As part of our process to welcome first year students at my fine place of employment, they are all reading Fast food nation by Eric Schlosser. Fascinating and disturbing stuff. Collectivisation of agriculture was not a unique achievement of the Soviets, you know.
11 comments:
Have you read "MacDonaldization of America" by George Ritzer?
and while I have nothing major against McDonalds, a nice cevapi is healthier and I htink it tastes better! Still that is probably the CUTEST McDonald's outlet Ive ever seen!
I have mixed feeelings about Ritzer's book. It's a nice illustration of Weber's rationalization theory, and it was through Ritzer that I learned about one of my favorite social-culinary movements, the "slow food movement." On the other hand, as it gets to the end it seems like he is indulging a little bit of snob aesthetics, and falling back on the fantasy that individuals can have large influence solely through their individual choices. Schlosser is a bit more grounded, and he makes a useful point that what government agencies do not have the power to do, the fast-food companies (since they are the largest buyers) can -- when McD's decided they would not buy GM potatoes, farmers stopped growing them.
true, mcdonalds is in a lot of places, but not quite everywhere. eg, two european capitals/countries without franchises are tirana and sarajevo. any more examples?
Good for Tirana and Sarajevo, svakako. People who like the combination of grilled meat and bread can find something better than McD's on every corner in the Balkans, as Yakima already knows. Their French fries can be nice, though.
Actually Sarajevo had nothing against haveing a McDonalds, the thing is McDonalds announced they felt BiH was 'too corrupt' so McDonalds wouldn't set up there in Sarajevo or anyplace else in BiH. There IS a McDonalds in Dubrovnik. Somewhere I have a file pic of it.
And yes I thought not doing the GM stuff was great! I think they did it for business but still good for them!
Ova ti nije losa!
pozdrav mirko
I don't know why Tirana lacks a McDonalds, but it does have no less than *three* McDonalds imitators. Including a yellow-arch-themed coffee shop. And, yes, it's really popular.
There's nothing inherently wrong with large-scale agriculture, BTW. Among my adopted people (economists), it's called "productivity", and sometimes even viewed as a good thing.
Yes, I know that wasn't what you were saying. But still.
Doug M.
Doug! Havent seen you for a while.
See my blog for why not. Nice to be back.
Doug M.
Ah, the long-distance car trip. We just did Boston to Seattle and back. Beautiful, but long.
Post a Comment