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Re:The Age of Average by Cthulhu_ on Friday December 13, 2024 @05:41AM (#42407490)
McDonaldization = globalization? The world is smaller now than it was in the 80's, and even then there were trends in design and fashion that spread across the world.
Re:The Age of Average by bluetomcat on Friday December 13, 2024 @06:18AM (#42407623)
They are not quite the same idea. In a globalised but diverse economy, a Japanese buys a Swiss watch and a Swiss buys a Japanese air conditioner. McDonaldization refers to the incessant urge of Western societies to over-rationalise every aspect of the economic and cultural life, resulting in bland uniformity. It is a progression of Max Weber's ideas on bureaucracy and rationalisation.
Re:The Age of Average by Spivak on Saturday December 14, 2024 @10:35AM (#42417721)
I think globalized but diverse was always kind of a pipe dream because along with things you're trading across the globe you're also spreading information back and forth. And as the article points out, human preference is roughly the same in aggregate across the globe, so we all loosely converge on a local maximum of "the best" rinse, repeat, and you suddenly get homogenization.