Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty |  | Author: Zygmunt Bauman
Publisher: Polity
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Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 76238
Media: Paperback
Pages: 128
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.2 x 5.3 x 0.4
ISBN: 0745639879
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.4
EAN: 9780745639871
ASIN: 0745639879
Publication Date: March 29, 2010 (In 9 Days)
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| • | ISBN13: 9780745639871 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
The 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.
Book Description
The 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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Fearful Times June 8, 2009
Juan del Valle (USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is a quick exploration of the main causes/symptoms that make our present lives uncertain and full of fears. Fragmentation, instability, lack of structure, absence of universal projects, and individual responsibility as the only venue for our social and global problems are the main characteristics of our new reality. As a consequence, we live in fear. Politics and advertising exploit this weakness, fueling a vicious cycle from which we try--seldom successfully--to escape: the more we fear, the more we are subject to feel unstable and the more we suspect anything and anyone who might present a risk to our individual situation. We fear because we know we are not in control anymore. Consequently, we reject and protect ourselves from strangers, migrants, or the unemployed, who represent not only the disturbing presences of the uncanny, but also a symbolic abyss that opens in front of us. We react by limiting their access to our social and urban space, by withdrawing into individual isolation, and by consuming readily disposable products and symbols. Zygmunt Bauman does not believe that this is a long-term solution. The author does not elaborate on clear alternatives to this situation except when at the beginning of the book (p. 26) he mentions, almost in passing, the need to seek a planetary solution to our democracies.
The book is divided in 5 sections ("Introduction: Bravely into the Hotbed of Uncertainties," "Liquid Modern Life and its Fears," "Humanity on the Move," "State, Democracy and the Management of Fears," "Out of Touch Together," and "Utopia in the Age of Uncertainty"). I find the last section the least interesting because of its vagueness. Although the writing is engaging, not all the quotes are fully documented; for instance, many times the author's name will be included but not the work and the page numbers.
 Do you want to be afraid? Read Zygmunt Bauman! February 21, 2008
PA Richman (Philadelphia, PA)
7 out of 17 found this review helpful
I had difficulty really sinking my teeth into Zygmunt Bauman's Liquid Times. I was impressed by Bauman's abilities to probe so adroitly into the depths of his position; he followed his assertions to the their logical outcomes and did not stray from his position. With that being said, I did not appreciate his argument because it ignored, somewhat negligently, every single positive aspect of globalization that stands in opposition to what he would have us believe is the current state of the world.
If fear does indeed multiply in a self-feeding cycle, with protection measures like gated condominium complexes, alarm systems and SUVs only serving to instigate more fear and propagate further protection, then where does fin de siècle doomsday philosophy fit into the mix? Probably somewhere close to the highbrow architectural theories of interdictory spaces would be my guess.
Bauman simply fails to acknowledge the entire equation:
POSITIVE GLOBALIZATION + NEGATIVE GLOBALIZATION = FUTURE? NOW?
Certainly his insight seems sharp and accurate and biting and liberal, but to disregard the other factors at work is to disregard the implications of one's words and as such to fail to recognize the snowballing effect that just a sentence can have, an effect that can keep growing long after the hands hits the keyboard. For Bauman to be so unaware of the role his Liquid Times philosophy plays in the "militancy machine," I do not even know what to say to that.
Perhaps he knows it? Perhaps he recognizes the peculiar relationship his work has with the very things he seems to denounce? What if I believe he raised his eyebrows to peek over the horizon? Perhaps he saw a wealthy man in Sao Paulo park his SUV inside his gated community, get out of his car, admire the strength of his fence, and then head inside (but first disarming his security system!) to read Liquid Times.
Admittedly, this is the only work of Bauman's that I have read, and maybe there are other elements to his thought espoused elsewhere. If such arguments do exist, they would have to recognize that if cultures are indeed the tapestries that Liquid Times suggests are being undone thread by thread, that globalization is simultaneously weaving them all together on a much wider scale. Sure there are holes, some of them big and others bigger, but this is what humans have been doing since we first started traveling in clans, growing into communities, villages, cities, city-states, empires (oops! road bump), nations, didn't learn our lesson and repeated empires, and now perhaps by mistake have reached a world society.
The forces that brought us here, the forces responsible for the NEGATIVE GLOBALIZATION, have unexpectedly delivered us to the brink of a non-terrestrial Pangaea. That's not to say that such unification is good or bad, but to highlight that either way, it's a pretty big deal, and as far as Bauman is concerned, it's worth mentioning in a book that purports to be about globalization.
- PA Richman
 Brilliant May 27, 2007
Malvin (Frederick, MD USA)
23 out of 26 found this review helpful
"Liquid Times" offers a brilliant series of thoughts about postmodern life by master philosopher/sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. This accessible book succinctly introduces the reader to Mr. Bauman's theories about the passage from the "solid" phase of welfare statism to the "liquid" phase of neoliberalism which have rightly earned the author international acclaim and recognition, particularly among activists in the anti-globalization movement. In this highly rewarding book, Mr. Bauman shares some of his knowledge gained from over eighty years of high-level scholarship and diverse life experiences, rewarding the reader with a number of unique, compelling and penetrating insights into our postmodern condition.
Mr. Bauman contends that as multinational corporations have wrested economic power from state control, individuals have born the cost of change: the evisceration of the social safety net compels individuals to sink or swim. Mr. Bauman describes how urban elites have become disconnected from the working class, residing in tightly-controlled enclaves of security while the masses have been left behind to fend for themselves in slums or crime-ridden shantytowns. As globalization depletes resources and produces prodigious amounts of human waste, the author believes that refugee camps represent only the most severe manifestation of the permanency of transience, as unwanted populations are forever stranded in a 'nowhereville' of non-citizenship.
Indeed, Mr. Bauman asserts that the state finds newfound legitimacy in law enforcement and militarization. While the reality of increasing economic insecurity has compelled many individuals to assuage their anxieties by increasing discipline over mind, body and physical environment, the state incarcerates those who are unable to adopt and attacks others who might threaten us. In this manner, the state serves the interests of the powerful by protecting property rights; meanwhile, the social rights that are most needed by the poor are almost never seriously considered.
In the final chapter, Mr. Bauman discusses how consumerism offers individuals the illusory utopia of the endless pursuit of self-realization. Mr. Bauman contrasts the "hunter" who lives within this fantasy with the "gardener" who attempts to cultivate a more humane and sustainable world for all. Discovering that the utopian concept is today most often seized upon by marketers than by idealists, the author brilliantly connects the seduction of the market economy with public passivity and a general lack of outrage within the industrialized nations for what the advent of corporate rule has come to mean for most of the world's people.
I give this masterwork the highest possible recommendation.
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