Ever enter a housing development and realize you can’t tell one street from another? Or notice how clothing styles, consumer products, stores and restaurants, and even shopping centers all exhibit a kind of homogenization?
In fact, our entire social structure seems to be running headlong toward sameness, says sociologist and author George Ritzer, a distinguished university professor at the University of Maryland.
Ritzer’s book, “The McDonaldization of Society,” originally published in 1993, chronicles this phenomenon. In it, he argues that McDonald’s is model for a rational society in which the emphasis is on efficiency, predictability, calculability and control. It also is a rational system with a number of irrationalities.
This year, Ritzer updated his book and added the subtitle, “Into the Digital Age,” which, as the name implies, reflects how digital consumption sites, including Amazon.com, are building off these same realities and, in some cases, connecting them back to brick-and-mortar consumer sites.
On Friday, April 26, Ritzer will visit the Selby Auditorium at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee, 8350 N. Tamiami Trail, to discuss his seminal work.
The event runs from noon to 1 p.m. It’s free and open to the public.
Ritzer’s work impacts disciplines beyond sociology and is well-known in academic circles. Scholars have cited his original book almost 10,000 times and it has been translated into more than 15 languages.
USFSM Research Administration Faculty Fellows Melissa Sloan, PhD, and Murat Haner, PhD, acquired funding from USF ResearchOne and the Duvall Family Studies Initiative to invite Ritzer to USFSM.
“We feel very fortunate to have such a world-renowned scholar visit our campus, and we are excited to hear about the updates in the newest edition of his book and consider how they might influence our own work,” Haner said.
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