Liquid Life E-Book

Zygmunt Bauman

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 312

Beschreibung

'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.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

Introduction: On Living in a Liquid Modern World

1 The Individual under Siege

2 From Martyr to Hero, and from Hero to Celebrity

3 Culture: Obstreperous and Unmanageable

4 Seeking Shelter in Pandora’s Box, or Fear, Security and the City

5 Consumers in Liquid Modern Society

Consuming life

Consuming body

Consuming childhood

6 Learning to Walk on Quicksand

7 Thinking in Dark Times (Arendt and Adorno Revisited)

Index

Copyright © Zygmunt Bauman 2005

The right of Zygmunt Bauman to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2005 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 0 7456 3514 8

ISBN: 0 7456 3515 6 (pb)

ISBN: 978 0 7456 5790 5 (Single-user ebook)

ISBN: 978 0 7456 5789 9 (Multi-user ebook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and has been applied for from the Library of Congress.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.polity.co.uk

Introduction: On Living in a Liquid Modern World

In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, On Prudence

‘Liquid life’ and ‘liquid modernity’ are intimately connected. ‘Liquid life’ is a kind of life that tends to be lived in a liquid modern society. ‘Liquid modern’ is a society in which the conditions under which its members act change faster than it takes the ways of acting to consolidate into habits and routines. Liquidity of life and that of society feed and reinvigorate each other. Liquid life, just like liquid modern society, cannot keep its shape or stay on course for long.

In a liquid modern society, individual achievements cannot be solidified into lasting possessions because, in no time, assets turn into liabilities and abilities into disabilities. Conditions of action and strategies designed to respond to them age quickly and become obsolete before the actors have a chance to learn them properly. Learning from experience in order to rely on strategies and tactical moves deployed successfully in the past is for that reason ill advised: past tests cannot take account of the rapid and mostly unpredicted (perhaps unpredictable) changes in circumstances. Extrapolating from past events to predict future trends becomes ever more risky and all too often misleading. Trustworthy calculations are increasingly difficult to make, while foolproof prognoses are all but unimaginable: most if not all variables in the equations are unknown, whereas no estimates of their future trends can be treated as fully and truly reliable.

In short: liquid life is a precarious life, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty. The most acute and stubborn worries that haunt such a life are the fears of being caught napping, of failing to catch up with fast-moving events, of being left behind, of overlooking ‘use by’ dates, of being saddled with possessions that are no longer desirable, of missing the moment that calls for a change of tack before crossing the point of no return. Liquid life is a succession of new beginnings – yet precisely for that reason it is the swift and painless endings, without which new beginnings would be unthinkable, that tend to be its most challenging moments and most upsetting headaches. Among the arts of liquid modern living and the skills needed to practise them, getting rid of things takes precedence over their acquisition.

As the Observer cartoonist Andy Riley puts it, the annoyance is ‘reading articles about the wonders of downshifting when you haven’t even managed to upshift yet’.1 One needs to hurry with the ‘upshifting’ if one wants to taste the delights of ‘downshifting’. Getting the site ready for ‘downshifting’ bestows meaning on the ‘upshifting’ bit, and becomes its main purpose; it is by the relief brought by a smooth and painless ‘downshifting’ that the quality of ‘upshifting’ will be ultimately judged …