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In this article, we re-examine the McDonaldization thesis in light of social changes that occurred since the 1990s and notably in light of the onset of digital forms of consumption. The argument is presented that while the theory of McDonaldization remains profoundly relevant to the consumption of bricks-and-mortar locales, it is even more applicable in the digital age, as well as "bricks-and-clicks" consumption sites. The ways in which McDonaldization is played out in three iconic companies, namely, McDonalds, Amazon, and Wal-Mart is critically interrogated. On this basis, the article seeks to understand what the intensification of McDonaldization means for our understanding of the contemporary consumption experience. Arguing that theories are routinely outpaced by the pace of social change, we contend that the digital speeds up processes of rationalization while intensifying levels of consumption. The article concludes by reflecting on what this might mean given that we now live in an age of networked individualism, for our understanding of the relationship between place and consumption: the degree to which digital platforms appear to consumers to be "natural" and thus ideologically powerful, being of particular concern. For this reason, we suggest that the McDonaldization thesis is, in fact, more relevant in the digital future than it was in the bricks-and-mortar past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages and extends understanding of the interrelated concepts of prosumption, the prosumer, prosumer capitalism, and McDonaldization in relation to the highly commodified and spectacularized world of professional sport. Developing an understanding of modern sport forms as having always exhibited prosumptive dimensions, the discussion focuses on the contemporary sporting context. The analysis highlights the increasingly intertextual and interactive nature of sport prosumption, as realized through Web 2.0 technologies, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and website comment pages, all of which provide a means of contributing toward (and thereby co-producing) the prosumer sport spectacle. Within this explication of sporting prosumption, we focus on empirical forms occupying the center of the prosumption continuum: those expressions wherein the productive and consumptive aspects of prosumption are "more or less evenly balanced.'' In doing so, we examine sport spectatorship as a form of material prosumption -- the digital-based prosumption implicit within "socialmediasport"and the enmeshed digital and material prosumption constitutive of eSport. Our aim is to critically explicate the prosumptive dimensions of contemporary sport culture and, in conclusion, to contribute to the wider dialogue regarding the nature and implications of prosumer capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the year that George Ritzer publishes the ninth edition of The McDonaldization of Society, moving his famous theory firmly Into the Digital Age, critical educator Petar Jandrić and sociologist Sarah Hayes invited George to a dialogue on the digital transformation of McDonaldization and its critical application to Higher Education. In this article, George first traces for us the origins of his theory that has endured for four decades. A key dimension of McDonaldization is the 'iron cage' of control, via rationalization. Once contained within physical sites of bricks and mortar, now, we encounter a 'velvet cage' in sites of digital consumption, at the hands of non-human technologies, that threaten human labor and autonomy. Whilst the concept of the McUniversity is not without some critique, this interview provides compelling reasons to open new dialogue about McDonaldization in augmented settings such as Higher Education. With the rise of prosuming machines such as blockchain and bitcoin, that can both produce and consume without intervention from human 'prosumers', universities cannot afford to ignore the challenges of prosumer capitalism, which George concludes, will explode into unprecedented and unpredictable directions in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay builds on and expands the domain of the burgeoning literature on the human prosumer and the process of prosumption. Just as the prosumer and prosumption are finally getting the attention they have always deserved, a dramatic technological change – the rise of smart prosuming machines – is taking place that is reducing the importance of the human prosumer. While the impact of these machines on producers (here conceived of as prosumers-as-producers) has long been obvious, what has changed the most is the explosion, and the growing impact, of these machines on consumers (or prosumers-as-consumers). A number of examples are offered of smart prosuming machines for humans. The latter are often unaware of the prosumption being done by smart machines, especially on the Internet. While smart prosuming machines offer many advantages, the danger lies in the replacement of human by non-human technologies and the control exercised by them. This is especially the case on the Internet of Things where many smart prosuming machines function, interrelate, and operate as autonomous, self-organizing devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay discusses capitalism and prosumption. Topics of the essay include capitalist market, social stratification and work overload for employees. Other topics such as entrepreneurs, capitalists and production in capitalist system are also discussed. Consumption in the capitalist system is also mentioned.

The essay discusses relationship between capitalism and prosumption. Topics of the essay include capitalist economic system, consumer capitalism and consumer societies. Other topics such as economic processes, social media and production in capitalism are also discussed. Capitalism in United States in mentioned.

While strong arguments can be made that prosumption today can be seen as a primal phenomenon and an evolutionary process, the strongest argument is that it involves a revolutionary set of developments producing a dramatically new world of prosumption. While those developments can be seen in both the material and digital worlds (although they augment one another), they are clearest in the digital world, especially the Internet. Among the forces that are creating this new world of consumption are new means of prosumption (e.g., IKEA, massive online open courses, automated teller machines) which are made possible by a variety of new technologies (the computer, the Internet). However, overarching these and other changes is the emergence of a new form of capitalism, 'prosumer capitalism.' In addition to exploiting often low-paid commodified workers, prosumer capitalism increasingly prioritizes the exploitation of largely uncommodified prosumers who are generally unpaid. Prosumers offer the capitalist many other advantages (e.g., no long-term obligations such as high-cost benefit programs). There are few, if any, obligations to prosumers with the result that they fit well with today's reigning neoliberal philosophy. The new world of prosumption could have been a more positive development had it not been usurped by capitalist interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prosumption, the interrelated process of production and consumption, is increasingly obvious everywhere, but especially on the internet where people “prosume,” for example, Facebook pages, Wikipedia entries, and Amazon.com orders. But what is prosumption? Has it evolved out of recent behaviors? Or, is it new and revolutionary? Or, is it what we’ve always done? In fact, it is all three. Beyond dealing with these questions and re-conceptualizing much of what we do as prosumption rather than as either production or consumption, we reflect on the future of prosumption, as well as on the continuing utility of traditional concepts, paradigms, theories and methods that were created to deal with epochs, phenomena and processes seemingly focused on production or consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay provides an introduction to prosumption, the topic of this special double issue of American Behavioral Scientist. The term prosumption was coined by Alvin Toffler in 1980 and refers to a combination of production and consumption. In this introduction, the authors first argue that prosumption is not new but is actually primordial. Many scholars have dealt with the issue, at least implicitly, but only recently have they begun to deal with it explicitly as prosumption. Prosumption has always existed, but various social changes (e.g., the rise of the Internet and of social networking on it) have greatly expanded both the practice of prosumption and scholarly attention to it. Prosumption has its most obvious and direct relevance to the economy. As a result, the authors also frame it in terms of contemporary capitalism. Finally, they offer a brief overview of the articles in the double issue, included under the headings Theoretical Contributions to the Concept of Prosumption, The Role of Prosumption in Politics, and Meaning Making Within Prosumption. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article deals with the rise of prosumer capitalism. Prosumption involves both production and consumption rather than focusing on either one (production) or the other (consumption). It is maintained that earlier forms of capitalism (producer and consumer capitalism) were themselves characterized by prosumption. Given the recent explosion of user-generated content online, we have reason to see prosumption as increasingly central. In prosumer capitalism, control and exploitation take on a different character than in the other forms of capitalism: there is a trend toward unpaid rather than paid labor and toward offering products at no cost, and the system is marked by a new abundance where scarcity once predominated. These trends suggest the possibility of a new, prosumer, capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a counterpoint to analyses of contemporary sport culture that falsely polarize the global and the local, in a manner that tends to privilege, and indeed romanticize, expressions of the sporting local. Rather than treating them as mutually exclusive categories, this discussion seeks to further the understanding of the constitutive interdependence linking the (sporting) global and the (sporting) local. In looking to further the understanding of the contemporary sporting landscape, we offer an alternative approach that reinscribes the influence of the global in shaping structures, practices, and experiences of the sporting local. The processual and empirical continuum through which we conceptualize globalization is bounded by grobalization (the imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations, organizations, and the like and their desire, indeed need, to impose themselves on various geographic areas) and glocalization (the interpenetration of the global and the local, resulting in unique outcomes in different geographic areas): the grobal and the glocal. We discuss four sport scenarios, and illustrate the manner in which they exhibit – in varying inflections and to varying intensities – the necessary, but never guaranteed, interpenetrative relationship between the grobal and the glocal. This is achieved by both problematizing the very possibility of the sporting local within conditions of intensive and extensive globalization (leading to the concept of the glocal), and simultaneously explicating the importance of the global (through the concept of the grobal) to the structure and experience of everyday sport cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 article relates the author's thoughts on being a fan of the New York Yankees and how he continues to be a fan despite his ideological beliefs against them. He became a fan of the Yankees mainly because of an interest in some of the team's more average players. He discusses how he continues to support the Yankees despite the fact that he feels they represent the inequality and unfairness of the capitalist system. He comments on why he followed the career of Shane Spencer, a minor league player temporarily hired by the Yankees, who he considers a mediocre player.

Two images of the social geography of the McDonaldization of society suggest themselves: Weber's "iron cage" and Foucault's "carceral archipelago." Although both are helpful in understanding McDonaldization, neither is satisfactory. On one hand, although the cage-like image fits to a degree, it is certainly not an iron cage because escape remains an easy (if not often taken) option for most people. On the other hand, the idea of an archipelago of McDonaldized settings is very attractive, but again, because escape is easy, it cannot be considered a carceral system. It is argued that it is best to see today's McDonaldized systems as "islands of the living dead." Building on George Romero's sci-fi cult classic, the author contends that although there is much life on these islands, they are also in many senses "dead." Although it is in the interest of the owners of these settings to make them as dead as possible, those in them often struggle to create as much life as possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of “grobalization” is proposed to complement the popular idea of “glocalization.” In addition, a sociologically relevant concept of “nothing” is defined and juxtaposed with “something.” Two continua are created—grobalization-glocalization and nothing-something—and their intersection creates four quadrants: the grobalization of nothing, glocalization of nothing, grobalization of something, and glocalization of something. Of greatest importance are the grobalization of nothing and the glocalization of something, as well as the conflict between them. The grobalization of nothing threatens to overwhelm the latter and everything else. Other issues discussed include the loss of something in a world increasingly dominated by nothing, the disappearance of the local, and the relationship of the triumph of nothing to political economy, especially social class. I conclude that no social class is immune to this process and that the poor and lower classess may be “doomed” to something. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As ballparks have grown in size to accommodate ever larger crowds, they have become increasingly rationalized or McDonaldized. However, rationalization brings with it disenchantment, that is, when they are rationalized, stadiums and other sites of consumption can lose the magical qualities that attract consumers. Recently, in an effort to attract larger crowds, ballparks have undergone a process of reenchantment whereby the magical allure of the ballpark is simulated to increase the consumer appeal of a rationalized setting. This article explores the applicability to contemporary ballparks of the various mechanisms involved in reenchantment, including such postmodern techniques as extravaganzas, simulations, implosions, and manipulations of time and space. We show that the evolution of the ballpark not only supports the reenchantment thesis, but also underscores the increasing commercialization of leisure. We also argue that the apparent de-McDonaldization that accompanies reenchantment is largely superficial and artificial; it is simulated de-McDonaldization, which remains rational at the core. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores key problems in globalization theory based on theorist Roland Robertson's ideas. Concept of McDonaldization; Processes in the New Means of Consumption; Importance of the interaction between culture and economics as a factor in globalization; Relationship between the global and local heterogeneity and homogeneity.

The occasion of the publication of Parsons' Marshall Lectures is used to demonstrate Parsons' prescience and the contemporary relevance of his ideas. It is argued that these lectures are similar in intent to the recent work of Amitai Etzioni and his objective of creating the field of socio-economics. The two works are compared and their relative strengths and weaknesses discussed. Parsons is shown to be well ahead of his time, not only in his effort to integrate social and economic concerns, but in the broader integrative intent of his overall theory. While Parsons was not able to begin to engineer a rapprochement with economics, such an intellectual integration may be more possible today because economics appears to be in greater crisis and sociology seems to have more to offer to disaffected economists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This is a metatheoretical examination of Simpson's overview of the history of the sociology of work. There is a broad correspondence between changes in the sociology of work and in sociological theory. The early period of the sociology of work was characterized by a micro-focus on creative actors, paralleling the dominance of the similarly oriented symbolic interaction theory. The middle period of the sociology of work witnessed a shift to a focus on more macro-level phenomena and their impact on more passive actors; this corresponded with the ascendancy of more macro-level theories like structural functionalism, conflict theory, and some varieties of neo-Marxian theory. More recently, there has been a rise of more integrated micro-macro concerns in the sociology of work and Simpson calls for even more of this kind of work. The 1980s have witnessed a boom in theoretical work on micro-macro integration. Sociologists of work have much to learn from this literature and theorists could learn from the empirical work on micro-macro integration in the sociology of work. Some elements of a synthetic micro-macro approach to the sociology of work are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The Weberian theory of rationalization, especially the concepts of formal and substantive rationality and the conflict between them, are used to analyze contemporary changes affecting the medical profession. Three major types of changes are discussed--changes in government policies, the changing nature of medical delivery systems, and changes within medical delivery systems. It is argued that these changes are impelling the medical profession away from substantive rationality and in the direction of formal rationality. Increasing formal rationality is likely to lead to greater external control over physicians and to a decline in the ability of the medical profession to distinguish itself from bureaucrats and capitalists. These changes, in turn, are likely to lead to some degree of deprofessionalization of physicians. Alternative future scenarios are also mentioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the scientific theories of Thomas Kuhn and its application to contemporary sociology. Kuhn sees science at any given point in time as dominated by a specific paradigm (defined for the moment as a fundamental image of a science's subject matter). Normal science is a period of accumulation of knowledge in which scientists work on, and expand, the reigning paradigm. Inevitably, however, such work spawns anomalies, or things that cannot be explained within the existing paradigm. If these anomalies mount, a crisis stage is reached, which ultimately may end in a revolution in which the reigning paradigm is overthrown and a new one takes its place at the center of the science. Thus a new reigning paradigm is born and the stage is set for the cycle to repeat itself. It is during the period of revolution that great changes in scientific status take place. This view clearly places Kuhn at odds with the lay and textbook conception of scientific development, which suggests that scientific progress is cumulative. In response to those who criticized his vagueness about the concept of a paradigm in his first edition, Kuhn offers a very narrow definition of a paradigm in the epilogue to the second edition. There he equates paradigms with exemplars, or the concrete puzzle solutions which when employed as models or examples, can replace explicit rules as a basis for the solution of the remaining puzzles of normal science.

This paper has three main objectives. The first is to outline the parameters of methodological relationism, a new metatheoretical perspective created to parallel methodological individualism and methodological holism as overarching theoretical perspectives. The second is to demonstrate that social psychology always has been relational and therefore that methodological relationism is a more appropriate metatheory for this area than are the other two perspectives. Finally, we will show that methodological relationism sheds new light on the long-standing problem of fragmentation in social psychology. We suggest that most social psychology has been relational and therefore has been unified, at least implicitly, under a single metatheoretical perspective. Given this unity, we argue that the idea of crisis in social psychology is overstated. Furthermore, looking at the many varieties of social psychology in this way allows us to envision more clearly the possibility of an integrated social psychological approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes recent developments in neo-Marxist theory from a metatheoretical viewpoint. Specifically, the focal concern is with post-Marxism, including analytic, empirically oriented, and postmodern Marxism. The goal is to gain a better understanding of post-Marxism by utilizing the four dimensions (internal-social, internal-intellectual, external-intellectual, external-social) of the subtype of metatheorizing oriented toward such a greater understanding. Three conclusions are derived from this analysis. First, the classic schools of neo-Marxist theory are declining in significance. Second, Marx's own ideas are also of decreasing importance. Third, the post-Marxists are drawing increasingly less on Marx's ideas and neo-Marxist theories and more on other intellectual traditions. This is seen as a healthy set of developments and as part of the larger movement towards greater theoretical synthesis. The paper closes with a discussion of alternative perspectives on the development of post-Marxism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This paper describes and makes the case for sociological metatheorizing, or the systematic study of sociological theory. Three types of metatheorizing are delineated on the basis of their end products: the attainment of a deeper understanding of theory, the creation of new theory, and the creation of an overarching theoretical perspective (a metatheory). The basic problems in metatheorizing are reviewed and it is concluded that the most basic difficulty has been the lack of a clear definition of the subfield. Some thoughts on the future of metatheorizing in sociology are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the essay written by Randall Collins about George Herbert Mead's sociological theory of mind in the context of metatheory. Collins has offered a broad-scale critic of metatheory, "it is not surprising to me that metatheory does not go anywhere, it is basically a reflexive specialty, capable about making comments on other fields but dependent on intellectual life elsewhere that it can formalize and ideologize or critic. That is why so much of the intellectual work of today consists of commentaries on works of the past rather than constructions that are creative in their own right." It is clear that in his essay on Mead, Collins is doing much of what he is criticizing. His essay is dependent on Mead's work, it does critic it, it is in sense an extended commentary on Mead and his work. However, it is also creative in offering a new sociology of the mind, indeed it is a model of the fact that metatheoretical works can be highly creative. Collins is a critic of metatheory at the same time he is doing some of the best contemporary work in metatheory. The first type of metatheory, internal-intellectual, involves the study of cognitive factors internal to the field. Here Collins is not doing what many metatheorists do and looking at such phenomena as paradigms or schools of thoughts, but he is doing what metatheorists most often do, that is, offering a detailed examination of a theory. In the essay, Collins took a close look at Mead's ideas and tried to link them to the ideas of other theorists, as well as his own work on interaction ritual chains.

The article presents the author's comments on the literary work of sociologist Norbert Wiley, regarding "levels" problem and its relation to the current boom in interest in the issue of the micro-macro relationship. The author believes that there is much of merit in Wiley's approach, the sense that the levels issue is more inclusive than the micro-macro problem, the idea that levels represent "paradigm spaces," the four specific levels identified in his essay, the concern for connections among levels through the processes of emergence and feedback, etc. The author also believes that many of the ideas developed by Wiley bear a striking resemblance to earlier work on levels especially to his own. What surprises the author is that rather than taking this body of work as his starting point, Wiley has roamed far afield including linguistics, philosophy, anthropology for intellectual roots. While the author thinks that such a wide intellectual net is laudable, it should be cast only after the most proximate sources of an idea are examined.

This article reports that even though metatheory and more generally metasociology, already encompasses a considerable and burgeoning body of work, it remains an ill-defined area within sociology. In spite of, or perhaps because of, its inchoate state, metatheory has recently come under substantial attack. The recent spate of assaults on metatheory by a number of important sociological theorists can be seen as evidence of the coming of age of metatheory as an area of thought and research. Were it not of increasing significance, metatheory would not have been singled out for attack by such thinkers. These critiques will be used in this article as a springboard to begin to define and clarify sociological metatheory. It is also the aim of this article to position metatheory in the context of meta-analyses in fields outside of sociology, metasociology in general and other specific types of meta-analysis within sociology. Still another goal is to lay out some of the issues that metatheory needs to confront in the near future.

The general domain of this paper is politics, the struggles for power, within sociology. Within this general context, a more specific arena of interest is the rise of micro-sociological theory, especially exchange theory, phenomenological sociology, and ethnomethodology. The excessive reach and intellectual problems of radical microsociology aside, the fact remains that micro-theories and the micro-oriented paradigms with which they are associated are on the ascendancy in contemporary sociology. The critical review of radical microsociology is useful in this context, not only in itself, but also because it points up several lessons that should be of utility to the supporters of all micro-theories. While radical microsociology focuses, for scientific reasons, on interaction, other micro-sociologies could well push for a focus on other aspects of the micro-domain, especially cognitive processes. Beyond the specific lessons of the critical analysis of radical micro-sociology, there is the more general issue of the implications of the rise in micro-theories and micro-paradigms.

The sociological perspectives of Max Weber and the "Frankfurt School" have been viewed as polarities in much of the recent literature. The Frankfurt sociologists were advocates of a neo-Marxism that stressed dialectical reasoning and rejected the notion of value-neutrality. Weber adhered to the canons of causal logic and cultivated the ideal of objectivity in social research. Notwithstanding these theoretical and methodological differences, Weber and the advocates of critical theory arrived at surprisingly similar conclusions about the "fate" of the modern world. Weber saw the advent of a bureaucratic "iron cage" which would effectively negate the role of the individual, while the Frankfurt sociologists posited the onset of an "administered world" in which human activity would be smothered in an ever-expanding network of management and control. Given these commonalities, a revision of the standard evaluation of Weber and critical theory is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1983 Richard Hall viewed the sociological study of the professions as near death. However, had Hall examined the recent British literature he would have come to a very different conclusion. Our survey shows that this is a very active area of research and theorizing and that there are important lessons in it for American students of the professions. First, unlike the American literature, work in Britain has not been dominated by fruitless efforts to find the characteristics that differentiate professions from other occupations. Second, the British literature contains four distinctive characteristics that differentiate it from the American literature. They are a focus on inter- and intraprofessional conflicts, the relationship between the professions and the polity, the link between the professions and social stratification, and theoretical roots in the classic ideas of observers such as Marx and Weber. Third, the realities examined in the British literature lead us to conclude that the professions will continue to be an active social force. It is imperative that the American literature be redirected to deal with these developments. [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]

Presents a preface to the March 1, 1990 issue of the periodical "Sociological Forum."

The article introduces reports published within the issue, including consumer culture on the consumption of lingerie.

Presents a letter to the editor in response to the article by Snizek about the relationship between theory and method proposed in a paradigmatic analysis of sociology, in the November 1976 issue.