Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: 'McDonald's stands for American cultural imperialism'? Support your argument with relevant statistics about the company, and balance your answer by considering McDonalds from the point of view of the

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Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: ‘McDonald’s stands for American cultural imperialism’? Support your argument with relevant statistics about the company, and balance your answer by considering McDonalds from the point of view of the company, its customers, and the countries/communities in which the restaurants are found.

Consideration of the facts, statistics and the phenomenal growth of McDonalds- with a product that is closely associated with American culture- makes McDonalds a form of representation of ‘American cultural imperialism’ on rest of the world. The essay considers different perspectives about the issue; for example, McDonalds as a global organisation, its justification for the charges made by social activist and consumer’s perception of the company image. The essay also integrates the consideration of adverse influences of McDonalds on different culture or nations, the economic implication for countries or communities in which it operates and  mixed reactions of consumers to the American cultural imperialism that is reflected through McDonalds.  

 Due to the controversies and complex nature in constituent terms of the concept ‘Cultural imperialism’, most attempts to define it end up creating abstract complexities in the name of definition (Tomlinson, 1991; Barnett, 1997). However in order to understand American cultural imperialism through McDonalds it is important to define cultural imperialism. Schiller, (1976) defined cultural imperialism as “Sum of the process by which a society is brought  into a modern world system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced and sometimes even bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating centre  of the system.” (Tomlinson,1991:9) .It is worth noting that in the context of cultural imperialism Watson, (1997) has taken ‘culture’ to mean as popular music, television, film, video, pulp, fiction, comic, advertisement, fashion, home design, and mass produced food.  John Tomlinson,   (1991) argues that the word ‘imperialism’ has a connotation of some a form of domination linking it to empire, that’s why cultural imperialism in ‘third world’ points to the link between present cultural domination and colonial past. Said, 1997 has also emphasised the sense of domination that underlying the modernist production that is represented through global giants like McDonalds (Laura Chrisman, 2003).

McDonalds is one of the crucial developments in America in twentieth-century that has influenced the world (Ritzer, 1996). In  1955 the first franchise of McDonalds was opened, by 1991 the number had reached to 12,000 outlets through out the world (Boje et al, 2006). Rigg (1994) states that McDonald’s total sales in 1993 had reached 23.6 billion, achieving the profit of 1.1 billion. The total sale of the average US McDonalds outlet is 1.6 million a year (cited in Ritzer, 1996). By the end of 2006 the company had 31,000 restaurants throughout the world that generated the revenue of $ 21.6 Billion (McDonalds Annual Report, 2006). And today McDonalds Corporation is running restaurants even in places like Mecca in Saudi Arabia where a product that is associated with modernity and pop culture is difficult to imagine. The influence of McDonalds has reached far beyond confines of the United States and the fast food business (Schlosser, 2002). In a survey of school children it was found that 96% of the students could identify Ronald McDonalds in name recognition which is second to Santa Claus (Greenhouse, 1986).  Because of its phenomenal success, there are restaurants throughout the world which copy McDonalds such as the fast food croissanteries in Paris, the chains of fast food restaurants like Nirula’s that sells mutton burgers and the restaurants like Juicy Burger in Beirut (Ritzer, 1996). The influence of McDonalds on the way we live today is so deep rooted that the Golden Arches are universally more recognised than the Christian cross (Schlosser, 2001). On the opening of the McDonalds in Moscow a student was observed to exclaim that it was a real peace of America (Ritzer, 1996). McDonalds have a central place in popular culture (Fishwick, 1983). According to Smart (1999) brand names like McDonalds represents high profile symbols that are overloaded with variety of complex cultural association and their continual growing presence in almost all nations and its appeal serve as evidence of its deep-rooted existence, power and success of American commercial and cultural imperialism. Eric Schlosser (2002), observe that a generation ago American embassies and oil companies were the usual targets of overseas demonstration against ‘American imperialism’ but these days fast food restaurants particularly McDonalds have assumed that symbolic role.  

 

 Even the media portrays McDonalds as the American culture. For example, movies such as Coming to America, Falling Down, Moscow on the Hudson, Time after Time, Sleeper and Ten Men, have symbolised the American culture through McDonalds (Ritzer, 1996). Kellner (1999) points out the cultural dimension of the McDonald’s corporation through advertising campaigns and promotional stunts, trying to create an experience of fun, of family togetherness, and of Americanisation associated with the McDonalds experience. Thus he argues that the one bite into a BigMc is actually consuming the sign values of good time, communal experience, consumer values, efficiency as well as the pleasure of the product. According to him McDonalds is not just selling the fast food, but a family adventure of eating out together, intergenerational bonding and a communal experience as repeated in their advertisements again and again. So the eating at McDonalds includes the consumption of sign values such as inexpensive food, a family outing, ‘Americana’ or Modernity (Kellner, 1999,). It can be said that McDonalds is a combination of elements of globalisation and internationalisation (Vignali, 2001). According to Royle (2000) in order to succeed abroad McDonalds had to introduce a major cultural change so that their quick service food was uniquely American.

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Ritzer (1996) has based his theorisation of the phenomenon of ‘McDonaldization’ on Weber’s concept of rationalisation that according to him is the domination of more and more sectors of American society and the rest of the world by the principals and key features of McDonalds fast food chain (Kellner, 1999). Retzer (1996) has explained that the principals of McDonaldization have restructured many diverse fields from the food, media, education, and even death. Kellner (1999) too agrees that the McDonalds fast food restaurants are sociological artefacts that can be analysed to generate more general and macro level of conceptualisation. According ...

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