Liquid Life

Defining 'liquid modern life' as living under conditions in which change occurs faster than ways of thinking/acting can become established, Bauman (emeritus, sociology, U. of Leeds; U. of Warsaw) treats facets of contemporary society's attempts to cope with resulting insecurities. These include celebrities, the defensive capsules known as sport utility vehicles, Americans' obsession with weight, and suicide bombers. Distributed by Blackwell Publishing. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
'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.