Z YG M U N T BAUMAN Liquid Times Living in an Age o f Uncertainty Liquid Times Living in an Age of Uncertainty ZYGMUNT BAUMAN NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 208 0 1169 4 Lo «o c, Copyright © Zygmunt Bauman 2007 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 2007 by Polity Press Reprinted 2007, 2008 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 purpose 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-13: 978-07456-3986-4 ISBN-13: 978-07456-3987-1 (pb) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Plantin by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester Printed and bound by MPG Books Ltd. Bodmin, Cornwall Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.polity.co.uk Contents Introduction: Bravely into the Hotbed of Uncertainties 1 1 Liquid Modern Life and its Fears 5 2 Humanity on the Move 27 3 State, Democracy and the Management of Fears 55 4 Out of Touch Together 71 5 Utopia in the Age of Uncertainty 94 Notes 111 INTRODUCTION Bravely into the Hotbed of Uncertainties At least in the ‘developed’ part of the planet, a few seminal und closely interconnected departures have happened, or lire happening currently, that create a new and indeed unprecedented setting for individual life pursuits, raising a series of challenges never before encountered. First of all, the passage from the ‘solid’ to a ‘liquid’ phase of modernity: that is, into a condition in which social forms (structures that limit individual choices, institutions that Huard repetitions of routines, patterns of acceptable behav­ iour) can no longer (and are not expected) to keep their j shape for long, because they decompose and melt faster j 1111111 the time it takes to cast them, and once they are cast J lor them to set. Forms, whether already present or only [ iiiiumbrated, are unlikely to be given enough time to solid- f il'y, and cannot serve as frames of reference for human j actions and long-term life strategies because of their short life expectation: indeed, a life expectation shorter than the j lime it takes to develop a cohesive and consistent strategy, N iiikI still shorter than the fulfilment of an individual ‘life project’ requires. Second, the separation and pending divorce of power and politics, the couple that since the emergence of the modern stale and until quite recently was expected to share their joint nation-state household ‘till death did them part’. 2 Introduction Much of the power to act effectively that was previously available to the modern state is now moving away to the politically uncontrolled global (and in many ways extrater­ ritorial) space; while politics, the ability to decide the direc­ tion and purpose of action, is unable to operate effectively at the planetary level since it remains, as before, local. The. absence_of political control makes the newly emancipated powers into, a source of profound and in principle untame- able uncertainty, while the dearth of power makes the extant political institutions, their initiatives and undertakings, less and less relevant to the life problems of the nation-state’s citizens and for that reason they draw less and less of their attention. Between them, the two interrelated outcomes of the divorce enforce or encourage state organs to drop, trans­ fer away, or (to use the recently fashionable terms of polit­ ical jargon) to ‘subsidiarize’ and ‘contract out’ a growing volume of the functions they previously performed. Aban­ doned by the state, those functions become a playground for tinTTiotoriously capricious and inherently unpredictable market forces and/or are left to the private initiative and care of individuals. Third, the gradual yet comistent withdrawal or curtail- ing of cotamunal, state-endorsed insurance against individ­ ual failure and ill fortune ^epnveJ.poD.edwe action of much of its^E3§i^ttacJjonand^apsjhe; social foundatjonspT social soII3arity; .‘xpinmunity’, as a waypf referring to the totality of the population inhabiting the soyersigAjerritor y of the state, sounds increasingly hollow. Interhuman bonds, once woven into a security net worthy of a large and continuous investment of time and effort, and worth the sacrifice of immediate individual interests (or what might be seen as being in an individual’s interest), become increasingly frail and admitted to be temporary. Individual exposure to the vagaries of commodity-and-labour markets inspires and promotes division, not unity; it puts a premium on Introduction 3 competitive attitudes, while degrading collaboration and team work to the rank of temporary stratagems that need to hi' suspended or terminated the moment their benefits have been used up. ‘Society’ is increasingly viewed and treated as ii ‘network’ rather than a structure’ (let alone a solid ‘total- ll y *): it is perceived and treated as a matrix of random con­ nections and(disconnections and of an esseupafly infinite volume of possible permutations. I '’ourth, the collapse of long-term thinking, planning and net ing, and the disappearance or weakening of social struc- t res in which thinking, planning and acting could be ii Inscribed for a long time to come, leads to a splicing of both political history and individual lives into a series of short- icnn projects and epj,sodes whicITaxe in princyple infinite, hiul do not combine into the kinds of sequences to wHich concepts like development, maturation , career or j?ro- tti ess’ (all suggesting a preordained order of'succession) could be meaningfully applied. A life so fragmented stimu- lntes ‘lateral’ rather than ‘vertical’ orientations. Each next Mrp needs to be a response to a different set of opportun­ ities and a different distribution of odds, and so it calls for ilid'erent set of skills and a different arrangement of assets. ii I 'list successes do not necessarily increase the probability of 1111 u re victories, let alone guarantee them; while means suc­ cessfully tested in the past need to be constantly inspected mul revised since they may prove useless or downright counterproductive once circumstances change. A swift and thorough forgetting of outdated information and fast ageing Imhiis can be more important for the next success than the memorization of past moves and the building of strategies on a foundation laid by previous learning. I'il'th, the responsibility for resolving the quanti s es uenenited by vexingly volatile and constantly changing circumstances is shifted onto the shoulders of individuals - win) arc now expected to be ‘free choosers5 and to bear in full 4 Introduction the consequences of their choices. The risks involved in every choice may be produced by forces which transcend the comprehension and capacity to act of the individual, but it is the individual’s lot and duty to pay their price, because there are no authoritatively endorsed recipes which would allow errors to be avoided if they were properly learned and dutifully followed, or which could be blamed in the case of failure. The virtue proclaimed to serve the individual’s inter­ ests best is not conformity to nBes'Jwhich at any rateaire'few and far between, and often mutually contradictory) but flexibility, a readiness to change tactics and style at short notice, to abandon commitments and loyalties without regret - and to pursue opportunities according to their current availability, rather than following one’s own estab­ lished preferences. It is time to ask how these departures modify the range of challenges men and women face in their life pursuits and so, obliquely, influence the way they tend to live their lives. This book is an attempt to do just that. To ask, but not to answer, let alone to pretend to provide definite answers, since it is its author’s belief that all answers would be peremptory, premature and potentially misleading. After all, the overall effect of the departures listed above is the necessity to act, to plan actions, to calculate the expected gains and losses of the actions and to evaluate their out­ comes under conditions of endemic uncertainty. The best the author has tried to do and felt entitled to do has been to explore the causes of that uncertainty - and perhaps lay bare some of the obstacles that bar their comprehension and so also our ability to face up (singly and above all collectively) to the challenge which any attempt to control them would necessarily present.