Introduction to Sociology

George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. Among his awards are Honorary Doctorate from La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia; Honorary Patron, University Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin; American Sociological Association's Distinguished Contribution to Teaching Award; and being named the 2013 Eastern Sociological Society's Robin Williams Lecturer. He has chaired four sections of the American Sociological Association: Theoretical Sociology, Organizations and Occupations, Global and Transnational Sociology, and the History of Sociology. In the application of social theory to the social world, his books include The McDonaldization of Society (8th ed., 2015; 9th ed., forthcoming), Enchanting a Disenchanted World (3rd ed., 2010), and The Globalization of Nothing (2nd ed., 2007). He is the author of Globalization: A Basic Text (Blackwell, 2010; 2^nd ed., 2015, with Paul Dean). He edited the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Sociology (2012) and The Blackwell Companion to Globalization (2008) and co-edited (with Jeff Stepnisky) the Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Classical and Contemporary Major Social Theorists (2012) and the Handbook of Social Theory (2001). He was founding editor of the Journal of Consumer Culture. He also edited the eleven-volume Encyclopedia of Sociology (2007; 2nd ed., forthcoming, with Chris Rojek), the two-volume Encyclopedia of Social Theory (2005), and the five-volume Encyclopedia of Globalization (2012). He co-edited a special double issue (2012) of the American Behavioral Scientist on presumption and edited a symposium on prosumer capitalism in Sociological Quarterly (2015). His books have been translated into more than twenty languages, with more than a dozen translations of The McDonaldization of Society alone.