Liquid Life

'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.