Jackie,

Excellent points you bring up. Opinions always welcomed.

I too hope that my doom and gloom prediction of things will not come to pass. However, living in the heart of the Midwest in America, I am inundated with it. Where I live is quite literally a test market for a huge amount of these companies. We might even be living in the epicenter of this McDonaldization.

Perhaps it is this concentration of this process where I live and the fact that any traces of identity (perhaps identity is a more accurate word than culture) are rapidly being absorbed. Homogeneity run amuck. We have many in town who have fought this progress but it is futile. They simply do not have the economic strength behind their passion to retain a sense of identity. Sadly, so much identity these days is being defined against it, yet it is still the force causing (or, perhaps, acausally) definining identity.

So the force, as I see it, is not life-affirming. I am sure someone at some point said that one Wal Mart in my hometown will not destroy identity and culture either. I firmly believe that one Wal Mart in England may be a sign of things to come if there is no resistance to this force. Perhaps it is unique in America. I personally do not believe so. I think you may see an increase not so much in warehouse style business practices but in the standardization of life on many levels. While the impression is that we have many choices, in reality we have few choices under the illusions that multiple brand names, packages, etc. are all under the banner of - as you noted - two or three large companies.

Where I live, Wal Mart has created its own culture. Perhaps what is most ironic, to me anyhow, is that not only has it really wiped out local culture, it has created its own culture. Teenagers hang out at Wal Mart on Friday night! It will someday, if it hasn't already, created its own language.

So it is a subtle form of imperialism, a virus that doesn't so much change a culture from without but transforms it from within.

Which brings me to another paradox: a truly homogeneous culture would actually BE a culture would it not?

Anyhow, maybe I'm looking for a more technical term for McDonaldization. I hate to use that word to describe the force because to use the word makes the user victim of the very same force it is trying to describe. Argh!!!