Things I know

This blog post is in response to a recent post about “Global-McDonaldization”. The author highlights how following post-modernism, we are living in a world of globalization and how increasingly American culture is spread through this mechanism.
This concept of McDonaldization becomes an ideology that becomes the basic logic for which decisions, values and goals are decided. It is pervasive in all aspects of our culture and with the new global economy, in all cultures. McDonaldization arises from the rise of Rationality and the division of labour, where individuals are trained in one particular repetitive task in order to streamline production. This follows the fordism model of factory production.
One of the primary problems of this model was first anticipated by Marx, when he explained that the division of labour will alienate the worker from the product. When a worker is coerced into making only a piece of a product, they are no longer attached from the product as a whole entity. Additinally, worker is also alienated from their labour as well. By making only a particular screw for a chair, you are no longer attached to the actual chair, and you are no longer attached to the labour as a carpenter, you are merely one aspect of the chair making factory line. Working in the factory prevents you from actively engaging with the individual who will eventually purchase that chair too. 
    Similarly, when McDonalds reduces the task of making burgers into a series of steps, which are then introduced as a working manual that is sent to locations around the world, the worker is not making a burger, they are not learning how to be a chef and they are not connecting with the customer. They are reduced down to a function of a burger making facility, reduced down to an aspect of their previous humanity. This is the alienation that Marx feared under capitalism, and this is the pervasive ideology of McDonaldization that encompasses the globe.
The previously mentioned blog post can be found here

Global-McDonaldization?