George Ritzeris Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, where he has also been a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and won a Teaching Excellence Award. He was awarded the Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award by the American Sociological Association, an honorary doctorate from LaTrobe University in Australia, and the Robin Williams Lectureship from the Eastern Sociological Society. His best-known work, The McDonaldization of Society (8th ed.), has been read by hundreds of thousands of students over two decades and translated into over a dozen languages. Ritzer is also the editor of McDonaldization: The Reader; and author of other works of critical sociology related to the McDonaldization thesis, includingEnchanting a Disenchanted World, The Globalization of Nothing, Expressing America: A Critique of the Global Credit Card Society, as well as a series best-selling social theory textbooks and Globalization: A Basic Text. He is the Editor of the Encyclopedia of Social Theory (2 vols.), the Encyclopedia of Sociology (11 vols.; 2nd edition forthcoming), theEncyclopedia of Globalization(5 vols.
), and is Founding Editor of theJournal of Consumer Culture. In 2016 he will publish the second edition of Essentials of Sociologywith SAGE.Jeff Stepniskyis an Associate Professor and Chair of Sociology at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, where he studied with George Ritzer and served as Managing editor for the Encyclopedia of Social Theory and the Journal of Consumer Culture. He is also Ritzer's co-editor on the Wiley-BlackwellCompanion to Major Social Theorists, and co-author on Contemporary Theory and its Classical Roots (4th ed.) and Sociological Theory(9th ed.
), both published by McGraw-Hill. His research interests lie at the intersections of sociology and psychology--the idea that selfhood is not an individual possession, but a socially and culturally mediated phenomenon. At McEwan, he teach courses in Introductory Sociology, Sociological Theory, Social Psychology and the Sociology of Mental Illness.