INTRODUCTION.

The article presents an introduction to the book "Explorations in Social Theory: From Metatheorizing to Rationalization." This is the first of two simultaneously published volumes that offer an overview of author's work over the last three decades, primarily in the areas of social theory and the sociology of consumption. While the chapters in this publication are mainly theoretical in nature, and those in the second volume focus on the substantive sociology of consumption, there really is no clear dividing line between these two bodies of work. In this book, the author used the concept of McDonaldization to do a meta-analysis of sociology. He demonstrated that sociology, like the rest of society, has undergone a process of McDonaldization and this helps to better understand some of the problems in the discipline as a whole and in sociological theory. In addition to laying out the basic dimensions of McDonaldization, he also discussed its relationship to a number of contemporary theoretical ideas--postindustrialism, postfordism, postmodemism and globalization theory.