consumption (as for
religious cathedrals) is how to
maintain enchantment in the face
of increasing rationalization” (p.9).
This brings us to the issue of
“enchantment” and the
“disenchantment” of modernity.
 McDonaldization (Ritzer p. 36)
• Definition: the principle of the fast
food restaurant comes to
dominate more sectors of society
• Vision of the world: emphasis on
efficiency, predictability,
calculability and technology
•  Streamlined process
•  Uniformity of goods & services
•  Faster, faster, faster!
Proposition #1.

“Most vengeful howls

directed at globalization
come from self-interested
business elites who are
being forced to surrender
to consumer choice.”
– (p.15)
 Proposition #2.

“The central issue in general

is not whether a particular
arrangement is better for
everyone than no
cooperation at all would be,
but whether that is a fair
division of the benefits.”
– Amartya Sen (p.22)
Proposition #3.

“Globalization means both

integration and polarisation. It
promotes both social
movements that fight for the
respect of human rights and
social movements that further
racism, ethnic divisions and
fundamentalism.”
– (p.27)
 Proposition #4.
“If the poor and rich continue to live in different
moral universes, education to produce global
citizens is doomed to fail.”
– (p.31)
Proposition #5.
“The dynamics of the
Jihad-McWorld Linkage
are deeply dialectical.
Japan has, for example,
become more culturally
insistent on its own
traditions in recent years
even as its people seek
an ever greater purchase
on McWorld.”
– Benjamin Barber (p.38)
Proposition #6.

“Differences among
civilizations are not
only real; they are
basic.”
- Samuel Huntington
(p.42)
THE END, Hurray!

CONGRATULATIONS!