Sheba George
Mc Donaldization is a term coined by Sociologist George Ritzer. If you’re not familiar with his work or haven’t read his book The Mc Donalization of Society, he defines Mc Donaldization as, “the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American Society as well as the rest of the world”. The process of Mc Donaldization consists of 5 main ingredients: efficiency, calculability, predictability, control, and the irrationality of the rationality. Americans appear to be always in a hurry, to go where and to do what is irrelevant. They want things done fast and in their way. Society has become lazy and impatient. But what happens when this system is exercised by evil men. For example, The Manhattan Project on July 16th 1945, a joint effort between the States, Canada, and United Kingdom to develop strategic nuclear weapons culminates with a detonation in New Mexico named the Trinity Test which is later used in 2 different cities Hiroshima, Japan and Nagasaki, Japan. This project employed more than 130,000 people at 3 different facilities across 3 different states.
A practice known as compartmentalization: in matters concerning intelligence, whether public or private sector, compartmentalization of information to persons who directly need to know certain such information in order to perform certain tasks, go hand in hand with Mc Donaldization in this operation. Therefore, information is limited on a need to know basis and people are often left in the dark while working on a project. General Leslie Groves of The Manhattan Project stated that “compartmentalization is the heart of security”. Each man should know everything he needs to know and nothing else. All they ask of you is an honest day’s work. When society fails to question their small part in a large assembly line of a bureaucracy they are stripped of everything humane. They become marionettes and are manipulated to benefit only the elite.
This is a clip from an episode of “I Love Lucy,” where Lucy and her friend are working in a candy factory and are given the small task of wrapping pieces of chocolate as they move along a conveyor belt. When the belt starts to speed up, Lucy and her friend are left desperate to keep up. This is an example of Ritzer’s “the irrationality of the rationality”. He explains: “Most specifically irrationality means that rational systems are unreasonable. In other words, they deny the basic human reason, of the people who work within or are served by them." The worker's need for the conveyer belt to move at a "human" pace correlates to the demands of a rationalized production process of a bureaucracy, which seeks to employ little to no workers possible to wrap chocolates.
Alexis Ortiz
ReplyDeleteI partially agree with you and I also see where you are going with your argument. Americans today are getting accustomed to living in the now and technology has made that possible by making the web available at your finger tips. I disagree with the comment you made "Therefore, information is limited on a need to know basis and people are often left in the dark while working on a project", people are busy I agree but we all have the opportunity to gain vital information however as a society we tend to gear more towards infotainment than information. The news is real and messy which is relatively close to what our everyday lives our like. We want to step out of our lives and into a fantasy instead of engaging in a harsh reality. I was also a bit confused with your example in reference to the "Manhattan Project." I do agree that society does not take the time to question their role or challenge their abilities because they do not have the opportunity to do so.