Can there really be ‘True’ alternatives within the food and drink markets? If so, can they survive as alternative forms?

ABSTRACT

This commentary deals with the issue of alternative food and drink from the perspective of my work on such topics as disenchantment, enchantment, McDonaldization, nothing, prosumption, rationalisation and something. The conclusion is that the interests of, and pressure from, large-scale profit-making businesses will, to a large extent, undermine efforts to produce ‘true’ alternatives in food and drink. Those alternatives will survive on the margins in the developed world, but they will be more prevalent in the less developed world which is less attractive to those businesses, and therefore, the alternatives will be allowed to survive there.

KEYWORDS:

• Disenchantment
• enchantment
• McDonaldization
• nothing
• prosumption
• rationalisation
• something

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Notes on contributors

George Ritzer

George Ritzer, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, was named a Distinguished-Scholar Teacher there and received the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Contribution to Teaching Award. He holds an Honorary Doctorate from La Trobe University and the Robin William Lectureship from the Eastern Sociological Society. He has chaired four Sections of the American Sociological Association- Theoretical Sociology, Organisations and Occupations, Global and Transnational Sociology, and the History of Sociology. He has written many refereed articles, but he is best-known for his monographs dealing with sociological theory, consumption, and globalisation. The McDonaldization of Society (9th ed., forthcoming, 2018) has been his most widely read and influential work. There are over a dozen translations of that book, and overall his work has been translated into over 20 languages. Most of his writing over the last decade has been in the form of articles and essays on prosumption.