Part One
Dehumanization of society refers to the mistreatments of the people in the society. In this case, people are treated like animals either in their work-place or any place they live or stay. From the books by both Ritzer and Ehrenreich, dehumanization is shown clearly. In Ritzer’s book, he depicts dehumanization acts in the society, most especially at the working places.
Here we find bureaucracy systems as Ritzer tells us, uses rationality concepts but in the end results to irrationality, as a concept of functioning. This rationalism is linked to bureaucracy, since bureaucracy has made people be seen as robots or machines.
The robotic world is portrayed when people are used just to give results, but little is done to safeguard them. The individuals are expected most of the time to just work and produce; this comes at a cost where the employees are not allowed to interact. There is no time set aside for recreation or socialization; a human being is just confined in a working environment. This creates a boring life style and people are exploited or over worked in the end.
Normally human beings enjoy team work and corporation at work. Similarly, an average human being has problems that he may need to share with other people at the working place. Therefore, lack of recreational time or freedom to interact denies a human being that privilege of having people who care around them. Thus the whole process lacks a human feeling in it and that’s why dehumanization results in our society today.
The introduction of fast food systems, through the Mcdonalization way has just reaffirmed the dehumanization acts in our working places in the society today. This is because individuals have no enough time for relaxing during lunch hours, but are only required to have time of buyingfood. How they eat is not the problem of the employer; people eat as if they are running because the time is not enough. This robs off the human being his freedom and the right to enjoy including the lunch times.
Ehrenreich’s book review on smith’s story also depicts how the society is full of inhuman activities. He states that this dehumanization results because of contemptuous behaviors that make people feel they are more superior to others. The genocide of Rwanda, for example, shows the clear picture of dehumanization where one side of the community dehumanized other individuals from another community because they believed in superiority. This shows that our society today has people who don’t care, people who would just kill to quench their thirst of cruelty. In our places of work, bosses are heard using evils words to refer to their workers, this dehumanizes the individuals.
Part two
In Nickel and Dimed, we get the first example being the low wage paying jobs. Here workers are expected to give so much more than what they get in return. Majority of them cannot afford better houses, good medical care and quality food because of the low wage set-up in the American society. The minorities are given less attention and more often they have no benefits like retirement funds and health insurance.
Thus, the workers are not seen as human beings who deserve all the attention and benefits. Another example is the managers’ scrutiny on the theft time and drag tests. This makes the workers look like misfits in the society, they are treated like suspects and not people with integrity and ability to work freely. This lack of freedom and trust is the dehumanizing phenomenon. In Mcdonalization, the quantity being used as a measure of good performance is both exploitative and inhuman because human beings are used as machines to produce more and more without time for relaxing or recreating. Mcdonalization also leads to deskilling as workers are easily trained and can be laid off easily, the workers are only focused on one line and are not flexible or creative, lack of creativity means there is more control and less freedom, it also shows that workers are manipulated.
Dehumanization is inevitable in the modern society because the corporations want to maximize production at low costs and increase profits. These profits are maximized when more and more human beings are mistreated so it is inevitable. The consequences are many staring form the low wage which causes many individuals to be unable to sustain their families street children have resulted.
It is evident that increase in insecurity in many cities around the world is as a result of dehumanization when people look for alternatives for survival. We can change our norms by ensuring better pay for everyone and other benefits as well, this will require more sacrifices like better housing and many more the society is not in a position to accept.
