Product Description

i??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 identityi??'. So begins a complicated journey into the power of one of the most recognizable signs of American capitalism: The Golden Arches. i??The Sign of the Burgeri?? 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 i??Kinderculture: The Corporate Construction of Childhoodi??.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1434128 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .61 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

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 Talwar'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

From the Publisher
A refreshingly sophisticated yet readable examination of the power of American culture—and burgers.