First-Year Seminar: Rationalization and the Changing Nature of Social Life in 21st-Century America

Fast food restaurants have become a model for everyday life. Some scholars even talk about the "McDonaldization" of the world. By that scholars mean a drive toward greater efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control by technologies in modern organizations. Sociologists call this process "rationalization," which will be examined in this course. Honors version available.