takes advantage of changes in society and it “seduces into accepting the deeply unsettling condition of postmodernity” (Smith, 1999: 50). Consumers “can buy short term comfort in the market place” (ibid). Through advertisements people are trained to think that the solution for dissatisfaction is the fulfillment of their wishful fantasies. People’s needs, which can be related to discipline and rationality, are replaced by the consumer society with “unnecessary things such as satisfying superfluous needs, artificially created in order to keep consumer demand high” (ibid: 86), which can be related to irrationality, hidden wishes or Freud’s pleasure principle. In other words, the consumers’ identity is defined by the acquisition of a variety of goods and services. Shopping in a consumer society is experienced as “a way of defining yourself, of saying who you are” (ibid: 56). When people choose an object instead of another they create their identity and “keep the capitalist system going” (ibid: 107). Consumption took the place of work, as “need” was replaced by “wish”. If “modernity allocated to work the main responsibility for giving people their identity, their social bond and their social function”, in a “postmodern habitat you are what you buy” (ibid: 157). The “contradiction”/secret of the consumer society is that the consumers’ irrationalities become tools of rational domination and control. To explain this process Bauman speaks about the fact that the “consumer society has achieved a previously unimaginable feat: it reconciled the reality and pleasure principles by putting, so to speak, the thief in charge of the treasure” (Bauman, 2001: 16). To explain this strategy it is worth mentioning George Ritzer’s “McDonaldization” process which refers to “an increase in efficiency, predictability and control” (Ritzer, 1998: 3) in the functioning systems of society. The model is taken from the American chain of McDonald’s fast food restaurants and their organizing principles. This process is connected with rationalization, which is the replacement of values, traditions, emotions with thoughts and actions which appear to be more rational. The rationalization process can be related to Max Weber’s concept of “iron cage” which refers to the amount of constraints that a materialistic society imposes on individuals and they accept all these constraints in order to receive the false happiness of possession and consumption. Because for the consumers “freedom is about the choice between greater and lesser satisfactions and rationality is about choosing the first rather than the second” (Smith, 1999: 107), they become the prisoners of consumption and they are manipulated to accept their “roles as happy consumers” (ibid: 30) through advertisements which greet you from “the moment you can blink at a television screen” (ibid: 157).

In his book The McDonaldization Thesis. Explorations and Ex