Volume 18, Issue 2, Fall 2011
Joseph Campisi
Pages 34-46
Feast and Famine
The Technology of Fast Food
Philosophical analyses of fast food have been relatively nonexistent. One of the only philosophers who provides a theoretical analysis of fast food is Douglas Kellner, who maintains that fast food is "dehumanizing." The most prominent scholarly or academic treatment of fast food is that of the sociologist George Ritzer, who advances the "McDonaldization" thesis, while claiming that fast food is "dehumanizing." Neither Kellner nor Ritzer offer a sustained analysis in defense of this claim. This paper will attempt to provide such an analysis, making use of the theory of technology put forth by Albert Borgmann. Fast food, it will be argued, is best understood as a "device" in Borgmann's sense. For Borgmann, devices lead to a "disconnected, disembodied, and disoriented sort of life." This aspect of fast food helps explain the reaction against it that we find in the work of Kellner and Ritzer.