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The article focuses on the essay "British sociology and public intellectuals: consumer society and imperial decline," by Bryan Turner, from an American perspective. George Ritzer argues that America has even less public sociologists than Great Britain, and discusses the lack of media interest in sociology in the United States. While the discussion of consumer culture is a topic of interest in the United States, as demonstrated by Morgan Spurlock's book, "Don't Eat This Book," the American public is not interested in the topic from a legitimate sociological standpoint.

This paper has several objectives. First, it demonstrates the utility of employing an array of metatheoretical tools (paradigm, paradigm bridging micro -- macro, integrated paradigm, theoretical syntheses) to analyze the recent history of mainstream American sociological theory. Second, it shows that we have moved through three rather well defined epochs in sociological theory over the last three decades and are entering a fourth. Third, it demonstrates that the trend in recent years has been away from theoretical separatism and exclusivity, and toward theoretical synthesis and integration. Finally, and relatedly, the integrated sociological paradigm that I sketched a decade ago, or at least something very much like it, it shown to be now much closer to being a reality, perhaps even a defining reality, in sociological theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue addressed here is whether the spread of rationalization, or what I have termed 'McDonaldization', is inexorable. That issue is examined spatially and temporally. Spatially, what we are witnessing is the increasingly global dissemination of rationalization, much of it emanating from the United States. The temporal growth is discussed from the point of view of the expansion of McDonaldization to birth and before and death and beyond; rationalization is coming to contain the entire life course (and more). Evidence of expansion does not, of course, necessarily mean that growth is inevitable. There are some hopeful social developments and there are some things that individuals can do, but it is difficult at this point to envision anything powerful enough to stem the tide in the direction of rationalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]