THE
MCDONALDIZATION OF
THE CONTEMPORARY
SOCIETY
INTRODUCTION
• Globalization does not only refer to the movement of people and services around the world. And it does
not only involve the interaction of the peoples globally. It also refers to the sharing of cultures
worldwide.
• Arguably, ideas are the most powerful globalizing agent. With the movements and interactions all over
the world, ideas, worldviews, the way of doing things, beliefs, and traditions—in a word culture—are
being shared. And these are effectively shared, sometimes subtly imposed, through the various media of
communication.
• Foremost of these ideas is the rational view of the world.
• The contemporary societies, according to Weber, has been rationalized.
• The rationalization of the contemporary societies refers to the process by which economic, social
political, and even ordinary tasks are subjected to methodic and systematic ways. Bureaucracy is an
example of a rationalized process
• George Ritzer believes that Weber’s theory of the rationalization of the society is even more relevant in
the contemporary society. Rationalization is best exemplified through the Mcdonaldization of the
contemporary societies all over the world.
FOUR TYPES OF RATIONALITY
• Practical Rationality. It seeks the “methodical attainment of a definitely given and practical end
by means of an increasingly precise calculation of adequate means” (Weber cited in Ritzer)
• Theoretical Rationality. It refers to “an increasingly theoretical mastery of reality by means of
increasingly precise and abstract concepts.” (Weber cited in Ritzer)
• Substantial Rationality. It “involves value postulates, or clusters of values, that guide people in
their daily lives, especially in their choice of means to ends.” …. It “involves a choice of means
to ends guided by some larger system of human values.” (Ritzer)
• Formal Rationality. “Formal rationality involves the rational calculation of means to ends based
on universally applied rules, regulations, and laws.” (Ritzer citing Kalberg) “Formal rationality is
institutionalized in such large-scale structures as the bureaucracy, modern law, and the capitalist
economy.” (Ritzer)
FORMAL RATIONALITY
“In looking for the best means of attaining a given objective under formal rationality, we are
not left to our own devices, but rather we use existing rules, regulations, and structures
that either predetermine the optimum methods or help us discover them. “
“[T]he optimum means to some given ends…is incorporated into rules, regulations, and
structures of our social institutions.” (Ritzer)
”Formal rationality often leads to decisions that disregard the needs and values of actors,
implying that substantive rationality is unimportant.” (Ritzer)
“Profits are the primary focus rather than issues of humanity.” (Ritzer)
FORMAL RATIONALITY
• ”Unlike the first three types of rationality, formal rationality has not existed at all times and in all
places. Rather, it was created in, and came to dominate, the modern, Western, industrialized
world.”
• “Weber believed that formal rationality was coming to overwhelm and to supplant the other types
of rationality within the Western world. ”
• It paves the way to the “erosion of substantive rationality.”
• “The fading away of substantive rationality was regrated by Weber because it “embodied Western
civilization’s highest ideals: the autonomous and free individual whose actions were given
continuity by their reference to ultimate values” Weber cited in Ritzer)
• “Instead of people whose actions were guided by these high ideals, we were to be left in the
modern world with people who simply followed the rules without regard to larger human values.”
(Ritzer)
• This leads to rational domination.
BUREAUCRATIC RATIONALIZATION
• Formal rationalization is best exemplified in the bureaucratization of social, economic, and
political processes.
• “Bureaucratic rationalization…revolutionizes with technical means, in principle, as does every
economic reorganization, “from without”: it first changes the material and social orders, and
through them the people, by changing the conditions of adaptation, and perhaps the opportunities
for adaptation, through a rational determination of means to ends.” (Weber quoted in Ritzer)
• “The bureaucracies themselves are structured in such a way as to guide or even to force people to
choose certain means to ends.” (Ritzer)
• “The rules and regulations represent the bureaucracy’s institutional memory, which
contemporaries need only to use (and not invent and continually reinvent) to attain some end.”
(Ritzer)
Department of Education Bureacracy
https://www.deped.gov.ph/about-deped/central-office/
ELEMENTS OF FORMAL RATIONALITY
• Efficiency
• Predictability
• Quantifiability/Calculation
• Control (Replacement of human with non-
human technology)
EFFICIENCY
• It is “the choice of the optimum means to an end.”
(Ritzer)
• Examples
–Turning customer into unpaid laborer [self-service;
in restaurants (Clean as you go), gas stations,
internet trouble shooting; clean-as-you-go; ATM
machines; diet industry]
CALCULABILITY
• It “emphasizes on things that can be calculated, counted,
and quantified.” (Ritzer)
• Valuing quantity over quality
• Examples: Big Mac, Burger King; Big Gulp; wholesale
over retail; number of degrees; number of credentials;
number of publications
PREDICTABILITY
• “Rationalization involves the increasing effort to ensure
predictability from one time or place to another. In a rational
society, people want to know what to expect in all settings and
at all times. They neither want nor expect surprises.” (Ritzer)
• Examples: predictability of movies (sequels); franchise of TV
shows; predictability of decisions; constancy and consistency
(shopping malls; regularity of designs, sizes, tastes…
MCDONALIZATION
• “It is the fact-food restaurant that today best represents and leads the process of formal
rationalization and its basic components efficiency, predictability, quantification, control through
the substitution of nonhuman for human technology, and the ultimate irrationality of formal
rationality.” (Ritzer)
CONTROL (REPLACING PEOPLE WITH
NONHUMAN TECHNOLOGIES
• People (employees and customers) are the most unpredictable part of the
rationalized system.
• McDonaldized system tends to exert increasing control over people by replacing
people with technology (robots and computers)
• Examples: factory farms replacing backyard raising of animals; computerized food
production, home cooking; installation of thermal scanners and vendo machines;
installation of RFIDs; use of credit cards, Gcash, computerized airplanes/ships
THE IRRATIONALITY OF RATIONALITY
• There are innumerable benefits gained from the rationalized systems. e.g.: growth, convenience.
• But there are also negative effects of the McDonalidization of the societies
• Inefficiencies in restaurants (long lines); technical glitches
• It poses health, environmental, family, and individual problems
• Rational systems are dehumanizing (employees are simply cogs in the machine)
• It leads to rational domination (the iron cage of rationality), preventing spontaneity and
creativity, and personal responsibility
• Loss of control over the system
• “the interlocking rational systems can fall into the hands of a small number of leaders who,
through them, can exercise enormous control over all society.” (Ritzer)
• The rational system is actually irrational.
SOURCE:
RITZER, GEORGE (2007). THE WEBERIAN THEORY
OF RATIONALIZATION AND THE MCDONALDIZATION
OF THE CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY.
HTTPS://WWW.SEMANTICSCHOLAR.ORG/PAPER/T
HE-WEBERIAN-THEORY-OF-RATIONALIZATION-AND-
THE-OF-
RITZER/EE54B70DF7A98096272CE5AEADB9F694
09BB837C
