Explorations in the Sociology of Consumption Fast Food, Credit Cards and Casinos

George Ritzer is one of the leading social and cultural commentators of the present day. In this essential new book he considers some of the main tendencies in contemporary social theory. Included here are Ritzer's latest reflections on the uses and misuses of metatheory. According to Ritzer, sociology is a multiparadigm science. The differences and intensities of rivalries between paradigms are often very confusing for students and even for professional sociologists. This book seeks to find a way out of the confusion by sketching out the lineaments of a new integrated sociological paradigm and demonstrates how this paradigm can be applied. It shows the various ways in which Ritzer has developed rationalization theory to shed light on professional integration, the shape of consumer culture, hyperrationality and the state of sociology today.
Table of Contents:

PART ONE: METATHEORIZING
Metatheorizing in Sociology
The Delineation of an Underlying Architectonic
Sociology
A Multiple Paradigm Science

Toward an Integrated Sociological Paradigm
Image of the Subject Matter

Potential Examplars for an Integrated Sociological Paradigm
Methodological Relationism
Lessons for and from Social Psychology

From Exclusion to Inclusion to Chaos (?) In Sociological Theory
The Implications of Postmodern Social Theory for Metatheorizing in Sociology
PART TWO: RATIONALIZATION THEORY
Rationalization and Deprofessionalization of Physicians
The McDonaldization of Society
Hyperrationality
An Extension of Weberian and Neo-Weberian Theory

Mannheim's Theory of Rationalization
An Alternative Resource for the McDonaldization Thesis?

The McDonaldization of American Sociology
A Metasociological Analysis