Problem?

Is anyone harmed? Are there undesirable consequences that result from McDonaldization? Some quick answers–how beef and chicken are produced (what are the risks, what is the quality?). The kinds of low-wage, no-benefits jobs that characterized McDonaldized businesses. Do their franchises outcompete local businesses (whether you think that’s good or bad, does it create harm)? What about all the consumption that goes with McDonaldization? Does it lead people to re-define what constitutes art, for instance, or music (whatever the pop stations play ….), or literature, or cinema? Does that harm the career prospects of artists, musicians, writers, etc.? What about eating habits and health effects on the public?

Affect large numbers of people?

Hopefully the above gives you an idea of that, but you need to be specific in coming up with your own examples. Always easier to think in terms of groups (e.g., you could think of people in the labor force, or certain parts of the country, or religions) or categories (race, age, gender, social class, investors, consumers, etc.).

Causes

Hmmm. Tough one. Is it capitalism and the profit motive? Clever advertising and persuasion? A society’s desire for more convenience? What creates the need for that convenience? Is it changes in the economy that force more household members into the workforce? Lower wage jobs, possibly McJobs? Is it some notion of ‘progress?’ Is it as Weber says about rationalization, some irreversible process?

Consequences

For individuals, for the environment (resource use, waste, food production), for various groups (workers, artists, musicians, writers, people working in the factory farming biz, people living near factory farms, people living in giant subdivisions, thinking they’re informed if they get 30 minutes of ‘news’ a few nights a week, voting for political candidates who are reading consultants’ speeches and avoiding any unscripted moments while they speak at $2000 per plate dinners attended by corporate executives), for institutions (education, democracy, law enforcement, corrections, media, etc.), maybe for society–does McDonaldization lead to social control of sorts, social control that doesn’t come at the end of a gunbarrel (like in 1984), but rather is embraced by many as fundamental to our individual liberties and rights to consume as we choose?

Who benefits?

Consumers? Investors? Owners? Producers of the raw materials that go into McDonaldized processes? Remember, the more people and groups that benefit, the more resistance there will be to public debate about whether a probably actually exists (my guess is most people would say there’s no problem here, and some of those people would be working McJobs).

How framed?

Who has access to mass media? What kinds of mass media (e.g., radio, TV, Internet, print)? Who has advertising dollars and can hire PR firms? Who can buy influence legislators with campaign donations and lobbyists? What avenues do the critics have to compete in the public debate? What role do media, especially commercial media, play in all this (lots here–not just editorial decisions about news coverage, but decisions about what to cover, about what advertising to seek and accept)? What are the framings that are most often used?

What to do?

As consumers, as citizens, as voters, as organized groups, government (legislation, law), private industry, etc.