Norm Yetman, a sociology professor at Kansas University, was pleasantly surprised Tuesday when more than 300 students showed for a lecture that, in years past, might have drawn a handful of colleagues.

“I glad so many of you could come,” Yetman said, looking across the standing-room-only audience at Alderson Auditorium at the Kansas Union.

The students came to hear George Ritzer, a University of Maryland professor and one of the nation’s top sociologists, present the oddly titled “The Globalization of Nothing: Implications of 9-11.”

Among sociologists, Ritzer is well-known for coining the phrase “McDonaldsation,” a term referring to the consequences of American society’s embracing big over small, impersonal over personal, generic over unique.

Though quick to say there “is no direct connection” between the proliferation of fast food restaurants and the events of Sept. 11, Ritzer asked the students to realize that in many parts of the world, bigger, faster and cheaper wasn’t always seen as better.

Ritzer, who taught in the early 1970s at KU, noted the disparity between Lawrence’s fast food restaurants and its Farmers Market.

The fast-food restaurant, he said, is a “nonplace” where people who have no connection to the food they sell interact with people who have little interest in what they’re buying. But at the Farmers Market, the sellers grow the products they sell, and the buyers care about what those products.

On one end of a societal spectrum, a Farmers Market, Ritzer said, represents “something,” while, at the other end, the fast-food restaurant is “nothing.”

“We  the United States  are actively exporting nothingness,” said Ritzer, addressing a packed Alderson Auditorium at Kansas University. “And because of that, there are some who see us as a threat to their indigenousness.”

Also worthy of the nothingness label, Ritzer said, are mega-stores, shopping malls, Mickey Mouse, ATMs and Visa-Master Card  all of which originated in the United States, none of which offers much permanence or worth.

“These are essentially empty structures that can be picked up and moved anywhere in the world,” he said.

Generally, Ritzer said, Americans don’t see much wrong with the spread of fast-food franchises, credit cards and Disney characters. But, he warned, “Others don’t want to see their cultures Americanized,” and react with protests or boycotts.”

Some, he said, attack the World Trade Center.

Though Ritzer’s lecture lasted almost 50 minutes, not a single student left.

“I’m glad I got to hear him,” said Sirkka Howes, an American studies graduate student from Baltimore. “He sort of put into word why there’s a grass-roots movement going on now to support businesses locally rather than nationally.”