Theory that works

What makes a theory work? If there is a single excellent example, it is George Ritzer's McDonaldization thesis, which he first presented in 1983 in a relatively brief but trenchant article. Since then, scholars have watched this thesis evolve and George has become ‘internationally renowned for his work in social theory’ (Bauman-Franks, 2005: 262–263). This contribution is inspired less by that work than by my encounters with George. Did we visit McDonald's on any of these occasions? Actually, we did not, but the point I want to make is this: wherever you go with George, theory with a capital T is always on the table. It is the direct juxtaposition of theory and the analysis of social life that makes a theory truly outstanding.

If the McDonaldization thesis did not already have to be capitalised according to grammatical rules, it certainly would today, owing to its status. As Chris Rojek (2007: 3) puts it, the thesis has achieved ‘that rare thing in intellectual labour: it has made “McDonaldization” a colloquial term, used by journalists, media presenters, and the general public’. I would argue, however, that the achievement of George's thesis goes even further. It involves taking an existing household name and developing it in such a way that it becomes both abstract and insightful, while still being relatable to everyday life – a real stroke of genius for an analytical term. The ultimate achievement for me is when a theory extends into the world of humour, when there are jokes about it in magazines, proof that these jokes are obviously funny to a wide audience of mostly non-theorists. Living a continent away, and with internet publishing in its infancy compared to today, I might never have come across this published joke about McDonaldization if George himself had not boldly posted it on the office door at the University of Maryland: ‘The Ritzers’, as the caption simply read, under the cartoon of a nightmare scenario in which one of two people is jolted from sleep by the vision of golden arches. Much like The Jerry Seinfeld Show and the early Woody Allen shows, which, as George often points out, featured main characters with whom he could identify, the McDonaldization thesis is notable for its successful entry into popular culture. Since George does not work in pop culture, the success of his theory can be linked to the mythological Trojan Horse strategy. As is well known, the effectiveness of this strategy lies not in the construction of a giant horse, but in the seemingly effortless transfer of the invisible power of the packed horse into a space where that power would never have had a chance to enter without a design that resonated exceptionally with the recipients. As Rojek (2007: 19) again puts it, ‘people were familiar with the brand and therefore fascinated by the structural forces that Ritzer attributed to it’. The Golden Arches must have had their nightmares too.

The power of the Trojan Horse was unleashed not by the sudden release of multiple elements, but by the release of a masterfully crafted essence. The 1983 article on McDonaldization begins with an almost Marxianesque statement: ‘A wide-ranging process of rationalization is occurring across American society and is having an increasingly powerful impact in many other parts of the world’ (Ritzer, 1983: 100). Although theoretical approaches are often grounded in classical readings, such work is usually confined to a few experts who seem to have developed an almost incomprehensible fascination with the details of these texts. Furthermore, the process of translating this fascination to the public may also be complicated by the tendency of these experts to adhere to detailed textual exegesis. Such an approach could render the potentially very potent enthusiasm for theory somewhat futile. Not infrequently, then, theorists worked with their theories, whereas experts in the empirical analysis of social life felt obliged merely to attach some sort of theory to the data they had generated.

George explored an alternative approach to theorising that is consistent with his biography and lifestyle – perhaps a model of best practice. When he sat down for an interview with Stephen Dandaneau and Robin M Dodsworth, he recounted his upbringing in a ‘lower middle-class’ family, noting that ‘father, for most of my childhood, was a taxi driver, and my mother was a secretary’. Born in upper Manhattan and raised in what he describes as a more European urban environment than the Americanised one he later encountered – and famously analysed – he defines ‘going to the Bronx High School of Science’ as the key event in his life. As well as being immersed in a challenging and inspiring school education, George also emphasised self-education, together with a friend, through spatially mobilised discourse activities, which are now seen as a promising alternative learning method:

One year, we had this thing where we would read a classic novel and then go for […] maybe five or ten miles in which we would talk about the book […] walk around Manhattan into the Bronx, over the bridge, then back. It was that kind of a world. (Ritzer et al., 2006: 85–6)

During his later studies he only came across sociology by chance and says: ‘basically [I] trained myself as a social theorist, and so I had to learn it all as I went. Consequently, I never wanted to read other peoples’ summaries of what classical theorists had to say. I would read it myself’ (Ritzer et al., 2006: 85).

I arrived with a background in European theory and the work of thinkers such as Weber, Simmel, Luhmann and Habermas, when George generously invited me to be a visiting scholar in his kind of a world at the University of Maryland. It was an illuminating experience and I felt that theorising should never be done any other way. Meetings, discussions and conversations with George were often accompanied by invigorating food, including hamburgers and fries, though not in a McDonald's restaurant, and sometimes even Starbucks coffee, though only in the telling absence of any other way to get that drink. It was here that I realised that theorising is not a desk-based practice, but a practice that should better start from where both you and your subject are; a practice that does not aim at exegesis, but rather at an elaborate mining of texts; and that it is best to get confirmation of one's theorising from everyday practice, even or especially in situations where one is not looking for such evidence of one's work.

With curiosity, I have also attended George's seminars, which are definitely not McDonaldised events. There are no calculable learning outcomes, nor is there any indication of how reading time is measured in relation to credit points. In the classroom, a traditional academic atmosphere is preserved. Always with an official time period of no less than three hours, and with a break in between that is not formally clocked, the graduate students discuss their assigned readings, which are usually book-length, by expressing ideas, making connections or raising doubts. For longer periods of time, George may listen attentively to this conversation, in addition to asking questions to push it further, and making his unique witty, laconic comments here and there, which would also make the discourse highly diverting. The conversation is only interrupted by George's brief or extended theoretical input. Here, George acts as an embodied encyclopaedia, but, as reviewers of one of his many encyclopaediae noted, not in the form of a ‘compiler’, but by providing a ‘comprehensive overview’ (Drakulovska Cukalevska and Dragovic, 2018: 115). By providing bits and pieces of theory as the seminar progresses, this AI (academic intelligence) effectively supports the discourse and, I believe, will outperform the artificial intelligence now being developed for quite some time to come.

It is not necessary to reiterate George's successful endeavours into classical theory and theorising, but it is certainly worth dissecting his approach. The aim of theorising is not to engage in further reflection on theory, but rather to construct a robust tool that can facilitate the generation of analyses informed by a particular mode of interpretation. To achieve this, it is essential to have that encyclopaedic knowledge base, which encompasses a pool of theories, even if most of them are not actively employed in most instances. This objective is comparable to the process of sculpting, as George once characterised his approach to writing (Dandaneau and Dodsworth, 2008: 199). But beyond writing, the metaphor of sculpting is also quite apt for the work of theorising. Theorising is sculpting by constantly processing and contextualising data from the ‘world outside theory’. At the same time, this data is not just ‘out there’, for analysts to uncover or explore; rather, the pool of theoretical knowledge informs the generation of data – resulting in a perpetual hermeneutic process of interpretation. Rather than presenting a theorem, theorising should aim to create an abstract analytical scheme to support further research. So the virtue of ‘good’ theorising is that it provides fresh analysis and strong arguments.

The McDonaldization thesis offered this virtue, although I would not exactly praise it by describing the thesis as a ‘franchise operation in its own right’ (Soron, 2013: 447), distilling four ‘fast thoughts’ from Weber's theory to easily play ‘the McDonaldization game’ (Hayes, 2005: 6). For me, it is more the case that ‘[t]he simplicity of an idea is only simple in relation to the method that frames the question’ (Braune, 2024: 7). If the McDonaldization thesis is taken as an analytical scheme, it has not only framed numerous innovative and relevant questions, but it has also generated important answers that have, for example, proliferated into a theory of consumption, which has been embedded in a global theory of ‘nothing and something’, and which has been broken down into prosumption. Moreover, this work has produced analyses in various forms: applications to empirical fields, extensions to broader phenomena and interactions with other theories, and critical reflections on everyday practices. In doing so, it has not only produced an immense body of work, or ‘a truly scandalous number of additional publications in social theory and sociology generally’ (Dandaneau and Dodsworth, 2008: 191), but also established an entirely new field of scholarship. What sounds like a Herculean task is, in fact, just that. For George, this process involves adapting, rethinking, revising, connecting, reworking, a relentless pursuit of refinement. It is, after all, that ongoing commitment that makes theory work. Perhaps this can only be achieved if one is driven by a genuine passion for theory – which, fortunately, George has in abundance.