McDonald’s and Postmodernity

McDonald’s provides a helpful glimpse at the complexities surrounding postmodernity.

On the one hand, the global reach of McDonald’s seems a perfect illustration of one part of the postmodern situation – the global diffusion of American culture and tastes, the plasticity and airiness of postmodern culture, the breaching of national boundaries.

On the other hand, as George Ritzer explains, “McDonaldization” involves “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 of the rest of the world,” and this process is a process of bureaucratization, standardization, organization (of workforce and consumers) – all of which are thoroughly modern social phenomena.