Totalizing criticisms as empirical generalizations
The Golden Arches
Italian arches reinterpreted even as they are trying to be repeated (Zamosc, Poland)
Totalizing criticisms might be made as empirical generalizations.
But such empirical claims are challengable either concerning their total coverage or concerning the absoluteness of their claim to cover every aspect of the places being criticized. Nor are the criticisms supported by sufficiently wide empirical consideration of the variety of places today.
Also, such claims often confuse the universality of systematic or economic effects with the local reinterpretation of meaning and norms. If we distinguish the two we find that systematic or economic effects (on resource distribution, for example) may indeed be present everywhere, but their impact on the meaning and norms for local places is determined through local reception. So it is illegitimate to conclude that the global forces are automatically forcing one meaning or one kind of place on everyone. McDonald's is not used in the same way or with the same meanings everywhere.
Even the 'global products' ... penetrate different national markets in different ways. Their globality, and the consequent ability of companies to produce them on a mass scale, comes from their finding numerous different niche markets in all corners of the earth. Massey 1994, 160
(See Watson 1997 for an analysis of local receptions of McDonald's in Asia.)