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Servers and managers at the Hungry Cowboy make the effort to give regular customers a feeling of familiarity and belonging. In return, customers become loyal to the restaurant. Drawing from analysis of one hundred customer surveys and over five hundred customer comment cards, this chapter examines what customers want and what they get by becoming “regulars.” It contrasts regular customers’ loyalty to the Hungry Cowboy with what George Ritzer calls the McDonaldization of everything. McDonaldization reorganizes processes to emphasize efficiency, calculability, and predictability; it exerts control through nonhuman technologies.

In an age of high—even galloping—expectations of better working and living conditions, higher status, and an active role in a ‘knowledge-intensive society’, it is hardly surprising that many employees and occupational groups want to advance their positions. They want to have the status, attractive working conditions, and influence that they feel they deserve. There are participants in various fields—researchers, popular authors, teachers, trade unions, and representatives of various professions—who are keen to launch ideas about the importance of their specific occupation or field of knowledge, and what the general public, organizations, and clients would gain if that occupation or field of knowledge had greater influence and status. Many of these attempts to advance positions take the form of launching and reinforcing such occupations by turning them into professions. Increased professionalization is broadly viewed as a good thing, in the interest of the specific occupation concerned as well as for society as a whole. This applies particularly to occupations in the public sector, where the achievements are often hard to determine, as previously mentioned. The absence or weakness of the market as a disciplinary mechanism—showing often more interest in what is delivered (or believed to be delivered) than in formal qualification and authorization of groups—also leads to a direction of energy into professionalization projects. Scoring high on signs of being a ‘profession’ becomes an indicator of success. Exceptions include such occupations as engineers, managers, consultants, and advertising experts are in most countries not certified or professionalized in any strict sense—and when they are targeted for certification efforts this is attributed little significance (Alexius, 2007). (Chartered accountants are a somewhat different matter.) However, generally, there is an increasing focus on regulating which occupational groups are to be entitled to do what, by applying statutory provisions and formal requirements for education and training. As is the case with many other popular concepts, the term ‘profession’ is used in different ways. But the general notion is that a profession is better than a ‘non-profession’ and professionalization is typically viewed as a way to bring an occupation forwards and upwards in the battle for status, respect, influence, and attractive job positions.

This chapter addresses the unexpected consequences of the privatization of iconic kibbutz institutions. Based on ethnographic research conducted in the dining rooms of three kibbutzim in different stages of privatization, or “McDonaldization,” the chapter follows the contested meanings of the dining room experience. The food and eating patterns that prevail in these dining rooms are presented as expressions of hegemonic power structures, and their modifications reflect changing values within and beyond the kibbutz. The chapter's findings challenge the common understating of the “kibbutz crisis,” or the understating of failure in general as a consequence of the rise of individualism in contemporary Israel.

This chapter explores the existing literature on globalization. Some understand globalization as an economic process seen as neoliberalization. Others focus on the cultural aspects of globalization, seeing it as McDonaldization. Yet others talk about globalization spatially, conceptualizing it as ‘time–space compression’, ‘space of flows’, and ‘de- and re-territorialization’. This chapter aims to understand globalization in its totality. But how to conceptualize these contradictory cultural, economic, and spatial realities in a tight nutshell? To answer that question, the author looks at churches, mosques, and other religious institutions that go global by using Facebook, YouTube, and the internet. She uses examples from cyberspace to indicate how these institutions resolve the cultural (religion) and economic (call for subscriptions, memberships, selling CDs, confessions, and sacred rites) through a cyber-material city, a transcendent space where culture always unfolds with the economy.

This chapter begins with an investigation of the arrival in New York City of Rick’s Cabaret, a publicly traded, clean-cut topless strip club based in Houston. Rick’s Cabaret International, Inc. owns fourteen clubs in six states and in Argentina, as well as several adult Internet sites, and in 2007 moved to the NASDAQ Global Market. Rick’s consolidation model acquires “independently owned mom-and-pop operations” that can be easily converted into Rick’s outlets. Rick’s is useful for this study because it has developed different specialized brands for its different chains according to the niches they serve: Rick’s Cabaret for “high-end white-collar business travelers”; XTC clubs for working-class men, a “little louder and rowdier”; and Club Onyx, which caters “largely to Black and Hispanic professionals and athletes.” When Rick’s opened in midtown Manhattan in September 2005, it introduced the notion of strip clubs as a potential site for shareholder profit making.

Chapter 8 discusses how various occupational groups are trying to advance their positions and gain status as professionals (experts) in line with ideas about the increased importance of knowledge and expertise. People who are not formally qualified are kept at bay. Many of the attempts to advance one group’s position take the form of launching and reinforcing such occupations by turning them into professions. Increased professionalization is broadly viewed as a good thing, for the specific occupation concerned as well as society as a whole. Scoring high on signs of being a ‘profession’ becomes an indicator of success. There is an increasing focus on regulating which occupational groups are to be entitled to do what, by applying statutory provisions and formal requirements for education and training. The general consensus is that a profession is better than a ‘non-profession’; professionalization is seen as a way to bring an occupation forwards in the battle for status, respect, influence, and attractive job positions.