Liquid Life

by Bauman, Zygmunt

• ISBN13: 9780745635156
• ISBN10: 0745635156
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-06-24
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

'Liquid life' is the kind of life commonly lived in our contemporary, liquid-modern society. Liquid life cannot stay on course, as liquid-modern society cannot keep its shape for long. Liquid life is a precarious life, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty. The most acute and stubborn worries that haunt this liquid life are the fears of being caught napping, of failing to catch up with fast moving events, of overlooking the 'use by' dates and being saddled with worthless possessions, of missing the moment calling for a change of tack and being left behind. Liquid life is also shot through by a contradiction: it ought to be a (possibly unending) series of new beginnings, yet precisely for that reason it is full of worries about swift and painless endings, without which new beginnings would be unthinkable. Among the arts of liquid-modern living and the skills needed to practice them, getting rid of things takes precedence over their acquisition. This and other challenges of life in a liquid-modern society are traced and unravelled in the successive chapters of this new book by one of the most brilliant and original social thinkers of our time.

Author Biography

Zygmunt Bauman is the Emeritus Professor at the University of Leeds

Table of Contents

Introduction: On Living in a Liquid-Modern World

The Individual Under Siege

From Martyr to Hero, and from Hero to Celebrity

Culture: Obstreperous and Unmanageable

Seeking Shelter in a Pandora Box or Fear, Security and the City

Consumers in Liquid-Modern Times

Consuming Life

Consuming Body

Consuming Childhood

Learning to Walk in Quicksand

Thinking in Dark Times (Arendt and Adorno Revisited)

Notes

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.