In a world increasingly festooned with familiar logos - from the hallmark swoosh on a designer tennis shoe to the famous golden arches outside a fast-food chain - it is clear that these symbols are not merely decorative, but represent shifts in our social milieu. More specifically, the proliferation of such items as credit card offers, automated banking services, and globally recognizable brand names illustrate significant changes in the realm of social consumption: a trajectory toward a world of increasingly dehumanized services and meaningless places and things.
George Ritzer theorizes in his provocative new book, The Globalization of Nothing, that the "grand narrative" or social story of this period is a movement from "something" to "nothing." Extending his renowned McDonaldization thesis, Ritzer contends that societies around the globe continue to move away from "something," defined as a social form that is generally indigenously conceived, locally controlled, and rich in distinctive content, toward "nothing" - that which is centrally controlled and conceived and relatively devoid of substance. It is in the movement toward the globalization of "nothing" that "something" is lost. More than likely, that "something" is an indigenous custom, a local store, a familiar gathering place, or simply personalized interaction.
The Globalization of Nothing takes the subject of globalization in new directions, introducing terms such as "grobalization." The key conflict in the world today is viewed as that between the grobalization of nothing and the glocalization of something. This book is structured around four organizing concepts addressing this issue: "non-places," "non-things," "non-people," and "non-services." By drawing upon salient examples from everyday life, George Ritzer invites the reader to examine the nuances of these concepts in conjunction with the paradoxes within the process of the globalization of nothing. Why is it that those who produce "nothing" for major multinational corporations often cannot afford that which they produce? Why do some people seem to be enraptured with their favorite brands or with their credit cards? What are the social implications of the increasing "globalization of nothing" for the medical, education, and tourism industries? Critical questions are raised throughout the book and the reader is compelled not only to seek answers to these questions, but to critically evaluate the questions as well as the answers they themselves conceive.
The Globalization of Nothing is ideal as a text for courses in sociology, anthropology, communication, business, and related disciplines. This book is also recommended for anyone interested in the critical study of contemporary social phenomona.
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George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, where he has also been a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and won a Teaching Excellence Award. He was awarded the Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award by the American Sociological Association, an honorary doctorate from LaTrobe University in Australia, and the Robin Williams Lectureship from the Eastern Sociological Society. His best-known work, The McDonaldization of Society (8th ed.), has been read by hundreds of thousands of students over two decades and translated into over a dozen languages. Ritzer is also the editor of McDonaldization: The Reader; and author of other works of critical sociology related to the McDonaldization thesis, including Enchanting a Disenchanted World, The Globalization of Nothing, Expressing America: A Critique of the Global Credit Card Society, as well as a series best-selling social theory textbooks and Globalization: A Basic Text. He is the Editor of the Encyclopedia of Social Theory (2 vols.), the Encyclopedia of Sociology (11 vols.; 2nd edition forthcoming), the Encyclopedia of Globalization (5 vols.), and is Founding Editor of the Journal of Consumer Culture. In 2016 he will publish the second edition of Essentials of Sociology with SAGE.
