George Ritzer

George Ritzer is an American sociologist best known for The McDonaldization of Society (1993), which extended Max Weber's theory of rationalization to argue that the organizational principles behind the fast-food restaurant, efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control through non-human technology, had become the dominant model reshaping an increasing number of sectors of American and global society, from education and health care to travel and religion. Ritzer argued that this process carries irrationalities of its own, including dehumanization and the loss of the diversity and human contact that many of these institutions originally offered, even as it delivers greater speed and uniformity. His concept of McDonaldization became one of the most widely recognized applications of classical sociological theory to contemporary consumer society, extending Weber's iron cage thesis into the late twentieth century.