Overview

Fast food chains like McDonalds and Burger King are part of world-wide corporate empires that generate billions of dollars in annual sales. In ""Making Fast Food"", Ester Reiter examines the impact the fast food industry has had on the organization of work and family life. She describes the growth and development of the industry and the creation of a market for fast foods, and analyzes the development and moulding of a cheap labour force for the industry and the technological innovations designed to facilitate mass production as cheaply as possible. The flourishing fast food industry represents one particular blueprint of how to live. Reiter analyzes the profound consequences of this blueprint for many spheres of life - women's work, youth employment, the labour movement, the family and the community. Since the 1970s, young people and women have increasingly entered the job market in low-waged, service-sector jobs. Family life, she explains, has changed dramatically in the last 40 years as many activities that were traditionally part of the home have been replaced by services available in the marketplace. The production of meals and those who produce them have moved from the family kitchen to the highly regulated corporate workplace where workers are like the interchangeable parts of a machine.

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A fascinating and highly readable study of the fast-food phenomenon that has become a symbol of life in contemporary society. Diane Schoemperlen, Books in Canada. Making Fast Food is a long overdue book designed to uncover the brutal truths about the have-a-nice-day industry of burgers and French fries ... Reiter masterfully documents, analyses and attacks the low pay and appalling working conditions of the fast food labour force. Emily Caston, City Limits, London, England. Illuminating ... This is a thought-provoking, honest, and painstaking work. Mark Abley, Montreal Gazette. Unique ... innovative ... enticing ... An extremely important book ... Both the topic and the accessible language make it a winner. So many people have worked or eaten in fast food restaurants. I think this book will interest them. Meg Luxton, Department of Social Science, Atkinson College, York University. Creative, demanding, and instructive ... It is so rare that scholars undertake this kind of field research ... [Reiter's study] will come to stand as a classic text on qualitative methodologies. Roberta Hamilton, Department of Sociology, Queen's University.

A fascinating and highly readable study of the fast-food phenomenon that has become a symbol of life in contemporary society. Diane Schoemperlen, Books in Canada. Making Fast Food is a long overdue book designed to uncover the brutal truths about the have-a-nice-day industry of burgers and French fries ... Reiter masterfully documents, analyses and attacks the low pay and appalling working conditions of the fast food labour force. Emily Caston, City Limits, London, England. Illuminating ... This is a thought-provoking, honest, and painstaking work. Mark Abley, Montreal Gazette. Unique ... innovative ... enticing ... An extremely important book ... Both the topic and the accessible language make it a winner. So many people have worked or eaten in fast food restaurants. I think this book will interest them. Meg Luxton, Department of Social Science, Atkinson College, York University. Creative, demanding, and instructive ... It is so rare that scholars undertake this kind of field

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