TAJUK :
McDonaldization or IKEAization? Rethinking the consequences of recent societal changes and technological advances on sport and leisure

PEMBENTANG

Dr Tony Blackshaw (Sheffield Hallam University)

 Tony Blackshaw is a scholar and researcher of international standing who teaches social and cultural studies in sport at Sheffield Hallam University. He has published two major qualitative studies in leisure and sport studies -  Leisure Life: Myth, Masculinity and Modernity (2003) and New Perspectives on Sport and ‘Deviance’: Consumption, Performativity and Social Control (with Tim Crabbe) (2004) - as well as writing the critically acclaimed introduction to the work of Zygmunt Bauman (2005) in Routledge's Key Sociologists series. He is also author of The Sage Dictionary of Leisure Studies (with Garry Crawford) (2009) and Sage Key Concepts in Community Studies (2010). He has just completed Leisure (Routledge 2010), which will be published in March

SINOPSIS:

This paper offers, on the one hand, a critical discussion to the efficacy of Ritzer’s (1993) McDonaldization thesis for understanding contemporary sport and leisure and, on the other, sets outs the author’s own alternative IKEAization thesis. After discussing the strengths and limitations of the McDonaldization thesis, the author maps out the key dimensions of IKEAization, which is defined as the process by which the principles of the global home furnishing corporation IKEA are coming to have a major bearing on the way in which global ‘liquid’ modernity (Bauman, 2000) works.  It is demonstrated that in common with McDonaldization, IKEAization is not a description of reality, but an ideal type or analytical tool that we might use to try to understand those aspects of the world which remain for most of us agonizingly confused, contradictory and incoherent. After outlining the key dimensions of IKEAization, the paper considers how we might apply the concept to contemporary sport and leisure. To this end the author demonstrates that IKEA is a much more appropriate metaphor for understanding more recent societal changes and technological advances than is the fast-food restaurant, because it better reflects our actual experiences of individualization, sport and leisure in a world dominated by consumerism.