Honouring George Ritzer: Reading Ritzer and developing as an interdisciplinary semiotician

Abstract

This Festschrift text presents my experiences with George Ritzer's writings, mainly regarding how they ‘mentored’ and influenced my own relationship to sociology and wider academics. I demonstrate this impact by discussing the influence of Ritzer's texts on my personal development as a student. I also examine some of the sociologist's key concepts and their paramount position within my PhD work on McDonaldization, enchantment, animals and semiotics; his work helped guide my research, which is essentially a synthesis of the sociologist's and zoosemiotic theory. Lastly, the text brings attention to the importance of Ritzer's writings being relatable, critical and an important means to understanding contemporary societies.

I have never met George Ritzer face-to-face, although I did have the pleasure of conducting an online interview with him − for the student journal Hortus Semioticus (Creighton, 2023a) − when I was already more than halfway through my PhD studies. So, although that interview is a highlight of my academic career, it suffices to say Ritzer has not personally mentored me throughout my studies and career. With that in mind, our honouree's literature and books have profoundly contributed to my academic studies, being a fundamental component for my sociological knowledge, through which I have (and will continue to) developed my research aims, goals and interests.

Ritzer had a considerable influence on me when I was a bachelor student: Classical Sociology Theory (Ritzer and Stepnisky, 2020), Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics (Ritzer and Stepnisky, 2022) and Introduction to Sociology (Ritzer and Ryan, 2023) were central textbooks for the development of my understanding of sociological theory and its history, to the point that by the time I had graduated, the sociologist's interpretations of the sociological landscape largely constructed the foundation for my own interpretations and knowledge. However, perhaps more importantly, Ritzer's theoretical innovations and developments would go on to guide my scholarly topics as a PhD student.

I was first introduced to Ritzer's perspective through Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Continuity and Change in the Cathedrals of Consumption (Ritzer, 2010) and was immediately engaged. I found the text's discussion of enchantment and its relation to rational systems a fundamental argument for understanding today's consumer society, pointing out consumption's underlying social action as well as the process of enchantment, re-enchantment and disenchantment that, in part, maintains consumer enticement. ‘Enchanting’ led me, finally, to The McDonaldization of Society (Ritzer, 2020), which I found striking as a current and accessible understanding and innovation of Max Weber's sociology and as, again, a text that concisely demonstrates the social rational action of many of today's societies, as well as the often-irrational consequences of this rationalization process. These books are fantastic examples of good sociological scholarship and social critics of consumption and rationalization, but also, and just as importantly, both texts are relatable as they offer perspectives that seem almost intuitive in their graspability while, somewhat paradoxically, presenting a model of the world that greatly disrupts the consumer messages, feelings and relations most of us are inundated with and socialized by from childhood and onwards. Consequently, Ritzer offers a tangible means to look at and engage with the world critically. To me, such tangibility and relatability are signs of excellent scholarship, and something greatly needed if we want to engage with the issues contemporary societies and modernization have created or exasperated, that is, the Anthropocene, misinformation, alienation, etc.

It is largely for the above reasons that I took Ritzer's work as a main theoretical frame in my PhD studies and beyond. I am a semiotician and culture studies scholar with an interest in zoosemiotics, or the study of how animals communicate, make meaning, interpret, etc. (Martinelli, 2010). Ritzer's work intuitively does not seem to have much in common with zoosemiotics or animal studies. However, McDonaldization and the sociologist's treatment of enchantment have proven to be extremely versatile, having strong potential for synthesis with semiotics and research on animals. So much so that my PhD thesis, in general, investigated how enchantment and McDonaldized systems make use of and relate to animals while also attempting to develop and add further semiotic dimensions to Ritzer's work, demonstrating in-depth how McDonaldization and enchantment can control animal relations to their environment, human−animal relations, be useful in semiotic analysis, etc. (Creighton, 2024a, 2024b, 2023b).

Ritzer's work offers a thorough and encompassing understanding of how McDonaldization and enchantment proliferate throughout many societies while at the same time missing a strong focus on the semiotic and animal dimensions of society. This, of course, is mainly because of disciplinary focuses rather than any lack of insight; sociology just does not take animals and semiotics as objects of study as its focus, in most cases at least (see Jerolmack et al., 2024 for a notable exception). Despite these apparent shortcomings, Ritzer's theory has acted not just as a basis for my synthesis or for my understanding of society but as a guidepost, pointing towards areas for zoosemiotics to research how enchantment and McDonaldization treat animals. For instance, in Enchanting, the use of animals as enchantment and spectacles is discussed in relation to the new cathedrals of consumption such as Las Vegas hotel-casinos (Ritzer, 2010). Through my work, I was able to use these examples as a means to find locations of rational−enchantment−animal relations and inquire about how dolphins in such situations may experience the McDonaldized structures of their captivity or consider why consumers may falsely perceive experiences with said dolphins as being one of intersubjectivity (Creighton, 2022).

Along with guideposts pointing to societal areas of McDonaldized and enchanting animals, Ritzer's term, the simulated animal, was a starting point for my own sociologically influenced zoosemiotics to develop. Although simulated animals are a minor consideration within the sociologist's (Ritzer, 2010) work, the term allows an understanding of animals as a part of and developed by McDonaldized systems, which I was able to develop into a wider consideration of the bodily, communicative and experiential aspects of animals within rational contexts (Creighton, 2024a). However, despite how much I advance the simulated animal as a concept, Ritzer's coining of the term and general framing are fundamental to the trajectory of its development. Although Ritzer's theory only gives minor considerations to animals, they do generously point to a means for facilitating this research, which I attribute to the wide breadth of societal spheres Ritzer's work tends to cover, taking detailed and thorough analyses of institutions throughout the contemporary world.

As a quick conclusion, having read Ritzer since my undergraduate days, I can say that his work has equipped me well for academia, and I owe much to him in these respects. From my knowledge about sociological theory as a bachelor student to my development as a PhD and my synthesis of zoosemiotics with sociology, Ritzer's texts served as more than just a means of disseminating or displaying his theory and scholarly work for me. They offered a way to situate myself in academia, and later to develop my ideas, theory and research aims. I attribute this to Ritzer's ability to make tangible and relatable work that covers a wide breadth, which ultimately allows academic research, innovation and critical thinking by encouraging researchers to relate to and position themselves and their experiences within the context of McDonaldization, enchantment and Ritzer's other theoretical innovations.