Culture in a Liquid Modern World [Paperback]

Brilliant!

I admit that I spent the first fourteen pages chuntering at this beta minus sociology 'A' level answer; and then I got it: the book as joke! I should, of course, have read the blurb on the obverse of this paperback,

"...'culture' was intended to be an agent for change, a mission undertaken with the aim of educating 'the people'.......
culture has lost its missionary role and has become a means of seduction..."

Is a book not an instrument of 'culture' (quotation marks around the word 'culture' seem de rigueur in Zygmunt's world) and so, must this not be a means of seduction rather than an attempt to educate?

Once thus enlightened, I enjoyed the joke; although, I did feel that it was perhaps sustained a little longer than necessary. I had to read to the end, of course, to see if all readers would have the joke spelled out in words of one syllable, but no - Zygmunt doesn't do one syllable terminology and, despite heavy hints, I bet some people will miss the jolly jape altogether. I wonder if it is just a jest, or whether the author is studying our reaction to his wit.....

This is a thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking book. It is not long - only about 117 pages plus notes - but in each short chapter, Bauman explores some aspect of culture as it now appears in our 'liquid world' in such concentrated detail that it keeps you thinking long after putting the book down.

By 'liquid world' Bauman refers to what other writers have termed 'postmodernity':

"I use the term 'liquid modernity' here for the currently existing shape of the modern condition, described by other authors as 'postmodernity', 'late modernity', 'second' or 'hyper' modernity." (P11)

For Bauman, what makes our current time 'liquid' is:

"...its self-propelling, self-intensifying, compulsive and obsessive 'modernization', as a result of which, like liquid, none of the consecutive forms of social life is able to maintain its shape for long." (P11)

Whereas Modernism saw the world progressing towards something - hopefully a 'better, brighter future' - this 'liquid modernity' progresses purely for the sake of progression - it is not going anywhere, it simply is, in a permanent state of renewal. In this sense, Fukuyama is perhaps correct. History has ended and it seems There Is No Alternative. Or, to put it another way, there is no destination, only the journey - "For 'gardeners' utopia was the end of the road, while for 'hunters' the road itself is the utopia." (P29) And we are again hunters.

The first essay 'Historical peregrinations of the concept' places Bauman's idea of 'culture' pretty much squarely within a European tradition. In Britain, we have maybe been used to a more literary approach - from Matthew Arnold, F R Leavis, T S Eliot through to the more anthropological conceptions of Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart. But Bauman looks to Adorno, Habermas and Bourdieu, amongst others. For example:

"As Bourdieu noted earlier, culture today is engaged in laying down temptations and setting up attractions, with luring and seducing, not with normative regulation; with PR rather than police supervision; with the production, sowing and planting of new needs and desires, rather than with duty." (P13)

Somehow, though, this does sound remarkably English (or Anglo-Saxon), with its undercurrent of disapproval for the 'Consumer Society'. But at the same time there is a grounding in European (Post-)Structuralism - defined as:

"networks replace structures, and an uninterrupted game of connecting to and disconnecting from those networks and the neverending sequence of connections and disconnections replaces determination, allegiance and belonging." (P14)

Finally:

'The function of culture is not to satisfy existing needs, but to create new ones - while simultaneously maintaining needs already entrenched or permanently unfulfilled. Its chief concern is to prevent a feeling of satisfaction in its former subjects and charges, now turned into clients, and in particular to counteract their perfect, complete and definitive gratification, which would leave no room for further, new and as yet unfulfilled needs and whims." (P17)

That is the theoretical underpinning. From there, Bauman goes on to explore various themes:

'On fashion, liquid identity and utopia for today - some cultural tendencies in the twenty-first century'.

'Culture from nation-building to globalization',

'Culture in a world of diasporas',

'Culture in a uniting Europe',

'Culture between state and market'.

All of these essays are fascinating. But what I found really interesting is comparing Bauman's views and analyses with other writers such as Paul Scheffer on 'immigration and diasporas', Colin Crouch, David Harvey and Dani Rodrik on 'state and market' and globalization. Bauman's basis is, as already stated, one of cultural critique, whereas the other writers have differing angles. But Bauman's stance somehow helps to pull all the other perspectives together (rather like Adam Curtis's eclectic documentaries) while at the same time shining fresh light on some seemingly small subject that has unexpected global significance.

I am very much looking forward to reading more of Professor Bauman's books.

In 'Culture in a Liquid Modern World' Zygmunt Bauman, a renowned sociologist, social thinker and Professor Emeritus at the University of Leeds, writes fascinatingly about the influence of globalisation on the peregrinations of culture and how the concept of culture has changed dramatically since the days when "every [cultural] offering used to be addressed to a specific social class, and to that class alone" (p. 5). Instead, Bauman argues, modern consumers of culture are "omnivorous"; the boundaries between different cultural forms have fallen and today we absorb culture in many shapes and forms. Bauman also suggests that culture is no longer a source which "enlighten[s] and ennoble[s]" (p. 16). Instead, it is a seducer which does not provide gratification to desire but which makes us hungry for more, without satisfying cultural needs.

'Culture in a Liquid Modern World' is a slim book but it packs a mighty punch in the form of Bauman's arguments, analyses and observations on the concept of culture in our modern world.