McWorld

McWorld is a term referring to the spreading of McDonald's restaurants throughout the world as the result of globalization, and more generally to the effects of international 'McDonaldization' of services and commercialization of goods as an element of globalization as a whole. The name also refers to a 1990s advertising campaign for McDonald's, and to a children's website launched by the firm in 2008.

Critics claim that fast food chain restaurants such as McDonald's are destructive towards many aspects of the indigenous cultures in countries where they have been introduced.

In March 1992, an article first published in The Atlantic Monthly by Rutgers political science professor Benjamin Barber entitled "Jihad vs. McWorld", described international commercialization as one of two great clashing forces of the 21st century, the other being tribalistic fundamentalism. According to his writing, there are four imperatives which constitute the McWorld: a market imperative, a resource imperative, an information technology imperative, and an ecological imperative. The four imperatives are transnational, transideological, transcultural and ecological. The contracting idea of McWorld, the Jihad, unlike those four imperatives, stress identity of each community.

The clashing forces results from what Barber explains as the two core doctrines of our age: globalism and retribalization. It was expanded and published in 1995, and became a bestselling book. McWorld does not necessarily relate to democracy. It cares about the elements of democracy, but only to the degree that it promotes economic production and consumption. In the book, Barber explains that liberalization of nation state oriented markets to a globalized market does not seem democratic. Democracy and liberal capitalism are terms commonly used as a correlation; how democracy leads to capitalist economy and vice versa. However Barber argues that multinational corporations pursuing profits outside their home country due to competition has less correlation with open society.

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