Golden Arches East

Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia is a 1997 collection of anthropological essays edited by American academic James L. Watson. Examining the cultural impact of McDonald’s in five East Asian locations (Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul, and Japan), the book raises broader questions about American cultural imperialism, the rise of capitalist consumer culture and the impact of fast food on traditional food cultures. Watson contributes an introduction and the essay on Hong Kong, while the other essays are authored by Yunxiang Yan (Beijing), David Y.H. Wu (Taipei), Sangmee Bak (Seoul) and Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney (Japan).

Watson’s introduction sets out some of the major questions which the collection aims to answer, including: “Does the spread of fast food undermine the integrity of indigenous cuisines?” and “Are food chains helping to create a homogeneous, global culture better suited to the needs of a capitalist world order?” Watson is at pains to stress the authors’ political neutrality: “We do not celebrate McDonald’s as a paragon of capitalist virtue, nor do we condemn the corporation as an evil empire. Our goal is to produce ethnographic accounts of McDonald’s social, political, and economic impact on local cultures.”

Watson proceeds to outline the major conclusions that emerge from the essays in the volume, as well as some striking differences. He concludes that the success of McDonald’s in Asia can largely be ascribed to two factors. The first is localization: the fact that local owner-operators control Asian McDonald’s restaurants. The second is the rapid revolution in family values that have created transformative change across East Asia, based on the rise of a well-off consumer class that lives in nuclear family groups rather than in traditional extended family groups. Watson notes that changes to the McDonald’s menu in local regions have comparatively little impact, with the burger/fries/drink combination remaining essentially uniform everywhere, and the most attractive offering to Asian consumers.



Watson sets out his and his fellow authors’ shared approach to the issue of globalization: their aim is to create “an entirely new approach” by focusing on the views and experiences of consumers. He notes that the most important finding of the five authors is that eating at McDonald’s is a different experience with a different meaning in each of the five locations the book considers. This extends even to one aspect of the McDonald’s experience, which superficially appears the same across the board: in all five locations, McDonald’s was originally viewed not (only) as a restaurant, but as an “American” experience. However, the authors show that the meaning of “American” varies from place to place (and would rarely be recognizable to an American consumer).

Ultimately, Watson and his fellow authors argue that the widespread claim that the spread of McDonald’s restaurants constitutes cultural imperialism, and undermines cultural differences and localization, is substantially false. Rather, they suggest, East Asian consumers have embraced American-style fast food without becoming “Americanized” in any meaningful way.

In her essay on McDonald’s in Beijing, Yunxiang Yan focuses on the “localization of Americana.” She goes on to note that for young Beijing consumers, eating at McDonald’s is seen as a way of participating in the wider world. David Y.H. Wu observes that in Taipei, McDonald’s restaurants are used very differently than U.S. restaurants, as relaxed gathering places where students and old people congregate. Local restaurant staff does not encourage customers to leave, as they might in the U.S. In Korea, Sangmee Bak finds a much more fraught relationship with McDonald’s as an emblem of America. Many Korean consumers regard eating at McDonald’s as an act of cultural treachery, a capitulation to U.S. imperialism. McDonald’s marketing in Korea focuses on the message that eating at the restaurant is not an ideological choice but a personal one. In Japan, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney discovers that McDonald’s has been completely normalized (the country has more than 1000 restaurants). However, McDonald’s restaurants are patronized almost exclusively by young people. She tells the story of some Japanese students visiting the U.S., who were surprised and pleased to find that America has McDonald’s restaurants too.



In an Afterword, Sidney Mintz points to a central theme emerging from the essays. Except in Japan, McDonald’s is marketed heavily to children (to the extent that in several of the locations discussed, McDonald’s is regarded as “children’s food” by older adults). Mintz suggests that the key new phenomenon emerging in East Asia is the decision-making power of children within families. He also suggests that women (who form more than 50 percent of the clientele at several locations) may find McDonald’s a safe and gender-equal environment, compared to traditional restaurants.

Golden Arches East is widely regarded as an important contribution to the anthropological literature on fast food and the impact of cultural imperialism in East Asia, which “must be read by anyone interested in globalization” (The China Journal). The book was re-issued in 2006 with a new introduction by Watson, considering how its insights have aged in the years since its first publication.