Cultural Values - Essay Example

How do you see our cultural values and beliefs (collective lenses and frames) and socialization influencing and being influenced by our politicalsystem in “Fast Food Nation"? What changes (and resistance to change) regarding these issues do you see? Our political system is beholden to the fast food industry, and this is causing a change in how we hold our cultural values and beliefs. For instance, one cultural value and belief is that individuals should be protected from violence of any kind. To this end, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has attempted to issue guidelines for how restaurants should protect their employees from violence that occurs in incidents such as robbery. These guidelines were innocuous, and included such advice as making sure that the parking lots were well-lit and that there was improved visibility within their stores. The restaurant industry opposed these guidelines, and basically bought off congressmen with lobbying money (Schlosser, 2001, p. 86). Some people have the value and belief that America is exceptional, and, as such, should spread its culture around the world. According to Schlossen, this has been accomplished by the fast food industry. Schlosser uses the case study of Plauen, a city in what Schlosser refers to as “new Germany,” to illustrate the point. Schlosser portrays the McDonald’s in this city as a kind of bright spot in a city that is otherwise depressed, with high unemployment and men desperate for work. Schlosser ends the story of Plauen by describing a bar that opened in that city that has a country-western feel to it, and this, implies Schlosser, defines Plauen today. The dream that Plauen has now comes not from the circumstances of Plauen itself, because the town is depressed, but, rather, by the shining example of McDonald’s, which fills the hearts of the Plauen people with hope of a better future, a future that is similar to the American Dream. And this is all because, implies Schlosser, Plauen has been supplied this American Dream through the presence of the first American fast food restaurant, McDonald’s (Schlosser, 2001, p. 252). Schlosser also uses the example of Dachau, which has a McDonald’s close to the notorious concentration camp. Just like in Plauen, the McDonald’s in Dachau was filled with people with Americanized clothes, eating Americanized burgers (Schlosser, 2001, p. 232). While this might seem to some to be insensitive to the history of Dachau, in that McDonald’s appears to be crassly commercialized and capitalizing on a tragedy by luring visitors to the ghastly Dachau site to its restaurant, it can be seen in another way. And that is that McDonald’s is merely performing a service for the visitors of Dachau, in that the people who visit the site need to eat, so McDonald’s is simply making doing so convenient. Nevertheless, because the people in the Dachau McDonald’s are Americanized with their clothing and so forth, Schlosser sees this as another example of Americanization in Germany, made all the more insidious because the McDonald’s is capitalizing on a particularly horrible part of German history. There are also health concerns, and there are cultural values and beliefs that we should be free of pathogens, and that the government should do a good job of inspecting our food to make sure that we are not exposed. However, there is a resistance to any changes that should be made in this area, just as there is a resistance to change regarding OSHA regulations, as described above. It started with the expose by Upton Sinclair, called The Jungle, which is now required reading for most schoolchildren. Schlosser says that the meatpacking industry was resistant to change in Upton Sinclair’s day and continues to be so – “The industry has repeatedly denied that problems exist, impugned the motives of its critics, fought vehemently against federal oversight, sought to avoid any responsibility for outbreaks of food poisoning, and worked hard to shift the costs of food safety efforts onto the general public” (Schlosser, 2001, p. 205). The meatpacking industry has used efforts such as blocking the use of microbial testing in the federal meat inspection program, and this has caused periodic outbreaks of E Coli infections (Schlosser, 2001, p. 206). 2) Find examples of our core concepts- freedom, order, equality and justice and describe how these concepts (and differing interpretations of the concepts) are reflected in the issues discussed in the book. One of the examples of freedom in the book is the freedom to feed children what they want to eat, even if this is bad for the children and leads to childhood obesity. This is an argument that is traditionally used against people who attempt to curb childhood obesity with any variety of measures – that the parents have the freedom to choose what their children eat, not the government. Our fast food corporations are taking advantage of this freedom by targeting children – this is all a part of their “cradle to grave” strategies, which means that the fast food restaurants are attempting to instill brand loyalty in customers as young as two years old (Schlosser, 2001, p. 43). To this end, the marketers and the advertisers for the fast food restaurants have gotten sophisticated, as they find out different ways to appeal to children, so that the children nag their parents into buying the food. Another example of a value is justice, if one feels that it is unjust to not pay an individual living wage. Schlosser states that the fast food workers typically make the minimum wage, even as the real value of the minimum wage fell by 40% during the years 1968 to 1990, which are the years when the fast food restaurants were becoming ubiquitous in the United States. In fact, the fast food restaurants not only pay the minimum wage, but they have been integral in opposing increases in the minimum wage, and have backed congressional efforts to eliminate it entirely. While the workers are attempting to get by on the minimum wage, the industry executives are earning considerably more money. Schlosser points out by raising the minimum wage by only one dollar would add only two cents to the cost of a hamburger. Moreover, restaurant employees typically have no benefits and get no overtime (Schlosser, 2001, p. 73). Fast food restaurants are also resistant to unions, as one McDonald’s, which shut down during a union drive, would attest (Schlosser, 2001, p. 77). Freedom also relates to free enterprise, which means that the market should be free from artificial constraints and that every industry should be able survive without governmental interference. However, the free enterprise system is not working very well within the fast food industry. One example of this is the cattle rancher – McDonald’s has not diversified its suppliers, making only five different companies their suppliers as opposed to the 175 that it used to use as suppliers. Because of this, a few large corporations have managed to gain a stranglehold on the markets, and are able to use this advantage and unfair tactics to drive down the price of cattle (Schlosser, 2001, p. 136). 3) Can you find examples of the social dilemma in the book? Society has a collective interest in educating our youth and making sure that our youth is the future of tomorrow. To this end, the private interests of the fast food companies are undermining these collective interests by working our American teenagers long hours. Schlosser states that the teenager who works 20 hours per week gain a lot through the experience with increased responsibility and self-esteem. Teenagers who work more than this, however, tend to cut classes and drop out of high school (Schlosser, 2001, p. 80). Schlosser states that teenagers are working 12 hour days and often working past midnight on a school night (Schlosser, 2001, p. 82). Also, because these jobs are boring and meaningless, it creates, in the teenagers who work these jobs, a “lifelong aversion to work” (Schlosser, 2001, p. 80). Thus, the private interests of the fast food companies are undermining the collective interests of society in two ways – by working teenagers so many hours that they are liable to cut class and drop out of high school, and by discouraging our workforce of tomorrow from wanting to work. Society also has interest in curbing childhood obesity, because of the rising cost of health care. However, fast food restaurants are repeatedly undermining this collective interest by their actions towards school children. Schlosser states that public schools are increasingly placing ads for fast food restaurants and the like within their hallways and on school buses. He uses the example of Colorado School Districts who use these ads to cover budget shortfalls. The schools are furthering the culture of the fast food nation by selling fast food in their schools. Many schools have Subway chains in their schools, or have Subway delivery contracts, and Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Dominos also sell food in the nation’s schools (Schlosser, 2001, p. 56). Moreover, Schlosser states fast food companies are targeting children all over the world. He points to the fact that, in Australia, half of the nation’s nine and ten year olds believed in Ronald McDonald and also believed that Ronald was an expert on what children should eat. Ronald McDonald is also ubiquitous in Beijing, where the kids called him “Uncle McDonald” who is “funny, gentle, kind, and…he understood children’s hearts” (Schlosser, 2001, p. 231). 4) Do agree or disagree in whole or in part with Schlosser’s dim view of the impact of fast food on our politics, health, culture, environment and treatment of workers? It is difficult to disagree with Schlosser’s dim view. The fact of the matter is is that the fast food industry exploits workers, including young workers, by paying them low wages and acting against any attempts to unionize. Meanwhile, their executives are being paid more and more money, while their employees’ wages stagnate, and they have contributed to poverty by not paying their employees a living wage. They have also collectively damaged our nation’s health by ignoring most calls for them to become more health conscious and by advertising to vulnerable children, thus increasing the childhood obesity rate. They have also contributed to e coli outbreaks by buying their meat from places that do not have good inspection practices, and have refused the government’s efforts to better their inspection practices. They have caused the price of beef to plummet, thus putting small cattle ranchers out of business, by buying beef from just a handful of producers. And, they have had an adverse impact on politics, because they use lobbyists to roll back reasonable guidelines, such as the guidelines regarding workplace violence. They have done all this out of greed and the pursuit of a bigger profit.     Read More