by George F . Ritzer (Author)
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.
Click on 'Additional Materials' to read sample chapters.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 280
Publisher: Pine Forge Press
Published: 09 Sep 2003
ISBN 10: 0761988076
ISBN 13: 9780761988076
The book makes a clear, interesting, and compelling argument and it certainly contributes to our understanding of modern culture and society.
-- Celestino Fernandez
The author does an excellent job in describing and explaining nothing, something, grobalization, glocalization, globalization, and their interrelations. Examples are drawn closely from life. They are touchable and powerfully illustrative. The discussion flows well and the text is highly readable.
-- Victor N. ShawThe book will make a valuable contribution to literature. . . . This book continues the trajectory of McDonalization by providing a more sophisticated analytical frame to interpret globalization.
-- Douglas H. Constance
The book's strength is that it takes a look at the big picture and is not timid in developing a case for the nothing/something continuum and the increasing globalization of nothing. We have an insufficient number of books in sociology that take on big agendas.
-- Steve Zehr
The Globalization of Nothing is a brilliant essay that develops revolutionary ideas based on sharp, penetrating observations. This book is truly the product of a sociological eye. I do no exaggerate when I use the term revolutionary. The author presents a phenomenon--or set of phenomena--that stretch sociology's phenomenological field. . . . After you become aware of nothing, you need to rethink the world and the way you look at it.
-- Hernan Vera
The Globalization of Nothing is one of the most original analyses of forces operating in the world today. The production and distribution of nothing or social formations that are centrally conceived, controlled and comparatively devoid of distinctive content represents a new way to address many of the issues raised by postmodern theory (without all of the jargon and anti-science rhetoric) and world systems theory (without the hoped for collapse of capitalism). It is critical but not shrill. It forces the reader to look at the contemporary work in a new way. The book is highly readable and engaging. It has something to say to the scholar, student, and layperson.
-- Jonathan Turner
George Ritzer's The Globalization of Nothing provides a highly original take on globalization that illuminates aspects of globalization neglected in standard works. Ritzer produces a wide range of categories, some original, to delineate how globalization produces massification, homogenization, and standardization of consumer products and practices and thus produces a worthy successor to his books The McDonalization of Society and Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption.
-- Douglas KellnerThe Globalization of Nothing is an articulate economic thesis by Professor George Ritzer that articulately postulates the short and long-term effects of globalization. . . The Globalization of Nothing is a philosophical and clarion warning regarding the creeping and homogenizing impersonality of severe economic forces.
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