The Sign of the Burger: McDonald’s and the Culture of Power (Labor in Crisis): Joe L. Kincheloe
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.” –Douglas 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.” –Choice “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.” –Harvard 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