Alexander David Turner (born 6 January 1986) is an English singer and musician. He is best known as the frontman and principal songwriter of the rock band Arctic Monkeys, with whom he has released seven studio albums. He has also recorded with his side project involving Miles Kane, as the Last Shadow Puppets and also as a solo artist.

When Turner was 15, he and three friends formed Arctic Monkeys in their native Sheffield. Their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (2006), became the fastest-selling debut album in British history and was ranked at No. 30 on Rolling Stone list of the greatest debut albums of all time, with the single "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor" becoming a UK number-one hit. The band's subsequent studio albums, Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007), Humbug (2009), Suck It and See (2011), AM (2013), Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino (2018) and The Car (2022), have experimented with desert rock, indie pop, R&B, and lounge music. Arctic Monkeys headlined Glastonbury Festival in 2007, 2013 and 2023, Reading and Leeds Festivals in 2009, 2014 and 2022, and performed during the 2012 London Summer Olympics opening ceremony.

As the co-frontmen of the Last Shadow Puppets, Turner and former frontman of The Rascals Miles Kane have released two orchestral pop albums: The Age of the Understatement (2008) and Everything You've Come to Expect (2016). Turner also provided an acoustic soundtrack for the feature film Submarine (2010), and co-wrote and co-produced Alexandra Savior's debut album Belladonna of Sadness (2017).

Turner's lyricism, ranging from kitchen sink realism to surrealist wordplay, has been  praised throughout the music industry and the public. All but one of his nine studio albums have topped the UK Albums Chart. He has won seven Brit Awards, an Ivor Novello Award, and a Mercury Prize, having been nominated six times for the latter.

Biography

Early life
Alexander David Turner was born in Sheffield on 6 January 1986, the only child of secondary school teachers Penny (née Druce) and David Turner. He was raised in Sheffield's High Green suburb. He has said that his parents came from "very different backgrounds"; his mother, from Amersham, Buckinghamshire, taught German and was "fascinated by language". His father, a Sheffield native, taught music and physics. Turner's parents were both music fans and his earliest musical memories involve the Beatles and the Beach Boys. During car journeys, his mother played music by Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, and the Eagles. His father was a fan of jazz and swing music, particularly Frank Sinatra, and had played the saxophone, trumpet, and piano in big bands. Turner himself was taught some scales on the family keyboard by his father and took professional piano lessons until he was eight years old. Pet Sounds was a big favourite when he grew up, it being the record that got Turner interested in music in the first place.

From the age of five, Turner grew up alongside neighbour Matt Helders; they attended primary school, secondary school, and college together. At their primary school graduation ceremony, Turner and Helders joined some other friends in a mimed performance of Oasis' "Morning Glory"Helders played the role of Liam Gallagher while Turner pretended to play the bass guitar, using a tennis racket as his instrument. The two met Andy Nicholson in secondary school, and the three friends bonded over their shared enjoyment of hip-hop artists such as Dr. Dre, the Wu-Tang Clan, Outkast, and Roots Manuva. They spent their time playing basketball, skateboarding, riding BMXs, and "making crap hip-hop" beats using Turner's father's Cubase system. Turner and his friends became interested in rock music following the breakthrough of the Strokes in 2001. His father let him borrow a school guitar to learn a "couple of chords" when Turner was 15 and, for Christmas that year, his parents bought him an electric guitar.

Turner was educated at Stocksbridge High School from 1997 to 2002. His former teacher, Mark Coleman, characterised him as a "bright" and "popular" student who excelled at sports rather than music. His English and drama teacher, Simon Baker, remembered him as a clever pupil who was "quite reserved" and "a little bit different". He noted that Turner had an "incredibly laid-back" approach to his studies, which worried his mother and led to criticism from other teachers. While there were books at home, Turner did not read regularly and was too self-conscious to share his writing with others. Nonetheless, he enjoyed English lessons. Turner then attended Barnsley College from 2002 to 2004. Given the opportunity to "get away without doing maths", he largely opted out of the "substantial" subjects required for university entry. He studied for A-levels in music technology and media studies, as well as AS-levels in English, photography, and psychology.

2002–2004: Formation of Arctic Monkeys
At the age of 15, Turner's weekends revolved around girls and drinking cider with his friends. Joe Carnall, a schoolfriend, has said Turner was "always the quiet one" in their social circle. After friends began forming bands and playing live, Turner, Helders, and Nicholson decided to start Arctic Monkeys in mid-2002. According to Nicholson, Turner already had "instruments about the house" and was conversant in the basics of musicianship because of his father's job as a music teacher. Helders bought a drum kit, while Turner suggested that Nicholson learn bass guitar, and invited Jamie Cook, a neighbour who attended a different school, to play guitar. Initially, Turner played guitar in the instrumental band; he became the frontman when two other school friends declined to sing. Helders considered Turner the obvious candidate for lyricist – "I knew he had a thing for words" – and he gradually began to share songs with his bandmates. Before playing a live show, the band rehearsed for a year in Turner's garage and, later, at an unused warehouse in Wath. According to Helders' mother, who drove the teenagers to and from their rehearsal space three times a week: "If they knew you were there, they would just stop so we had to sneak in." Their first gig was on Friday, 13 June 2003, supporting The Sound at a local pub called The Grapes. The set, which was partly recorded, comprised four original songs and four cover versions of songs by the Beatles, the White Stripes, the Undertones, and the Datsuns.

In the summer of 2003, Turner played seven gigs in York and Liverpool as a rhythm guitarist for the funk band Judan Suki, after meeting the lead singer Jon McClure on a bus. That August, while recording a demo with Judan Suki at Sheffield's 2fly Studios, Turner asked Alan Smyth if he would produce an Arctic Monkeys demo. Smyth obliged and "thought they definitely had something special going on. I told Alex off for singing in an American voice at that first session." An introduction by Smyth led to the band acquiring a management team, Geoff Barradale and Ian McAndrew. They paid for Smyth and Arctic Monkeys to record numerous three-song demos in 2003 and 2004. Turner was quiet and observant during studio sessions, remembered Smyth: "Whenever anyone popped in the studio, he would sit and listen to them before he would say anything." At their rehearsal room in Yellow Arch Studios, Arctic Monkeys developed a reputation as particularly hard workers; the owner lent the band touring equipment while the owner's wife helped Turner with his singing. Barradale drove the band around venues in Scotland, the Midlands, and the north of England to establish their reputation as a live band. The band handed out free copies of the demo CDs after each show and fans began sharing the unofficial Beneath the Boardwalk demo compilation online. After finishing college in mid-2004, Turner took a year out to focus on the band and deferred vague plans to attend university in Manchester. He began working part-time as a bartender at the Sheffield music venue The Boardwalk. There, he met well-known figures including musician Richard Hawley and poet John Cooper Clarke. By the end of 2004, Arctic Monkeys' audiences were beginning to sing along with their songs and the demo of "I Bet You Look Good on The Dancefloor" was played on BBC Radio 1 by Zane Lowe.

2005–2007: Rise to fame

Arctic Monkeys came to national attention in early 2005. They received their first mention in a national newspaper in April, with a Daily Star reporter describing them as "the most exciting band to emerge this year". They self-released an EP, featuring the single "Fake Tales of San Francisco", in May and commenced their first nationwide tour soon afterwards. In June, in the midst of a bidding war, Arctic Monkeys signed to the independent label Domino Recording Company. After initial sessions with James Ford and Mike Crossey, they recorded an album in rural Lincolnshire with producer Jim Abbiss. In October, the single "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor" debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart. Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, Arctic Monkeys' debut album, was released in January 2006, and debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart. Turner's lyrics, chronicling teenage nightlife in Sheffield, were widely praised. Kelefa Sanneh of The New York Times remarked: "Mr. Turner's lyrics are worth waiting for and often worth memorizing, too ... He has an uncanny way of evoking Northern English youth culture while neither romanticizing it nor sneering at it." Musically, Alexis Petridis of The Guardian noted that the album was influenced by guitar bands "from the past five years ... Thrillingly, their music doesn't sound apologetic for not knowing the intricacies of rock history."

It was the fastest-selling debut album in British music history and quickly became a cultural phenomenon. Turner was hailed by British press outlets as "the voice of a generation". In interview profiles, however, he was described as quiet and uncomfortable with attention. The band dismissed the hype, with Cook saying their goal was "to be able to grow like The Clash. When they started, it was a very basic, punky record. Then they started to take off and move in lots of directions. That's what we want." Less than two months after the album's release, Turner declared that Sheffield-inspired songwriting was "a closed book": "We're moving on and thinking about different things." Years later, Turner said that the attention during this period made him "a bit frightened or nervous": "We shut a lot of people out, just to try to keep some sort of control." The band turned down many promotional opportunities and quickly released new material – a five-track EP Who the Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys? in April, and a stand-alone single, "Leave Before the Lights Come On", in August. That summer, the band made the decision to permanently replace Nicholson, who had taken a touring break due to "fatigue", with Nick O'Malley, another childhood friend. Nicholson was informed at a band meeting, during which "Al did the speaking." Turner and Nicholson stopped speaking for two years but later repaired their friendship.

Arctic Monkeys' second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, was released in April 2007, just over a year after their debut. It was produced in London by Mike Crossey and James Ford. As of 2020, Ford has produced every subsequent Turner project. Lyrically, the album touches on fame, love, and heartache. Johanna Bennett, Turner's then girlfriend, was credited as a co-writer on "Fluorescent Adolescent". While uninterested in the songs concerning fame, Marc Hogan of Pitchfork said the album displayed Turner's "usual gift for vivid imagery" and explored "new emotional depth". Petridis of The Guardian noted that the band were "pushing gently but confidently at the boundaries of their sound", with hints of "woozy psychedelia" and "piledriving metal". The album was a commercial success, debuting at number one in the UK, while Arctic Monkeys headlined Glastonbury Festival in the summer of 2007. Also that year, Turner began to collaborate with other artists. He worked with rapper Dizzee Rascal on the Arctic Monkeys B-side "Temptation", a version of which also featured on Rascal's album Maths and English. He co-wrote three songs on Reverend and The Makers' debut album The State Of Things, after briefly sharing a Sheffield flat with the frontman Jon McClure. Another Sheffield singer, Richard Hawley, featured on the Arctic Monkeys' B-side "Bad Woman" and performed with the band at the Manchester Apollo, as part of a concert film directed by Richard Ayoade. Turner also announced plans to form a side-project band, the Last Shadow Puppets, with Ford and Miles Kane, whom he had befriended during a tour in mid-2005.

2008–2011: Musical experimentation

The Last Shadow Puppets' debut album, The Age of the Understatement, was released in April 2008, shortly after Turner had moved from Sheffield to east London. Co-written by Turner and Kane, the album was recorded in the Loire Valley, France and featured string arrangements by Owen Pallett. Hogan of Pitchfork noted that, lyrically, Turner was "moving from his anthropologically detailed Arctics brushstrokes to bold, cinematic gestures." Petridis of The Guardian detected "the audible enthusiasm of an artist broadening his scope" and praised "a certain fearlessness on display". During a tour with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Turner said Kane's presence gave him "somewhere to hide" on stage. The Last Shadow Puppets gave a surprise performance at Glastonbury Festival, with both Matt Helders and Jack White making guest appearances. Alison Mosshart performed with the band at the Olympia in Paris, and provided vocals for a B-side. Also in 2008, Turner formed a covers band with Dev Hynes for a one-off show in London and recorded a spoken word track "A Choice of Three" for Helders' compilation album Late Night Tales.

Turner has described Arctic Monkeys' third album, Humbug, released in August 2009, as "a massive turning point" in the band's career. They travelled to Joshua Tree, California to work with producer Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age; it was the band's first experience of working in a studio for an extended period of time. Homme has said the album's heavier sound was initiated by the band themselves, while he encouraged Turner to embrace longer guitar solos and to develop his newfound "crooning" style of singing. While Petridis of The Guardian found some lyrics "too oblique to connect", he was impressed by the band's "desire to progress". He described "Cornerstone" as a "dazzling display of what Turner can do: a fabulously witty, poignant evocation of lost love." Joe Tangari of Pitchfork felt the album was a "legitimate expansion of the band's songwriting arsenal" and described "Cornerstone" as the highlight. During a break in the UK Humbug tour, Turner joined Richard Hawley on stage at a London charity concert, and played a seven-song acoustic set. Homme joined Arctic Monkeys for a live performance in Pioneertown, California.

While living in Brooklyn, New York, where he had moved in the spring of 2009, Turner wrote an acoustic soundtrack for the coming-of-age feature film Submarine (2010); it was released as an EP in March 2011. Director Richard Ayoade initially approached Turner to sing cover versions but, instead, he recorded six original songs in London, accompanied by James Ford and Bill Ryder-Jones. Two of the songs had already been written; Turner wrote the rest after watching dailies from the film set. The songs existed within the world of the film as a mixtape made by the main character's father. Paul Thompson of Pitchfork felt "Turner's keen wit and eye for detail" had created a "tender portrayal" of adolescent uncertainty.  Ben Walsh of The Independent said the "exquisite" soundtrack was "reminiscent" of Cat Stevens's work on Harold and Maude. In 2014, the Submarine soundtrack appeared on The Times'''s list of 100 Soundtracks to Love. Turner also co-wrote six songs for Miles Kane's debut solo album Colour of the Trap (2011) and co-wrote Kane's standalone single "First of My Kind" (2012).

Turner wrote Arctic Monkeys' fourth album, Suck It and See, in New York and met up with his bandmates and James Ford for recording sessions in Los Angeles. Marc Hogan of Pitchfork enjoyed the album's "chiming indie pop balladry" and "muscular glam-rock". Petridis of The Guardian remarked that Turner's new lyrical style of "dense, Dylanesque wordplay is tough to get right. More often than not, he pulls it off. There are beautifully turned phrases and piercing observation." Richard Hawley co-wrote and provided vocals for the B-side, "You and I", and performed the song with the band at the Olympia in Paris. Turner joined Elvis Costello on stage in New York to sing "Lipstick Vogue".

2012–2017: International success
By 2012, Arctic Monkeys were based in Los Angeles, with Turner and Helders sharing a house. Arctic Monkeys toured the US as the support act for the Black Keys in early 2012. While they had previously opened for Oasis and Queens of the Stone Age at one-off shows, it was the band's first time to tour as a supporting act. They released "R U Mine?" as a standalone single in preparation for the tour. Later that year, Arctic Monkeys performed "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor" and a cover of "Come Together" by the Beatles at the 2012 London Summer Olympics opening ceremony. In early 2013, Turner provided backing vocals for the Queens of the Stone Age song "If I Had a Tail" and played bass guitar on "Get Right", a Miles Kane B-side. Arctic Monkeys headlined Glastonbury Festival for a second time in June.AM was released in September 2013. Ryan Dombal of Pitchfork said that the album, dealing with "desperate 3 a.m. thoughts", managed to modernise "T. Rex bop, Bee Gees backup vocals, Rolling Stones R&B, and Black Sabbath monster riffage". Phil Mongredien of The Guardian described it as "their most coherent, most satisfying album since their debut": "Turner proves he has not lost his knack for an insightful lyric." Arctic Monkeys promoted the album heavily in the US, in contrast to previous album campaigns where, according to Helders, they had refused to do radio promotion: "We couldn't even have told you why at the time. Just stubborn teenage thinking." Arctic Monkeys spent 18 months touring AM; they were joined onstage by Josh Homme in both Los Angeles and Austin.

Columbia Records approached Turner about working with Alexandra Savior in 2014, and he co-wrote her debut album, Belladonna of Sadness, in between Arctic Monkeys' touring commitments. Turner and James Ford co-produced the album in 2015, with Turner also playing bass, guitars, keyboards, and synthesisers. An additional song "Risk" was recorded with T Bone Burnett for an episode of the crime drama True Detective. While Turner and Savior performed together in Los Angeles in 2016, the album was not released until April 2017. In reviewing it, Hilary Hughes of Pitchfork remarked: "Turner's musical ticks are so distinct that they're instantly recognizable when someone else tries to dress them up as their own." Savior later said the press attention surrounding Turner's involvement was overwhelming: "I'm so grateful for him, but I'm also like, 'Alright, alright!'"

The Last Shadow Puppets released their second album, Everything You've Come to Expect, in April 2016. Turner, Kane and Ford were joined by Zach Dawes of Mini Mansions, with whom Turner had collaborated on the songs "Vertigo" and "I Love You All The Time" in 2015. Owen Pallett again composed the string arrangements, this time working in the studio with the band rather than remotely. According to Turner, the album featured "the most straight-up love letters" of his career, written for American model Taylor Bagley whom he dated from 2015 to 2018. Laura Snapes of Pitchfork detected an air of "misanthropy" in the album. However, she acknowledged that Turner was "no less a gifted lyricist than ever" and described some songs as "totally gorgeous ... the structures fluid and surprising". Alexis Petridis of The Guardian enjoyed Turner's "characteristically sparkling use of language" and "melodic skill". However, he felt the pair's "in-joking" during interviews and Kane's "leery" encounter with a female Spin journalist sullied the album. From March until August 2016, they toured in Europe and North America. Johnny Marr played guitar with the band at two shows, while Turner's father David played saxophone at a Berlin show.

2018 onward: Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino and The CarTranquility Base Hotel & Casino, Arctic Monkeys' sixth album, was released in May 2018. After receiving a Steinway Vertegrand piano as a 30th birthday present from his manager, Turner wrote the space-themed album from the perspective of "a lounge-y character". He recorded demos at home, alone and later with Helders, and shared them with Cook in early 2017. Cook was initially taken-aback by the change in direction but was "very, very excited by what he'd come up with." By mid–2017, the whole band was recording the project, produced by Turner and James Ford, in both Los Angeles and France. They were joined by musicians from the bands Tame Impala, Klaxons, and Mini Mansions.

Upon release, Jonah Weiner of Rolling Stone characterised Tranquility Base as "a captivatingly bizarre album about the role of entertainment – the desire to escape into it, and the desire to create it – during periods of societal upheaval and crisis." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian found it "quietly impressive" that the band chose to release the "thrilling, smug, clever and oddly cold album" rather than more crowd-pleasing fare. Jazz Monroe of Pitchfork declared it "a delirious and artful satire directed at the foundations of modern society." The album became the eighth number one album of Turner's career in the UK. The band toured the album from May 2018 to April 2019.

After unsuccessfully attempting to write heavier guitar riffs for the next album, Turner's songwriting took a similar subdued tone on Arctic Monkeys' seventh studio album, The Car, which was released in October 2022. The album heavily featured a string section co-arranged by Turner and its lead single, "There'd Better Be a Mirrorball", was accompanied by a video co-directed by Turner. That same year, Turner composed the music for the audiobook version of Richard Ayoade's The Book That No One Wanted to Read with the instrumental interludes being performed himself and James Ford. In 2023, the band headlined Glastonbury Festival for the third time, despite Turner having been diagnosed with acute laryngitis days before.

Artistry
Influences

Turner was "into hip-hop in a big way" as a teenager. When he first started writing lyrics, Roots Manuva's Run Come Save Me was his main influence. He also listened to Rawkus Records and Lyricist Lounge compilations, and artists such as Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Outkast, Eminem and the Streets. He has repeatedly cited Method Man as one of his favourite lyricists, and has referenced the Wu-Tang Clan in his own lyrics.

For Turner, the Strokes were "that one band that comes along when you are 14 or 15 years old that manages to hit you in just the right way and changes your whole perception of things." He changed his style of dress and began to take an interest in guitar music. He has since referenced the band in his lyrics. The Vines were the first band Turner ever saw live and Craig Nicholls provided inspiration for his early stage persona. Other early guitar influences included the Libertines, the Coral, The Hives and The White Stripes. In his late teens, Turner began "delving" into older music and discovered lyricists including Elvis Costello, Ray Davies of The Kinks,  Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, Paul Weller of The Jam, and Morrissey of The Smiths. Turner has since performed with Jack White of The White Stripes, Costello and Johnny Marr of The Smiths.

John Cooper Clarke, whose poetry Turner first encountered at school, was a "massive" source of early inspiration. Turner was working as a barman at The Boardwalk in Sheffield in late 2004 when Clarke appeared on stage as the opening act for the Fall. The performance made a big impression on the eighteen-year-old: "He's talking 100 miles an hour, and he's really funny ... It just blew my mind." He was inspired by Clarke's use of a regional accent and the early Arctic Monkeys song "From the Ritz to the Rubble" was his homage to Clarke's style ("my best shot at it, at least"). Later in his career, Turner requested to interview Clarke for Mojo Magazine, published two Clarke poems as part of a single's artwork and used another ("I Wanna Be Yours") as the lyrical basis for a song. In 2018, Arctic Monkeys invited Clarke to perform his reading of "I Wanna Be Yours" at one of their Sheffield arena shows.

Nick Lowe, Jake Thackray, Nick Cave, John Cale, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan are among the lyricists Turner admires. He has spoken of his respect for country music songwriters like Roger Miller, Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt, and Hank Williams. He has been drawn to artists who reinvented themselves throughout their careers: "The Beatles, David Bowie… the big ones." When forming The Last Shadow Puppets in 2007, Turner was inspired by the music of Bowie, Scott Walker, Serge Gainsbourg, David Axelrod and Ennio Morricone. Songs that Turner has discussed repeatedly in interviews are Michael Chapman's "You Say", Leon Russell's "A Song for You" and Dion's "Only You Know", describing the latter as "one of my favourite tunes of all time". He has described himself as a Beyoncé fan.

Turner's work is also influenced by movies. Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino was inspired by films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), World on a Wire (1973), Le Cercle Rouge (1970), Spirits of the Dead (1968), Inherent Vice (2014) and The Last Waltz (1978). In the song "Hello You", there are references to post-war British movie Tread Softly Stranger (1958) and Stanley Kubrick's unmade script for Napoleon. He has also said he's interested in film production and editing and has read about those topics, citing In the Blink of an Eye (2005) by Walter Murch as a book "that feels connected to the process and also the feel or lyrics on [The Car]." Turner has also cited Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe series and works by authors David Foster Wallace and George Saunders as inspirations for The Car.Songwriting
Kate Mossman of the New Statesman described Turner as "one of the great lyricists of the 21st century", writing that his songs are "full of lovingly extended metaphors" and "mordant Morrissey-style observations". Mike Laws of the Village Voice characterised him as "a writer without peer in virtually all of rock" and identified "rapid-fire prosody and facility with internal rhyme" as Turner's trademarks. Simon Armitage, writing in The Guardian,  said: "Of all those writing lyrics today, Turner is among the most poetic. His use of internal rhyme exists to be admired and envied ...  Turner is a storyteller and scene-setter." "Like all the estimable British lyricists, be it Noël Coward or Morrissey, Turner has always been willing to risk a delicious irony or witty turn of phrase, even in a sad song." Kitty Empire of The Observer considers him "probably the finest lyricist of his generation." Turner's frequent collaborator Owen Pallett said of him: "There are many contemporary rock songwriters who I admire, but none more than Alex, [...] there seems to be no limit to his lyrical inventiveness… It would be impossible to overpraise him."

Turner's early songs chronicled teenage nightlife in England, and, according to Armitage, were "of the kitchen-sink, social-realism variety." Sasha Frere-Jones of the New Yorker described him as "a prodigy at both character sketches and song form." Turner drew comparisons to Alan Bennett and Victoria Wood. As Turner has aged, Laws of the Village Voice noted: "His lyrics have shied away from making themselves amenable to easy reading. [They have become] more oblique and abstruse — more apt, too, to adopt the perspective of somebody else entirely, and so more editorially unreliable." Turner himself acknowledges that, after writing "so directly" on his early songs, he went through a period of "wanting to reject that and, you know… just be the walrus for a bit." He first "attempted to write lyrics that weren't so observational" with his side-project The Last Shadow Puppets, later remarking that he had sometimes veered too far "into abstraction". He considers the lyrics on 2018's Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino to be the most direct since his earliest songs: "I think that was something I was trying to get away from, and perhaps I've returned to it now."

Turner has said his songs are preoccupied with romance, loneliness, and longing. Jazz Monroe of Drowned in Sound remarked: "Turner seems part of an elite club of songwriters whose best love songs are the requited ones." Similarly, in reviewing 2013's AM, Mossman found the depiction of romantic partners "two-dimensional. In "Fluorescent Adolescent", or the memorably titled "Mardy Bum", he somehow managed to tell a girl's side of the story even in the act of mocking her." Neil McCormick of The Telegraph noted "a particularly North of England, working-class quality of sarcastic misanthropy" in Turner's lyrics while Frere-Jones of the New Yorker said Turner "manages to summon the intractable bleakness of someone three times his age". Later songs have alluded to "questions of consumerism, hyper-reality, [and] accelerating technology". Monroe of The Independent highlights "anti-industry sloganeering", "lyrical abstraction", "postmodern scepticism", and a "rejection of the entire rock construct" as the "through-line in Turner's work".

Turner himself says that his songwriting is "absolutely not" poetry: "Poetry and the written word are harder, you've no melodies to hide behind." After initial reluctance, he began publishing his lyrics with Arctic Monkeys' fourth album. In an in-depth conversation about songcraft with New Yorks Lane Brown, he said: "I don't really get the 'I wrote the whole song on the back of a cigarette packet in 20 minutes' sort of thing ... I would keep adding or changing words forever if somebody didn't stop me." Turner has said writing melodies is the more difficult part of the songwriting process for him. Alexis Petridis of The Guardian believes "Turner's melodic skill sometimes gets overlooked" because he "arrived in the public consciousness words-first."

He has also said that "there absolutely are images in [his] head when [he] writes", making The Car, their "most cinematic sounding record". There's a "grandiose, cinematic quality" that "carries on throughout the album" "while making things more grander, colorful and cinematic." Talking about Mr Schwartz, he said he imagined the character present while "a production is going on".

Voice
In the early years of his career, Turner performed in a strong Sheffield dialect. Simon Armitage remarked: "I can't think of another singer whose regional identity has been so unapologetically and naturally intoned through his singing voice." By 2018's Tranquility Base Hotel, Alexis Petridis of The Guardian noted: "The Yorkshire dialect that was once his USP is now deployed sparingly, as a jolting effect." On his accent change, former Arctic Monkeys bassist Andy Nicholson, said: "I don't think he thinks he's Elvis, I don't think he's an actor, I think he sometimes probably can live up to the character people are expecting him to be. I mean, he has lived in America, he lived in New York for a long time, and he lived in LA for a long time […] he soaks accents up a lot, 'cause when he started hanging around with Miles quite a lot, he started to get a bit of a Scouse twinge to his accent." One critic claimed that the tone of Turner's voice has also transformed over time, from a "fidgety whine" to "a worn-in baritone croon". About his vocals, Turner told Rolling Stone Germany, "I find the sound and presentation of the voice to be at least as meaningful as the lyrics."

Stage persona

In an otherwise positive review of a 2006 show, Richard Cromelin of the Los Angeles Times noted that Turner seemed "a little spooked by the attention" and hoped he would learn "to reach out more to the audience" in time. In 2007, Kitty Empire of The Observer noted that he was a "reserved" presence on stage: "He chats a bit to about 15 people in the middle of the front rows, and only looks up at the balcony, once, a little apprehensively." Following Arctic Monkeys' headlining appearance at Glastonbury Festival in 2007, Rosie Swash of The Guardian remarked upon Turner's "steady, wry stage presence": "Arctic Monkeys don't do ad-libbing, they don't do crowd interaction, and they don't do encores." Simon Price of The Independent said Turner seemed "to freeze like a rabbit in the spotlights" during a headlining set at Reading Festival in 2009.

In late 2011, Turner began to change his stage persona and style, most notably changing his hairstyle to a "rockabilly-inspired quiff". Brian Hiatt of Rolling Stone noted of his "newfound showmanship" that he "puts his guitar down to strut and dance, drops to his knees for solos when he does play, [and] flirts shamelessly with the female fans". In reviewing a 2013 concert, Dorian Lynskey of The Guardian said, "Turner, a shy sort for a frontman, used to seem unnerved by attention and he's coped by adopting a tongue-in-cheek persona that suggests a comic-strip version of a 50s rock star, a Blackpool Buddy Holly: all quiff and quips. It's a curious pose, entertaining but alienating in the same way as some of his more arch lyrics. [...] Turner always holds something back, which makes the band more interesting but somewhat distant." Ben Beaumont-Thomas of The Guardian noted in 2018 that Turner ironically "played with the role" of being a rockstar but simultaneously "can't help but be a real rock star". While reviewing a 2023 concert, Sian Cain of The Guardian said, "There are few frontmen touring today who lean into the theatrics of rockstardom as effortlessly as Alex Turner", and felt there were similarities to the performance styles of Bob Dylan and David Byrne, adding, "He's fond of a campy turn and stare".

Turner has described public speaking as almost being his "worst nightmare" and does not consider himself a "born performer", stating that he "enjoy[s] the studio side of it more than touring". Although an admitted "control freak" by nature, he describes being a frontman as an "awkward" and "strange" experience that he does not "take too seriously". He said, "I can't go out there and absolutely be myself. The situation is so fundamentally unnatural. [...] It's not a full-on, 'right, get into character' thing ... [sometimes] part of how you actually feel comes out. But I think I always feel weird about that afterwards." Turner felt that being on stage and his songwriting are "a series of intermittent interpretations and impersonations of various artists I admire [...] colliding aggressively and rapidly enough with one another that the origins of the inspiration are largely obscured and from it comes something original." In a 2022 interview with The Guardian, referencing his 2014 BRIT Awards speech, Turner acknowledged for the first time the use of personas, separating himself from what he described as, the "performer" – a fractured reflection of himself– of each album. Turner has named one of his former "performers" Mr Snarl, due to the disdainful way in which he sang, Turner said "Sometimes Mr. Snarl shows up", further adding, "It feels completely insane to embody this guy singing to a carpeted room. There I stand, staring at the carpet and wondering how do you sing a damn song like 'Teddy Picker'? But I'm counting on it all making sense again once other people are in the room."

Personal life
Despite significant media attention, Turner rarely discusses his personal life. From 2005 to January 2007, he dated British musician Johanna Bennett and she was credited as a co-writer on "Fluorescent Adolescent". He started dating British TV presenter and model Alexa Chung in July 2007. In the spring of 2009, they moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York together, but later relocated to London. They ended their relationship in July 2011 and briefly reunited in the summer of 2014. From late 2011 to early 2014, he dated American actress and model Arielle Vandenberg. In March 2015, he started dating American model Taylor Bagley. Their relationship came to an end in July 2018. He began dating French singer Louise Verneuil in mid–2018.

He is an avid reader and has cited authors Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, Vladimir Nabokov, David Foster Wallace, and George Saunders as some of his favourites. He is a fan of the science fiction genre, and this has inspired his writing on numerous occasions, notably on Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino. He is also a cinephile, and has shown interest in photography, a hobby he shares with bandmate, Matt Helders. He is a fan of the works of Stanley Kubrick, Federico Fellini, Jean-Pierre Melville, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder among others. Turner is a supporter of Sheffield Wednesday F.C. and practices Muay Thai in his free time.

Politics
Turner was reticent to voice his political opinions, and let them show in his music: "I'm aware of what's going on to a degree, but… I just don't think I'm equipped to soundtrack the times. There might be someone out there who can do that, but I haven't cracked it." After the release of Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino Turner said: "I'd never wanted anything political to get into the music and that was because I didn't know how to do it. It's not as though these are protest songs necessarily, but I'm more confident about putting myself across." Adding, "I seem to remember feeling like I hadn't given sufficient consideration to these issues to be able to discuss them, which I'm not sure is necessarily a bad attitude towards it. They often are complex."

Speaking on the 2011 England riots, he criticised the lack of analysis the media had regarding the causes that originated the violence. In an interview with the Sunday Times, Turner revealed he voted remain in the Brexit referendum, and so did his close circle. At the time Turner was living in Los Angeles and felt disappointed with the result: "I woke up with a bitter, strange taste in my mouth. Especially when we had to put on the glitter jacket, go on stage and ensure the show. Strangely, it makes me want to come back and live in England: we can not leave the country to those who want to isolate it. Many of my American friends said they would go live in Canada if Trump was elected. Yet it is now that the United States needs them most. Otherwise, we let the ditches widen." In 2014, it became known that Turner and the rest of Arctic Monkeys were involved in Liberty's tax avoidance scheme. Each member paid between £38,000 and £84,000 in fees to shelter between £557,000 and £1.1 million between 2005 and 2009. In the same Times interview, Turner said, "We were given some poor advice and I made a poor decision, but I always paid my taxes in full, on time," he further added that they saw the possibility of paying less tax, but pulled out of the scheme when they realised it was not the right thing to do.

DiscographySolo Submarine (2011)Arctic Monkeys Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (2006)
 Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007)
 Humbug (2009)
 Suck It and See (2011)
 AM (2013)
 Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino (2018)
 The Car (2022)The Last Shadow Puppets The Age of the Understatement (2008)
 Everything You've Come to Expect (2016)Other collaborations' 2007 – Reverend and The Makers – The State of Things (writer and vocalist on "The Machine", co-writer of "He Said He Loved Me" and "Armchair Detective")
 2007 – Dizzee Rascal – Maths + English ("Temptation")
 2008 – Matt Helders – Late Night Tales: Matt Helders ("A Choice of Three")
 2011 – Miles Kane – Colour of the Trap (co-writer of "Rearrange", "Counting Down the Days", "Happenstance", "Telepathy", "Better Left Invisible" and "Colour of the Trap")
 2012 – Miles Kane – First of My Kind EP (co-writer of "First of My Kind")
 2013 – Miles Kane – Don't Forget Who You Are (co-writer and bassist on B-side "Get Right")
 2013 – Queens of the Stone Age – ...Like Clockwork (guest vocalist on "If I Had a Tail")
 2015 – Mini Mansions – The Great Pretenders (co-writer and guest vocalist on "Vertigo", co-writer on "Valet")
 2015 – Alexandra Savior – True Detective season 2 original soundtrack (co-composed song "Risk" on guitar, keyboard, drums)
 2017 – Alexandra Savior – Belladonna of Sadness'' (co-writer, co-producer, bass, guitar, keyboards, and synthesizers)

References

External links

 Arcticmonkeys.com
 Hitster.fm

1986 births
21st-century English singers
Alternative rock guitarists
Alternative rock singers
Arctic Monkeys members
British indie rock musicians
Domino Recording Company artists
English baritones
English expatriates in the United States
English rock guitarists
English rock singers
English male singer-songwriters
English male guitarists
Ivor Novello Award winners
NME Awards winners
Lead guitarists
Living people
Musicians from Sheffield
The Last Shadow Puppets members

Alex Turner


Fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) is a poisonous and psychoactive mushroom, one of many in the genus Amanita. Native throughout the temperate and boreal regions of the Northern Hemisphere, this mushroom has been unintentionally introduced to many countries in the southern hemisphere, generally as a symbiont with pine plantations, and is now a true cosmopolitan species.

The quintessential toadstool, it is a large white-gilled, white-spotted, usually deep red mushroom, one of the most recognizable and widely encountered in popular culture. Although it is generally considered poisonous, deaths from its consumption are extremely rare, and it is eaten as a food in parts of Europe, Asia, and North America after parboiling. Amanita muscaria is noted for its hallucinogenic properties, with its main psychoactive constituent being the compound muscimol. It was used as an intoxicant and entheogen by the peoples of Siberia and has a religious significance in these cultures. There has been much speculation on traditional use of this mushroom as an intoxicant in places other than Siberia; however, such traditions are far less well documented. It has for instance been suggested that the fly agaric was an ingredient of Soma and that it played a role in the Eleusinian Mysteries as well as early Christianity.

Related pages
Panther cap

Other websites

 Webpages on Amanita species by Tulloss and Yang Zhuliang
 Amanita on erowid.org
 Aminita muscaria, Amanita pantherina and others (Group PIM G026) by IPCS INCHEM

Mushrooms
Medicinal fungi
Vulnerable species

Fly agaric


J. Arthur Seebach Jr (May 17, 1938 – December 3, 1996) was an American mathematician.

Seebach studied Greek language as an undergraduate, making it a second major with mathematics.

Seebach studied with A. I. Weinzweig at Northwestern University. He earned a Ph.D. with the thesis Cones and Homotopy in Categories. Seebach began to teach at Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota in 1965. He, his wife Linda A. Seebach, and Lynn A. Steen wrote an expository article "What is a Sheaf". The paper showed that a sheaf is useful in analysis, algebra, and geometry when considering germs of holomorphic functions, local rings, and differential forms. J. Arthur also wrote "Injectives and Homotopy".

In 1971 Seebach and Steen took over the Book Reviews section of American Mathematical Monthly, including Telegraphic Reviews which ran for several pages every month. The massive effort was eventually distributed over some 50 mathematicians at Saint Olaf, Carleton, and Macalester Colleges. Telegraphic Reviews, in telegraphic style, was started by Kenneth O. May in 1965 and provided an American posting of new publications before the digital age.

Seebach and Steen conducted research in a 1967 summer school with students investigating the independence of conditions on topological spaces. They summarized their work in Counterexamples in Topology (1978).

In 1975 Seebach and Steen became co-editors  of Mathematics Magazine. Steen wrote:
Arthur's sense of whimsy, his love of puns, and his proclivity for obscure connections totally transformed the image of Mathematics Magazine. Cover art, viewed as radical at the time, has since been emulated...
Seebach welcomed the rise of computers when he assembled a Heathkit H8.
In 1986 he became editor of Mathematical Notes in American Mathematical Monthly.

Beyond mathematics, Seebach sang with the Bach Society of Minnesota. The craftsmanship of the Studebaker automobile appealed to Seebach and he operated a side-business in Studebaker parts, driving some, and publishing a newsletter for fellow aficionados of the car. His newsletter experience was of value to Mathematical Association of America when they began their own newsletter.

Seebach died in 1996 from complications of diabetes.

References

 Lynn Arthur Steen (1997) "In Memoriam: J. Arthur Seebach Jr.", Mathematics Magazine 70: 78–79.

External links

1938 births
1996 deaths
20th-century American mathematicians
20th-century American educators
St. Olaf College faculty
Northwestern University alumni

J. Arthur Seebach Jr.


Woodstock is a village in the central west of New South Wales, Australia,  north east of Cowra. It contains remains of a brief goldrush during the late 19th century which left behind a number of substantial buildings before the village relapsed into relative isolation. It includes a restored railway station, hotel and a memorial hall. At the , Woodstock had a population of 812.

History

The railway station was opened in 1888  on the Blayney - Demondrille line which connected the Main Western Line at Blayney and the Main Southern Line at Demondrille railway station. At one time there were several sidings near the station with grain silos, stock yards, loading bank, goods shed, hay stage, and loco platform. In the 1980s services were suspended between Cowra and Blayney. The section was re-opened by the Lachlan Valley Railway which runs heritage trains from Cowra to Blayney. The  railway station is now an art gallery and private residence.

Gold was discovered in 1868 at Woods Flat, a few kilometres south of Woodstock. A rush of 500 diggers took up the ground there, but after a short period only a few were left as surface gold was minimal and water supplies lacking. The goldfield had a long history but today almost nothing remains of the buildings at Woods Flat. The village of Woodstock was established in response to the building of the railway line north of Woods Flat, from Blayney to Cowra in 1880s. Initially known also as Woods Flat, the name of the village was changed to Woodstock in 1886.

By 1900 there were many commercial businesses in the villages including butchers, bakers, hotels, saddleries, smithies, bootmakers, mercers, tailors, motor vehicle garages and billiard rooms. A post office was operating by 1897. The current Royal Hotel was rebuilt in 1911, an earlier timber building having been destroyed by fire. The Commercial Banking Company of Sydney opened a branch at Woodstock in 1907, followed by the Commonwealth Savings Bank in 1913 and the Bank of New South Wales in 1929. The Soldiers Memorial Hall was opened in 1925 by Sir Neville Reginald Howse, who was at that time the Member for Calare.

The bushranger John Vane, a member of Ben Hall's gang, who died in 1906 was buried in an unmarked grave at Woodstock cemetery. A headstone was erected by local historians in 1989.

Country markets are held at Woodstock Soldiers Memorial Hall on the second Sunday of each month except January. The  Memorial Hall hosts a touring opera company, OperaWorks, each year. Other events at Woodstock include a long track motorbike championships and the annual show.

Heritage listings
Woodstock has a number of heritage-listed sites, including:
 Blayney-Harden railway: Woodstock railway station

Notes

References
Kelton, J. (1987). Woods Flat Gold .

Gallery

External links
 Visit Woodstock NSW

Towns in New South Wales
Towns in the Central West (New South Wales)
Mining towns in New South Wales

Woodstock, New South Wales


William Desmond Anthony Pertwee,  (21 July 1926 – 27 May 2013) was a British comedy actor. He played the role of  Chief ARP Warden Hodges in the sitcom Dad's Army.

Early life
Pertwee was born in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, on 21 July 1926. Born the youngest of three boys of a Brazilian mother and an English father, James Francis Carter Pertwee, who travelled the country as a salesman until he became ill and died in 1938, when Bill Pertwee was 12. The family moved home many times during Pertwee's childhood and he lived in Hereford, Glasbury, Colnbrook, Newbury, Erith, Belvedere, Blackheath, Storrington, Westcliff-on-Sea, Wilmington and Worthing.

His education was disrupted by the moves and he attended many schools including an independent convent school, a small independent school, followed by Frensham Heights School in Surrey, Dartford Technical College and Southend College.

Pertwee left school during the Second World War and worked for a company that made parts for Spitfire cannon. He was declared unfit for RAF service as he was on medication following a swimming accident, but was a member of the Air Training Corps (UK Air Cadets). He later worked as an accounts clerk at the Stock Exchange and as a salesman for the clothing retailer Burberry in London.

Entertainment career
Pertwee appeared in the radio comedy series Beyond Our Ken (1959–1964) and Round the Horne (1965–1967). He was also a warm-up act for many television shows.

His most prominent role was that of ARP Warden Hodges in Dad's Army, which he played in both the original television series from 1968 to 1977, and the radio adaptations, as well as the radio sequel It Sticks Out Half a Mile, set after the war. Pertwee was president of the Dad's Army Appreciation Society and the author of the book Dad's Army – The Making of a Television Legend.

In July 2008 he and other surviving members of the Dad's Army cast gathered together at the Imperial War Museum on the 40th anniversary of the show's first broadcast in 1968. He also made appearances on This Morning. In 1975 he took part in the Dad's Army stage show and with Norman Macleod released the Dad's Army single "Get Out And Get Under The Moon", with Pertwee's B-side song "Hooligans" on EMI.

Pertwee appeared in two Carry On films – Carry On Loving (1970) and Carry On Girls (1973). His appearance in Carry On at Your Convenience (1971) was cut from the final film. His other film appearances include  The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971), Psychomania (1973), as postmen in the film versions of Love Thy Neighbour and Man About the House, Confessions of a Pop Performer (1975), What's Up Nurse! (1977) and What's Up Superdoc! (1978).

On television Pertwee appeared in the final episode of It Ain't Half Hot Mum (1981) and an episode of Hi-de-Hi! (1986). He played PC Wilson in You Rang, M'Lord? (1988–1993), another creation of Jimmy Perry and David Croft.

The subject of This Is Your Life in 1999, Pertwee was surprised by Michael Aspel at the Imperial War Museum. In 2006, he performed in the World Cup song, "Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Jurgen Klinsmann?"

In 2011 a portrait of Pertwee, painted by a local artist, was unveiled in the Dad's Army Museum, Thetford where it now resides. Pertwee was patron of the museum and of the DAAS (Dad's Army Appreciation Society) until his death.

Personal life

Pertwee married Marion Macleod, sister of John and Norman Macleod of the Maple Leaf Four, in 1955. They had a son, Jonathan James Pertwee (born in 1966), who has appeared in various TV programmes.

Following the death of his wife, he lived in Topsham, Devon. He was awarded an MBE in the Queen's 2007 Birthday Honours list for his services to charity. He was vice-president of the "Railway Ramblers" and a member of the executive committee of the Entertainment Artistes' Benevolent Fund ('The Royal Variety Charity') and was initiated in 1976 as a member of the Grand Order of Water Rats.

Pertwee died aged 86 on 27 May 2013. He had been ill since the previous year and died peacefully at his home in Cornwall. Three days previously he had attended a parade in Thetford (home of the Dad's Army Museum) where spectators and museum volunteers remarked how frail he was looking. His death, and those of Pamela Cundell in 2015 and Frank Williams in 2022, leaves Ian Lavender, who played Private Pike, as the only surviving Dad's Army cast member.

Pertwee's brother James Raymond "Jiggy" Pertwee was an RAF Whitley Bomber pilot who was killed in a crash on a hillside close to a disused quarry above Bank Foot, near Ingleby Greenhow in North Yorkshire, following a leaflet drop over Dortmund, Germany, in June 1941.

He was related to Michael Pertwee and Jon Pertwee, being a second cousin of Michael's and Jon's father, the screenwriter and actor Roland Pertwee. He was godfather to one of the sons of his Dad's Army co-star Ian Lavender.

Film/TV/radio

Film

Television

Radio

References

External links

1926 births
2013 deaths
Actors from Amersham
British male comedy actors
English male comedians
English male radio actors
English male television actors
English people of Brazilian descent
English writers
Male actors from Buckinghamshire
Male actors from Cornwall
Members of the Order of the British Empire
People educated at Frensham Heights School
People from Truro
Bill
Royal Air Force personnel of World War II

Bill Pertwee


A Short Vision is a British adult animated short film by Joan and Peter Foldes released in 1956. The film, inspired by one of Peter's poems, depicts the destruction of the world, including mankind. The film's music was composed by Matyas Seiber, who composed music for Animal Farm two years earlier.

A Short Vision gained notoriety when it was shown on The Ed Sullivan Show on 27 May 1956. This, however, made it controversial. Due to popular demand, it was shown again on 10 June.

Origins
A Short Vision was inspired by a poem composed by Peter Foldes while on a boat from Australia in October 1954. Peter was creative artist for the film, while his wife Joan was responsible for the animation stand, the lighting and some of the animation. The film was produced in the Foldes' kitchen. and was funded by the British Film Institute's Experimental Film Fund. The scheme also funded an earlier Foldes' animation entitled Animated Genesis about a society which is under threat from a tyrant.

Synopsis

The film opens with a shot from a bedroom window. It pans to the sky as the narrator (James McKechnie) recalls the time he looked out his window. He saw an object flying through the sky. Throughout the film the object is only referred to as It. Although It (bearing an uncanny resemblance to the B-2 stealth bomber or black triangle UFO, though likely inspired by the YB-35 or YB-49) was very far away and seemed to move slowly, it came swiftly and was unnoticed. When It flew over the mountain, the leopard and the deer looked up. When they saw It, the deer ran free from the leopard's claws and they both hide in fear. When It flew over the fields, the owl and the rat looked up, and the rat ran free of the owl's claws and they both hide in fear.

When It flew over the city, everyone was asleep except for their leaders and their wise men, who all looked up at It, but it was too late. It produces a mushroom cloud engulfing the city, killing and destroying the wise men, the leaders, the owl, the leopard, the rat and the deer. It also destroys the sleeping people. It then engulfs the mountain and the fields; destroying them. When it was all over, there was nothing left except a tiny flame. Then the narrator sees It flying around the flame like a moth, and then It too is destroyed. And then, the flame died.

The Ed Sullivan Show
Ed Sullivan saw A Short Vision in England, and promised an American showing. He said his motive was a "plea for peace". However, he may have shown it because of his relationship with George K. Arthur, A Short Visions distributor. Ten days after he saw it, Sullivan showed A Short Vision on his popular Sunday night show The Ed Sullivan Show on 27 May 1956. Sullivan told the audience to tell their children in the room to not be alarmed, because of its animated nature. The film was very popular, and when it was shown again on 10 June, Sullivan told parents to take children out of the room.

Sullivan was incorrect when he said before the first showing that the film depicts the effects of a hydrogen bomb on an "animal population". The film avoids all modern references, and all animal and human life is destroyed. Sullivan may not have watched the entire film before broadcasting it on his show.

See also

References

External links

1956 films
1956 animated films
1950s animated short films
1956 horror films
1950s war films
British animated short films
Films about nuclear war and weapons
British animated horror films
Films directed by Peter Foldes
Films about death
1950s British films
British adult animated films
Adult animated films

A Short Vision


Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) is an international organization working in partnership with the United Nations, leaders in government, the private sector, financial institutions and civil society with as goal to drive further, faster action toward the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 7, which calls for universal access to sustainable energy by 2030, and the Paris Agreement, which calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to limit climate warming to below 2 °C.

Launched by former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2011, SEforALL is now an independent organization based in Vienna, Austria with a satellite office in Washington, DC. Damilola Ogunbiyi took office in January 2020 as CEO and as Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All as well as Co-Chair of UN-Energy. She is the former Managing Director of Nigeria's Rural Electrification Agency.

See also

 Global warming
 Renewable energy
 Sustainable Development Goals

References

External links
Sustainable Energy for All official website
Understanding SDG 7
Cooling for All
SEforALL Energizing Finance reports

Energy policy
Sustainable energy

Sustainable Energy for All


Símun av Skarði (3 May 1872 – 9 October 1942) was a Faroese poet, politician, and teacher.

Biography
Símun was born in the village of Skarð on Kunoy. In 1893, he entered  the seminary in Tórshavn, which he graduated from as a teacher in 1896. He attended Askov Højskole from 1896 to 1898, and then the State Teachers College in Copenhagen from 1898 to 1899. In 1899, he co-founded the Faroese folk high school  (Føroya Fólkaháskúli) together with Rasmus Rasmussen (1871–1962). He worked there as headmaster and teacher from 1899 to 1942. Símun's sister, Anna Suffía Rasmussen (1876–1932), who had married Rasmus Rasmussen, served as the superintendent. Rasmus Rasmussen worked there as a teacher until 1947.

He was the husband of the educator Sanna av Skarði (1876–1978), who also taught at Føroya Fólkaháskúli. They were the parents of
the journalist Sigrið av Skarði Joensen (1908–1975) and linguist Jóhannes av Skarði (1911–1999). Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen is his great-grandson-in-law.

His best-known work as a poet is the Faroese National Anthem, Mítt alfagra land, better known by its incipit Tú alfagra land mítt. He was a member of parliament for the Self-Government Party (Sjálvstýrisflokkurin) from 1906 to 1914.

References

Other sources
 Løgtingið og høvundarnir 2: Løgtingið 150 (1st ed.) p. 350. Tórshavn Løgtingið 2002.

External links
Føroya Fólkaháskúli  website

1872 births
1942 deaths
20th-century Faroese poets
Faroese-language poets
Self-Government (Faroe Islands) politicians
Members of the Løgting
National anthem writers
Faroese male poets
19th-century Faroese people
20th-century Faroese people
20th-century Danish male writers

Símun av Skarði


George Ritzer (born October 14, 1940) is an American sociologist, professor, and author who has mainly studied globalization, metatheory, patterns of consumption, and modern/postmodern social theory. His concept of McDonaldization draws upon Max Weber's idea of rationalization through the lens of the fast food industry. He coined the term in a 1983 article for The Journal of American Culture, developing the concept in The McDonaldization of Society (1993), which is among the best selling monographs in the history of American sociology.

Ritzer has written many general sociology books, including Introduction to Sociology (2012) and Essentials to Sociology (2014), and modern/postmodern social theory textbooks. Many of his works have been translated into over 20 languages, with over a dozen translations of The McDonaldization of Society alone.

Ritzer is currently a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Biography

Personal life

Ritzer was born in 1940 to a Jewish family in upper Manhattan, New York City. Ritzer's father was a taxicab driver and his mother was a secretary; he also has one brother. Ritzer described his upbringing as "upper lower class".  When his father contracted what Ritzer referred to as "a strange illness," speculated to be from his job as a taxi driver, Ritzer's mother had to do so much as to break open the family's piggy bank, where they stored half dollars, to provide for the family. Living a marginal economic existence, he never felt deprived relative to others while growing up in a "working-class, multi-ethnic neighborhood".

His father never received his high school diploma and therefore, had no strong desire for Ritzer to achieve educationally. Ritzer described his father as being "a very bright man who simply grew up in a different time". His parents in general did not push him to pursue higher education or knew much about it. Instead, it was more "' go to college because that's what people are doing,' instead of that classic middle class Jewish family push to go to the elite universities'".

In an interview, Ritzer noted a formative experience that occurred while he attended the Bronx High School of Science, he felt that he was "a pretty average kind of student" as he was among incredibly intelligent individuals. Due to his surroundings, it took him a while to realize that he "was a little bit above average." In addition, despite the high school being largely orientated toward the sciences and his classmates sharing these interests, Ritzer had no interest in math or science.

While in high school, Ritzer had a friend who he would read the same classic novel such as Crime and Punishment with, and then walk around the city walking miles discussing the book alone. He gave this example in an interview where he was explaining the nature of his high school and the students who went there. Ritzer also noted that "it was just sort of known that if you were bright or saw yourself as bright then you wanted to go to the Bronx High School of Science" to further exemplify the environment he was in during high school.

Growing up, Ritzer was an avid sports player. He often played basketball, in large part due to his height, and other sports like baseball. He also read a lot even as he notes that he wasn't "very academically inclined".

Ritzer and his wife, Sue (married 1963), have two children and five grandchildren. Despite being a workaholic, he has always made time for his family. Ritzer also loves to travel, oftentimes using the work trips as a time for a mini vacation with his wife.

Ritzer resides in Maryland with Sue, where he owns three homes. He noted in an interview regarding consumption how the success of his books has "allowed him to acquire things, mostly houses" and gives him the ability to live life the way he wants to. Since he likes to be outdoors, he wants homes that will allow him to do so. For example, due to the restriction of winter months in Maryland which inhibits his ability to walk outside, he purchased a place in Florida where he can continue his hobby of walking "three or four miles a day" when he's not writing inside.

Education and early employment
Ritzer graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1958, stating to have "encountered the brightest people I have ever met in my life". While at Bronx High School of Science, Ritzer received a New York State Regents Scholarship which would follow him to whichever college he chose to attend.

Ritzer began his higher education at City College of New York, a free college at the time. His scholarship in addition to the free college tuition proved to be a benefit to the economic positioning of the Ritzer family. While at CCNY, Ritzer initially planned to focus on business, but he later changed his major to accounting. Ritzer stated in an interview that he was a student at CCNY when he first stepped inside a McDonalds, which greatly juxtaposed the distinct culture of restaurants and stores in New York. This event unknowingly catalyzed Ritzer's study and major theory of McDonaldization.

After graduating from CCNY in 1962, Ritzer decided that he was interested in pursuing business again. He was accepted into the M.B.A. program at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, where he received a partial scholarship. While at Michigan, his official academic interest was human relations; however, he had many other intellectual hobbies, such as reading Russian novels. Ritzer reported that at Michigan, he was able to grow and improve as a student. However, during his time at Michigan, he remembers being heavily involved in global events occurring at the time. He reports memories of going to the Michigan Union to watch the happenings of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

After graduating from The University of Michigan in 1964, Ritzer began working in personnel management for the Ford Motor Company, however, this proved to be a negative experience for him. His managers mistakenly hired three people, more than was necessary, for the one job, leaving him idle and unoccupied. As he once said: "[i]f we had two hours of work a day, it was a lot." Nevertheless, he was always expected to appear busy. He would constantly wander around the factory for hours observing people working, causing many of the workers and foremen to become hostile towards him. Moreover, Ritzer also found problems within the management structure at Ford. Most of the younger people with advanced degrees defied their less-educated authorities. Ritzer said, "I'd like to see a society in which people are free to be creative, rather than having their creativity constrained or eliminated." This feeling of dehumanization is very relevant in his future sociological work of McDonaldization. Furthermore, he found himself constrained and unable to do anything creative while working at Ford, encouraging him to apply to Ph.D. programs.

Ritzer enrolled in Cornell University's School of Labor and Industrial Relations Ph.D. program in Organizational Behavior in 1965, ironically returning to another business program despite his distaste for his time at Ford. There, his adviser Harrison Trice suggested that he minor in sociology. After a conversation with the head of the department, Gordon Streib, Ritzer realized that he knew nothing about sociology and was then urged to read "Broom and Selznick's Introduction to Sociology" and found himself enthralled with the subject matter. He continued to succeed in sociology courses at the graduate level. As a testament to his interest and dedication to the subject, he received an A+ on a 102-page paper he wrote for a course on American society. His professor stated that the paper was "too long not to be good". This experience as well as out-reading the other sociology students in a small seminar with Margaret Cussler allowed Ritzer to become more confident as a sociology student due to his ability to outwork the competition. He attributed his talent of being able to compete with well-read and experienced sociology students to his work ethic.

Ritzer never earned a degree in sociology but studied psychology and business. He began his sociological work writing theory connecting his minimal sociological education alongside the experiences that struck him when first experiencing the McDonalds chain stores.  As he said in a later interview, "I basically trained myself as a social theorist, and so I had to learn it all as I went."  Despite this challenge, Ritzer found that not being trained in social theory was advantageous for him, because his reasoning was not limited to a particular theoretical perspective.

Academic awards

 Honorary Doctorate from La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
 Honorary Patron, University Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin
 American Sociological Association's Distinguished Contribution to Teaching Award
 2012-2013 Robin William Lectureship from the Eastern Sociological Society

McDonaldization
George Ritzer wrote The McDonaldization of Society.

Ritzer's idea of McDonaldization is an extension of Max Weber's (1864–1920) classical theory of the rationalization of modern society and culture. Weber famously used the terminology "iron cage" to describe the stultifying, Kafkaesque effects of bureaucratized life, and Ritzer applied this idea to an influential social system in the twenty-first century: McDonald's. Ritzer argues that McDonald's restaurants have become the better example of current forms of instrumental rationality and its ultimately irrational and harmful consequences on people.
Ritzer shared similar views with Weber about rationalization. While Weber claims that "the most sublime values have retreated from public life", Ritzer claims that even our food is subject to rationalization, whether it is "the McDonaldized experience or the steak dinner that is subjected to the fact that it contains 2,000 calories and 100 grams of fat.""Ritzer identifies four rationalizing dimensions of McDonald's that contribute to the process of McDonaldization, claiming that McDonald's aims to increase:
 Efficiency: McDonald's delivers products quickly and easily without inputting an excessive amount of money. The "McDonald's model," and therefore the McDonald's operations, follow a predesigned process that leads to a specified end, using productive means. The efficiency of the McDonald's model has infiltrated other modern-day services such as completing tax forms online, easy weight loss programs, The Walt Disney Company FASTPASSes, and online dating services, eHarmony and match.com.
Calculability: America has grown to connect the quantity of a product with the quality of a product and that "bigger is better". The "McDonald's model" is influential in this conception due to providing a lot of food for not that much money. While the end products feed into the connection between the quantity and quality of the product, so does the McDonald's production process. Throughout the food production, everything is standardized and highly calculated: the size of the beef patty, the number of french fries per order, and the time spent in a franchise. The high calculability of the McDonald's franchise also extends over into academics. It is thought that the academic experience, in high school and higher education, can be quantified into one number, the GPA. Also, calculability leads to the idea that the longer the resume or list of degrees, the better the candidate, during an application process. In addition to academics being affected by the McDonaldization in society, sports, most specifically basketball, have also been affected. It used to be that basketball was a more laid-back, slow-paced sort of game, yet through the creation of fast-food and McDonald's, a shot clock was added to increase not only the speed of the game but also the number of points scored.
Predictability: Related to calculability, customers know what to expect from a given producer of goods or services. For example, customers know that every Big Mac from McDonald's is going to be the same as the next one; there is an anticipated predictability to the menu as well as the overall experience. To maintain the predictability for each franchise, there has to be "discipline, order, systematization, formalization, routine, consistency, and a methodical operation". The predictability of the McDonald's franchise also appears through the golden arches in front of every franchise as well as the scripts that the employees use on the customers. The Walt Disney Company also has regulations in place, like dress codes for men and women, in order to add to the predictability of each amusement park or Disney operation. Predictability has also extended into movie sequels and TV shows. With each movie sequel, like Spy Kids 4, or TV show, Law & Order and its spinoffs, the plot is predictable and usually follow a preconceived model.
Control: McDonald's restaurants pioneered the idea of highly specialized tasks for all employees to ensure that all human workers are operating at exactly the same level. This is a way to keep a complicated system running smoothly; rules and regulations that make efficiency, calculability, and predictability possible. Oftentimes, the use of non-human technology, such as computers, is used. The McDonald's food is already "pre-prepared", the potatoes are already cut and processed, just needing to be fried and heated, and the food preparation process is monitored and tracked. The computers tell the managers how many hamburgers are needed at the lunchtime rush and other peak times and the size and shape of the pickles as well as how many go on a hamburger is managed and controlled. The control aspect of McDonaldization has extended to other businesses, Sylvan Learning and phone operating systems, and even birth and death. Every step of the learning process at Sylvan, the U-shaped tables and instruction manuals, is controlled as well as each step of the birthing process, in modern-day hospitals, and the process of dying.

McDonaldization is profitable, desirable, and at the cutting edge of technological advances. Many "McDonald's" aspects of society are beneficial to the advancement and enhancement of human life. Some claim that rationalization leads to "more egalitarian" societies. For example, supermarkets and large grocery stores offer variety and availability unlike smaller farmer's markets from generations past. The McDonaldization of society also allows operations to be more productive, improve the quality of some products, and produce services and products at lower cost. The Internet has provided countless new services to people that were previously impossible, such as checking bank statements without having to go to a bank or being able to purchase things online without leaving the house. These things are all positive effects of the rationalization and McDonaldization of society.

However, McDonaldization also alienates people and creates a disenchantment of the world. The increased standardization of society dehumanizes people and institutions. The "assembly line" feel of fast-food restaurants is transcending many other facets of life and removing humanity from previously human experiences. Through implementing machines and computers in society, humans can start to "behave like machines" and therefore "become replaced by machines".

The McDonaldization of Society has been translated into over a dozen languages and is arguably one of the best selling monographs in the history of American sociology.

Consumption

Karl Marx was one of the first to establish a field of sociological theory surrounding consumption and its flaws. Consumption refers to the participation in purchasing and absorbing the products of capitalist society, as well as their effect.The topic of consumption in sociology has skyrocketed since Marx's time, primarily in Europe from the mid-late 1900s. Since, consumption has become a basis of study within the science. An early admirer of Jean Baudrillard's Consumer Society (1970), Ritzer is a leading proponent of the study of consumption.  In addition to his beliefs expressed in The McDonaldization of Society, the most important sources for Ritzer's sociology of consumption are his edited Explorations in the Sociology of Consumption: Fast Food Restaurants, Credit Cards and Casinos (2001), Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption (2nd edition 2005, 3rd edition 2009), and Expressing America: A Critique of the Global Credit-Card Society (1995). Ritzer is also a founding editor, with Don Slater, of Sage's Journal of Consumer Culture.

Prosumption
First coined by Alvin Toffler in 1980, the term prosumption is used by Ritzer and Jurgenson, to break down the false dichotomy between production and consumption and describe the dual identity of economic activities. Ritzer argues that prosumption is the primordial form of economic activities, and the current ideal separation between production and consumption is aberrant and distorted due to the effect of both Industrial Revolution and post-WWII American consumption boom. It has only recently become popularly acknowledged that the existence of prosumption as activities on the internet and Web 2.0 resemble prosumption much more so than production or consumption individually. Various online activities require the input of consumers such as Wikipedia entries, Facebook profiles, Twitter, Blog, Myspace, Amazon preferences, eBay auctions, Second Life, etc.
Ritzer argues that we should view all economic activities on a continuum of prosumption with prosumption as production (p-a-p) and prosumption as consumption (p-a-c) on each pole.

Something vs. Nothing
According to Ritzer, "Something" is a locally conceived and controlled social form that is comparatively rich in distinctive substantive content. It also describes things as being fairly unusual. "Nothing" is "a social form that is generally centrally conceived, controlled and comparatively devoid of distinctive substantive content"  "Nothing" usually aims at the standardized and homogenous, while "something" refers to things that are personal or have local flavor. Examples of "nothing" are McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, credit cards, and the Internet. Examples of "something" are local sandwich shops, local hardware stores, family arts and crafts places, or a local breakfast cafe.
Ritzer believes that things that embody the "nothing" component of this dichotomy are taking over and pushing "something" out of society. He explains the advantages and disadvantages of both "something" and "nothing" in The McDonaldization of Society.

Globalization
In Ritzer's research, globalization refers to the rapidly increasing worldwide integration and interdependence of societies and cultures. This book presents a sophisticated argument about the nature of globalization in terms of the consumption of goods and services. He defines it as involving a worldwide diffusion of practices, relations, and forms of social organization and the growth of global consciousness. The concept of "something" vs. "nothing" plays a large part in understanding Ritzer's Globalization. Society is becoming bombarded with "nothing" and Ritzer seems to believe that the globalization of "nothing" is almost unstoppable   Ritzer's aforementioned The Globalization of Nothing (2004/2007) stakes out a provocative perspective in the ongoing and voluminous globalization discourse. For Ritzer, globalization typically leads to consumption of vast quantities of serial social forms that have been centrally conceived and controlled – one McDonald's hamburger, i.e., one instance of nothing again and again- dominates social life (Ritzer, George. 2004. The Globalization of Nothing. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press).
To better understand globalization, it can be broken down into a few characteristics:
 The beginning of global communication through different media like television and the Internet
 The formation of a "global consciousness"

In addition to The Globalization of Nothing, Ritzer has edited The Blackwell Companion to Globalization (2007), written Globalization: A Basic Text (2009), and edited an Encyclopedia of Globalization (forthcoming). Insight into Ritzer's distinctive approach to globalization is available via a special review symposium in the Sage journal Thesis Eleven (Number 76, February 2004).

Grobalization
In his book The Globalization of Nothing (2004), Ritzer quotes that globalization consists of glocalization and grobalization.
Grobalization, a term coined by Ritzer himself, refers to "imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations, organizations, and the like and their desire, indeed need, to impose themselves on various geographic areas".
As opposite to glocalization, grobalization aims to "overwhelm local". Its ultimate goal is to see profit grow through unilateral homogenization, thus earning its name grobalization. Capitalism, Americanization, and McDonaldization are all parts of grobalization.

Grobalization involves three motor forces: capitalism, McDonaldization, and Americanization. Grobalization creates a world where:
Things are more homogenous and ubiquitous.
Larger forces overwhelm the power of people to adapt and innovate in ways that preserve their autonomy.
Social processes are coercive, determining the nature of local communities, which have little room to maneuver.
Consumer goods and the media are key forces that largely dictate the nature of the self and the groups a person joins.

Ritzer provides American textbook as an example of grobalization. In his book, The Globalization of Nothing, he quotes that textbooks are "oriented to rationalizing, McDonaldizing, the communication of information." Students, rather than evaluating the competing ideas, instead absorb the information given to them. Yet, these textbooks are surprisingly sold out worldwide, only to be slightly revised to reflect local standards.

Glocalization
Glocalization is a combination of the words "globalization" and "localization" used to describe a product or service that is developed and distributed globally, but is also fashioned to accommodate the user or consumer in a local market, causing the products, or results of glocalization, to vary depending on different locations. The term emphasizes global heterogeneity and rejects the notion that the norms and behaviors in West are leading to cultural homogeneity. The local individuals are able to manipulate their own situation in the world and become creative agents in what products and services are represented in their local environment within the glocalized world. Ritzer further explains Glocalization as a relatively benign process that is closest to the "something" end of things. It creates variety and heterogeneity within society. Ritzer has written about this term in his own works, demonstrating its connection to globalization and  "something vs. nothing".

Metatheory
Metatheory can be defined as the attainment of a deeper understanding of theory, the creation of new theory, and the creation of an overarching theoretical perspective. There are three types of metatheorizing: Mu, Mp, and Mo. Through the application of the three subsets of metatheory, Ritzer argues that the field of sociology can create a stronger foundation, experience "rapid and dramatic growth", and generally increase not only the knowledge of metatheory but social theory in general.

The first category of metatheory (Mu), aims at being a means of attaining a deeper understanding of theory. Within the greater category of Mu, Ritzer establishes four other subsets: internal-intellectual, internal-social, external-intellectual, and external-social. The internal-intellectual sector of Mu identifies the "schools of thought" and the structure of current sociologists and social theories. The internal-social subtype identifies connections between sociologists and connections between sociologists and society. The last two subsets of Mu are looking more at the macrolevel of sociology than the other two subsets. The third subtype of Mu is the external-intellectual view of sociology; it looks at different studies and their concepts, tools, and ideas in order to apply these aspects to sociology. The fourth, and final, subset is external-social where the impact of social theory in a larger societal setting is studied.

The second (Mp), aims at being a prelude to theory development. New social theory is created due to the complex study and interpretation of other sociologists. For example, Karl Marx's theories are based on Hegel's theories. The theories of the American sociologist, Talcott Parsons, are based on the theories of Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Vilfredo Pareto, and Alfred Marshall.

The last (Mo), aims at being a source of perspectives that overarch sociological theory. Influenced by Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Ritzer has long advocated the view that social theory is improved by systematic, comparative and reflexive attention to implicit conceptual structures and oft-hidden assumptions.

Key works include Sociology: A Multiple Paradigm Science (1975), Toward an Integrated Sociological Paradigm (1981), Metatheorizing in Sociology (1991), and Explorations in Social Theory: From Metatheorizing to Rationalization (2001). See also Ritzer's edited Metatheorizing (1992).

Modern and postmodern social theory
Ritzer is known to generations of students as the author of numerous comprehensive introductions and compendia in social theory. Postmodern society is a consumer society that invents new means of consumption, such as credit cards, shopping malls, and shopping networks. Today, "Capitalism needs us to keep on spending at ever-increasing levels to be and remain capitalism."  As with several of Ritzer's other principal works, many are translated into languages as diverse as Chinese, Russian, Persian, Hebrew and Portuguese. Key volumes in this genre include The Sociological Theory (7th edition 2008), Classical Sociological Theory (5th edition 2008), and Modern Sociological Theory (7th edition 2008), Encyclopedia of Social Theory (2 vols. 2005), and Postmodern Social Theory (1997). For convenient access to many of Ritzer's substantive contributions to modern and postmodern social theorizing, see Explorations in Social Theory: From Metatheorizing to Rationalization (2001) as well as more recent work often co-authored with his many students, such as (with J. Michael Ryan) "Postmodern Social Theory and Sociology: On Symbolic Exchange with a 'Dead' Theory," in Reconstructing Postmodernism: Critical Debates (2007).

Works

Ritzer has published many monographs and textbooks. He has edited three encyclopedias, including the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. He has written approximately one hundred scholarly articles in respected journals.

Sociology: A Multiple Paradigm Science (1975, 1980)

Based on his original article appearing in the American Sociologist, this book provides a foundation for Ritzer's other works on metatheory.  The piece applies Thomas Kuhn's idea of scientific paradigms to sociology and demonstrating that sociology is a science consisting of multiple paradigms. Ritzer also discusses what implications this has for the field of sociology.

Toward an Integrated Sociological Paradigm (1981)

In this book, Ritzer contends that sociology needs an integrated paradigm in order to add to the extant paradigms noted in Sociology:  A Multiple Paradigm Science. Ritzer proposes an integrated paradigm dealing with the interrelationships between the many levels of social reality.

Metatheorizing in Sociology (1991)
This paper describes and makes the case for sociological metatheorizing, or the systematic study of sociological theory. Three types of metatheorizing are delineated on the basis of their end products: the attainment of a deeper understanding of theory, the creation of new theory, and the creation of an overarching theoretical perspective (a metatheory). The basic problems in metatheorizing are reviewed and it is concluded that the most basic difficulty has been the lack of a clear definition of the subfield. Some thoughts on the future of metatheorizing in sociology are offered.

The McDonaldization of Society (1993)

In this provocative book, George Ritzer explores how Weber's classic thoughts on rationalization take on new vitality and meaning when applied to the process of McDonaldization. He describes this as the process by which the principles of the fast food restaurants are coming to dominate more and more sectors of society in the United States as well as the rest of the world. George Ritzer is most well known for The McDonaldization of Society, which has five different editions and has sold over 175,000 copies as of 2007.

Ritzer shows how Weber's central characteristics of rationalized systems - efficiency, predictability, calculability, substitution of non-human for human technology and control over uncertainty - have found widespread expression in a broad range of organized human activity, including travel, consumer products and services, education, leisure, politics and religion as well as in the fast food industry.

The Blackwell Companion to Major Contemporary Social Theorists (2003)

Guide to thirteen leading social theorists: Robert K. Merton, Erving Goffman, Richard M. Emerson, James Coleman, Harold Garfinkel, Daniel Bell, Norbert Elias, Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean Baudrillard, Judith Butler.
During the Introduction of this book, Ritzer writes, "Although any list of theorists covered in a collection such as this one can be read as an official cannon, this book is intended to be used as 'cannon fodder' in an open, contestable process of theory construction and reconstruction."

The Globalization of Nothing, Second Edition (2007)
The Globalization of Nothing, Second Edition emphasizes the processes of globalization and how they relate to McDonaldization. As before, this book is structured around four sets of concepts addressing the issues of: "places/non-places," "things/non-things," "people/non-people," and "services/non-services." By drawing upon salient examples from everyday life, Ritzer invites the reader to examine the nuances of these concepts in conjunction with the paradoxes within the process of the globalization of nothing. Critical questions are raised throughout, and the reader is compelled not only to seek answers to these questions, but also to critically evaluate the questions as well as their answers. The current edition features a greater emphasis on the main topic of globalization: a new first chapter offers an introductory overview of globalization and globalization theory, outlining the unique ways in which these topics are addressed throughout the text. It also delves into two subprocesses of globalization — "glocalization" and "grobalization."

Enchanting a Disenchanted World, Third Edition (2009)

Enchanting a Disenchanted World, Third Edition examines Disney, malls, cruise lines, Las Vegas, the World Wide Web, McDonald's, Planet Hollywood, credit cards, and all the other ways we now consume. The current edition was updated to reflect the recent economic recession and the impact of the internet. Ritzer continues to explore this book's central thesis: that our society has undergone fundamental change because of the way and the level at which we consume.  The third edition demonstrates how we have created new "cathedrals" of consumption (places that enchant us so as to entice us to stay longer and consume more) while continuing to take capitalism to a new level. These places of consumption, whether in our homes, the mall, or cyberspace, are in a constant state of "enchanting the disenchanted," luring us through new spectacles because their rational qualities are both necessary and deadening at the same time.  The book also includes a wide range of theoretical perspectives — Marxian, Weberian, critical theory, postmodern theory — as well as a number of concepts such as hyperconsumption, implosion, simulation, and time and space to show the audience how sociological theory can be applied to everyday phenomena.

Globalization: A Basic Text (2010)
The first full-scale textbook of its kind, Globalization: A Basic Text provides a balanced introduction to the major topics in globalization studies. Written in a highly accessible style, and drawing on sources both academic and popular, the book adopts a definition of globalization that emphasizes transplanetary flows and the structures that both expedite and impede those flows. Driven by a range of theories from imperialism and Americanization (and anti-Americanism), to neo-liberalism and the neo-Marxian alternatives, as well the major types of cultural theory, the book examines the key events in the history of globalization, and the principle flows and structures produced in the course of that history. Among the major topics covered are the economy, culture, technology, media and the Internet, migration, the environment, global inequalities, and the future of globalization. Making extensive use of maps and with a glossary of key terms, this book offers the reader not only a descriptive, but also acritical, analysis of globalization.

Introduction to Sociology (2012)
Introductory textbook co-written with Wendy Wiedenhoft Murphy, this piece serves to illustrate relevance of sociology to daily life for beginning sociology students. The text highlights primary sociological concepts as well as basic theory, with an emphasis on Ritzer's largest areas of study: McDonaldization, consumerism, and sociology of the digital age. The textbook is on its fifth edition as of August 2019, which features new contemporary examples featured within "Digital Living" boxes, which emphasize the ever-changing and present digital modernizations to the world and their impact.

The McDonaldization of Society: 20th Anniversary Edition (2012)
Ritzer's McDonaldization of Society, now celebrating its 20th anniversary, continues to stand as one of the pillars of modern-day sociological thought. By linking theory to 21st-century culture, this book resonates with audiences in a way that few other books do, opening their eyes to many current issues, especially in consumption and globalization. As in previous editions, the book has been updated and it offers new discussions of, among others, In-N-Out Burger and Pret a Manger as possible antitheses of McDonaldization. The biggest change, however, is that the book has been streamlined to offer an even clearer articulation of the McDonaldization thesis.  The final chapter also looks at "The DeMcDonaldization of Society", and concludes that while it is occurring on the surface, McDonaldization is alive and well.

Sociological Theory, Ninth Edition (2013)

George Ritzer and Jeffery Stepnisky are co-authors this book. The book is split into four parts.
Part One goes into specific details about the early years of sociological theory, focusing on Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel.
Part Two shifts into modern sociological theories, such as Structural Functionalism, Systems Theory, Conflict Theory, varieties of Neo-Marxism Theory, Symbolic Interactionism, Ethnomethodology, Exchange, Network, and Rational Choice Theories, Contemporary Feminist Theory.
Part Three covers Integrative Sociological Theory, specifically Micro-Macro and Agency-Structure Integration.
Part Four is focused on contemporary Theories of Modernity, Globalization Theory, Structuralism, Poststructuralism, and Postmodern Social Theory, and Social Theory in the Twenty-First Century.

Essentials of Sociology (2014)
Adaptation of Introduction to Sociology (2012), with the intention of being shorter and more streamlined. Includes same primary content (see Intro to Sociology 2012). On fourth edition as of December 2019.

Globalization: A Basic Text Second Edition (2015)
Updated to reflect recent global developments, the second edition of Globalization: A Basic Text presents an up-to-date introduction to major trends and topics relating to globalization studies.

Globalization: A Basic Text Third Edition (2022)
In the comprehensively revised Third Edition of Globalization: A Basic Text, distinguished researchers and authors George Ritzer and Paul Dean deliver an up-to-date introduction to major trends and topics related to the study of globalization. The book includes accessible and rigorous material on the key theories and major topics in globalization, as well as modern developments like the rise of populism and far-right political groups, Brexit, migration and backlash to it, trade negotiations, social media and the spread of misinformation, climate change, social justice issues, and COVID-19.

Leadership roles
 2009-2010 – First Chair of the ASA Section-in-Formation on Global and Transnational Sociology
 2000 - American Sociological Association Distinguished Scholarly Publication
Award Committee
 1989–1990 Chair of Section on Theoretical Sociology, ASA
Present positions: Editor, Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology; editor, Journal of Consumer Culture; associate editor, Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change; editorial board, Sociology Analysis; consulting editor: St. Martin Press/Worth, Series on Contemporary Social Issues; Sage of England, Series on Cultural Icons; McGraw-Hill.

Bibliography
 Toward an Integrated Sociological Paradigm (1981)
 Metatheorizing in Sociology (1991)
 Metatheorizing (1992)
 Expressing America: A Critique of the Global Credit Card Society (1995)
 Explorations in Social Theory: From Metatheorizing to Rationalization (2001)
  Encyclopedia of Sociology (2007)
 The Blackwell Companion to Globalization (2007)
  Globalization: A Basic Text (2009)
  Encyclopedia of Globalization (2012)

See also
 The McDonaldization of Society
 Retailtainment
 Globalization

References

External links

 George Ritzer at the University of Maryland
 Interviews
 McDonaldization of Society Myspace Page
 Publisher's Website for McDonaldization of Society
 Junk Journalism and the McDonaldization of Society
 George Ritzer
 Amazon
 Ailun

1940 births
Living people
American sociologists
University of Maryland, College Park faculty
University of Maryland College of Behavioral and Social Sciences people
Ross School of Business alumni
Jewish social scientists
Anti-consumerists
Writers about globalization
The Bronx High School of Science alumni

George Ritzer