Liquid Times: Living in an Age of UncertaintyThe passage from ‘solid’ to ‘liquid’ modernity has created a new and unprecedented setting for individual life pursuits, confronting individuals with a series of challenges never before encountered. Social forms and institutions no longer have enough time to solidify and cannot serve as frames of reference for human actions and long-term life plans, so individuals have to find other ways to organise their lives. They have to splice together an unending series of short-term projects and episodes that don’t add up to the kind of sequence to which concepts like ‘career’ and ‘progress’ could meaningfully be applied. Such fragmented lives require individuals to be flexible and adaptable – to be constantly ready and willing to change tactics at short notice, to abandon commitments and loyalties without regret and to pursue opportunities according to their current availability. In liquid modernity the individual must act, plan actions and calculate the likely gains and losses of acting (or failing to act) under conditions of endemic uncertainty. Zygmunt Bauman’s brilliant writings on liquid modernity have altered the way we think about the contemporary world. In this short book he explores the sources of the endemic uncertainty which shapes our lives today and, in so doing, he provides the reader with a brief and accessible introduction to his highly original account, developed at greater length in his previous books, of life in our liquid modern times. |
Contents
Humanity on the Move | |
State Democracy and the Management of Fears | |
Utopia in the Age of Uncertainty | |
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Common terms and phrases
actions Adam Curtis affliction Agier already anxieties Arundhati Roy asylum seekers become benefits Blunkett borders capital Castel city residents community ghetto condition confidence confined confronted contemporary countries danger David Blunkett defined definition democracy deregulation difficult dream economic elite escape exclusion existential fear fence fight final find finding first flows forces freedom Garry Younge Guardian Hedgehog Review human waste hunters hunting hyperghetto increasingly individual infinite influence insecurity inside interdictory spaces Iraq Jacques Attali labour land lifeworlds liquid modern living longer manage Maurice Druon means Michael Peter Smith migrants mixophilia mixophobia Naomi Klein negative globalization officially once one’s personal rights personal safety planet planetary political rights population premodern problems prospect protection recycling redundant reflection refugee camps ricin Robert Castel Rosa Luxemburg social rights society solidarity stay strangers task tend terrorism terrorist threats uncertainty urban utopia war on terror