Product Description

This innovative text focuses on an American icon, central to United States culture, that is rapidly becoming a global expression of prosperity - the credit card. George Ritzer explains what the credit card tells us, both good and bad, about the essence of the modern US and why and how the credit card is helping to transform much of the world.

Drawing on the insights of both classic and contemporary social thinkers, including Georg Simmel, C Wright Mills, Karl Marx and Max Weber, as well as micro-macro, agency-structure and Americanization theories, Ritzer also reveals to students the powerful insights gained from using the sociological `imagination' applied to a topic that students know about and are interested in.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1054367 in Books
• Published on: 1995-02-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

About the Author

George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, where he has also been a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and won a Teaching Excellence Award. He was awarded the 2000 distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award by the American Sociological Association and an honorary doctorate from LaTrobe University in australia. He is best-known for The McDonaldization of Society (translated into over a dozen languages) and McDonaldization: The Reader 3 as well as several related books, including expressing America: A Critique of the Global Credit Card Society, Enchanting a Disenchanted World 3, The Globalization of Nothing 2, Globalization: A Basic Text, and The Outsourcing of Everything (forthcoming, with Craig Lair). He is the Editor of the Encyclopedia of Social Theory (2 vols.), the Encyclopedia of Sociology (11 vols.), is currently editing the Encyclopedia of Globalization (5 vols.), and is Founding Editor of the Journal of Consumer Culture.