ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Zygmunt Bauman’s account of sexuality, love and intimacy in relation to sex and relationships policy and practice in schools. It deals with an attempt to give substance to the remarks by outlining the central arguments that Bauman advances in relation to the study of love and human sexual relations. The chapter considers their merits in the context of the United Kingdom, the country that Bauman lived in most of his adult life. It argues that the ‘urge to convert’ and the ‘gardening’ ambitions of the state remain central to the processes of governance within both solid and liquid modernity. Academics have tended to focus on the mechanisms that Bauman claims bring about the transition from solid to liquid modernity. In Bauman’s thought, a key characteristic of modernity, in both its solid and liquid forms, remains social exclusion. In the United Kingdom, as in all liquid modern societies, people have experienced a high degree of individualisation.
