The Sign of the Burger: McDonald's and the Culture of Power (Labor in Crisis) [Hardcover]

Joe L. Kincheloe (Author)

Book Description

Series: Labor in Crisis | Publication Date: April 29, 2002

"I didn't want to remain a hick from the mountains...In my cultural naivete I saw McDonald's as a place somehow where modern culture capital could be dispensed. Keeping these memories in mind as years later I monitored scores of conversations about the Golden Arches in the late 1990's, it became apparent that McDonald's is still considered a marker of a modern identity." So begins a complicated journey into the power of one of the most recognizable signs of American capitalism: The Golden Arches. The Sign of the Burger examines how McDonald's captures our imagination: as a shorthand for explaining the power of American culture; as a symbol of the strength of consumerism; as a bellwether for the condition of labor in a globalized economy; and often, for better or worse, a powerful educational tool that often defines the nature of culture for hundreds of millions the world over. While many books have offered simple complaints of the power of McDonald's, Joe Kincheloe explores the real ways McDonald's affects us. We see him as a young boy in Appalachia, watching the Golden Arches going up as the - hopeful - arrival of the modern into his rural world. And we travel with him around the world to see how this approach of the modern affects other people, either through excitement or through attempts at resisting McDonald's power, often in unfortunate ways. Through it all, Kincheloe makes clear, with lucidity and depth, the fact that McDonald's growth will in many ways determine both the nature of accepting and protesting its ever-expanding presence in our global world. Author note: Joe L. Kincheloe is Professor of Education at Brooklyn College, and is co-editor, most recently, of Kinderculture: The Corporate Construction of Childhood.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In addition to being at the center of the fast-food industry, McDonald's seems to have become something of a publishing phenomenon. Hard on the heels of Jennifer Talwar's Fast Food, Fast Track and Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal comes this offering from Kincheloe (education, Brooklyn Coll.; coeditor, Kinderculture: The Corporate Construction of Childhood). While Talwar considered the local, positive aspects of employment at McDonald's for ambitious immigrants, Kincheloe returns to the Evil Empire theme: McDonald's is a poor but extremely powerful symbol of American culture abroad. This is, of course, not a new argument, and Kincheloe's unpolished writing style and tendency toward broad generalizations (McDonald's seems to be a catchall for everything that is bad about America) are sophomoric. The only whopper here is the price. Not recommended.
Ellen D. Gilbert, Princeton, NJ
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"McDonald's has come to be a highly contested symbol of globalization and American commodity culture. Joe Kincheloe offers a multifaceted exploration of the battles over McDonald's throughout the world, of how it serves as a force of education and enculturation, and the ways that different audiences consume McDonald's as a source of meanings as well as (highly dubious) diet. Using a variety of sources and his own ethnographical research, Kincheloe provides the most many-sided critical analysis of McDonald's yet to appear." oDouglas Kellner, George F. Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education, UCLA "A burger is never simply a burger." This is a case study of the capacity of neocolonial giants like Disney, Nike, Coca Cola, and, in particular, McDonald's to ingratiate themselves in worldwide markets and achieve cultural hegemony by promoting an ideology of markets. Academic collections at all levels." oChoice "Kincheloe's study is a crucial tool for educators who are desperately seeking new educational resources that promote critical thinking, not only for themselves, but also for their students." oHarvard Educational Review "Kincheloe's work, written in an easy, fluid style peppered with (often horrific) statistics and public responses, is a useful cultural study of corporate capitalism...For the anthropologist of work, this is an important book because it calls for a closer attention to the forms of discourses that mask conditions of labor and capital." Anthropology of Work Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press (April 29, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566399319
• ISBN-13: 978-1566399319
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,534,152 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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15 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars full of incomprehensible jargon, inaccuracies, & arrogance, March 7, 2005

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Robert J. Crawford (Balmette Talloires, France) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Sign of the Burger: McDonald's and the Culture of Power (Labor in Crisis) (Hardcover)

This book exemplifies why I tend to stay away from "critical studies" (or whatever academic current this represents). Written by a professor in an obscure vocabulary that reeks of self-appointed elitism, it develops a convoluted argument against McDonald's as a cultural force that is subverting the polticial process in America and even the world. He claims that a burger is not just a burger, but instead eating one is a political act and even a religious ritual without offering anything in support of such claims except his weird academic discipline.

While I find much of value in such radical critiques as No Logo or Fast Food Nation, which in spite of their excesses explore very worthy questions, this book is simply off the deep end. Even worse, though the author claims he has done field research in conversations with people queueing at McDonald's, the book is really pure academic indulgence in the form of an incestuous group that reads and supports eachothers' writing - and perpetuates a common vacabulary.

These views are so outrageously silly and incoherent that it is hard to believe someone can make a living by writing - and teaching - about it. For example, he argues that in enticing kids into the McDo world, the company is decisively damaging the child-parent relationship because kids will nag their parents to get burgers. Well, my kids do, but we set limits on them anyway - once a week or less - and they forget about it immediately. What is the big deal about that?

Moreover, the author is baffled that the people he interviews in line get angry when he implies they don't get the dangerous "politics" behind the act of getting a burger, ie support of a global capitalist system, etc etc. Gosh, maybe they are just in a hurry and don't want to listen to the weird trip that some high-fallutin intellectual tries to impose in them. Why, I wonder, can't a person just like the burgers without becoming a sop to "hegemonistic" big capital? Afterall, the ultimate consumer control is just deciding not to buy them - and lots of us do so. Whether he likes it or not, that option exists.

I wish I could say that I learned something useful from this book, but I didn't. Instead, I waded through such phrases as: "When consumers are in hermeneutic freefall, they are set up for advertisers poised to insert corporate consumption values into the vacuum left by the dissolution of previous beliefs." If this guy is trying to connect to the public, he's got a LONG way to go.

If I could put his argument in a nutshell, it is that McDonald's is both a ("modernist") corporation that seeks operational efficiency with ruthless rationality and a ("post-modernist") manufacturer of culture that speaks to our unconscious needs. In a confusing age ("hyperreality"), he argues, the company strives to be a place of stability and value for customers that fills an existential gap in their lives. By extension, he claims, just going there co-opts us all into its "hegeomonistic ideology" of global capitalism and hence is inherently political. This is strong stuff with a ton of questionable assumptions built in.

The author never, so far as I can tell, approached anyone inside of McDonald's - the supposed evil cabal that is seeking to dominate the world through the insidious exploitation of our children - preferring instead to create the most ridiculous of caricatures. For example, he claims that McDo's early managers were supposed to be uniform anti-intellectual automatons, that Ronald McDonald is actually a reflection of Ray Kroc's right-wing ideology, etc. This type of analysis is not only inaccurate - Kroc preferred diversity of opinion and cultivated it - but it is about as sophisticated as a maoist comic book.

The factual inaccuracies are also legion, such as the author's claim that Kroc hired only men as managers - one of his key executives from the beginning was a woman - or even the date that Kroc gained complete control. While these are details, they signal a sloppiness with how he deals with the company that should make the careful reader suspicious.

At the heart of all of this, in my view, Kincheloe confuses riding the wave of economic forces with the underlieing causes of socio-economic transformation. McDo rode the wave of suburbanization and the development of industrial-style fast food - it didn't invent the wave, yet it exploited it better than did the other fast food chains. It does have an impact on our culture, to be sure, but I don't think its influence is much larger than deciding to buy a burger once a week or once a day. Furthermore, there is an unproven assumption that once set in childhood, eating patterns will never change. Again, this pathetically exagerates the impact of the company: I used to eat a burger a day, and now I don't. I bet there are a lot of people like me - our tastes evolve. Duh.

However, what the author totally misses, in my opinion, is that McDo is in fact a relatively responsive corporation that is learning to listen to its critics. It is beginning to work with some NGOs and corporate watchdogs, and will evolve. Sure, a lot of it may be enlightened self interest, but would it be better if the company ignored its critics? I think that how McDo responds to situations is more than just cynical ploys to fend off lawsuits, though I suspect that that opinion is too nuanced for those who want simple enemies. THere are people who care in the company - it is not a monolith of greedy exploiters of children as Kincheloe would have us belive, but a living institution that can strive to change for the better. Why should we not take the company at its word, that is, look at what it says it is trying to do and then make it live up to those ideals? While many would regard this as naively optimistic, the only thing I have to say is that as a reporter I have observed that such corporations do exist and I believe that McDonald's is striving to be one of them. That doesn't mean these companies always do the right thing and that things shouldn't be better, but there are smart people in them who want to and are working within the system to change them - they can be allies to corporate critics, if we choose to work with them rather than automatically against them.

So, I would not recommend this book. Look elsewhere for useful critiques of capitalism and burger empires. THere are many books far more worthy of thoughtful examination.

1.0 out of 5 stars is it the rigt sight of McDonald's or just author 's personal problem?, December 27, 2011

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moni - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Sign of the Burger: McDonald's and the Culture of Power (Labor in Crisis) (Paperback)

This is a book, which is very hard to read. Only a few passages are readable. Do not recommend the book for a reader, who do not know economic terms or reader, who is not native speaker. Author is still describing all the things over and over again - he is repeating himself, which normal reader can find boring.

9 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book in cultural studies and labor, May 10, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Sign of the Burger: McDonald's and the Culture of Power (Labor in Crisis) (Paperback)

This book is a refreshing break from the self-indulgent prattle of cultural studies. Taking an autobiographical theme, blending it with a bricolage of good research, the author looks at the power behind the McDonald's corporation. Examining the hegemonic implications of McDonald's, Kincheloe never ceases to entertain, teach, and create the best page-turner of the year--read this book if you are interested in consumer colonialism.