ABSTRACT
For quite some time, the term ‘liquid’, both as a descriptor and a metaphor, has been associated primarily with the work of Zygmunt Bauman. It was invented by him at the turn of the millennium in the book Liquid Modernity in order to capture the new social landscape that confronted social researchers as well as ordinary people who, according to Bauman, had been used to navigating in a so-called ‘solid modern’ world. Its use is intended, in part, to capture the rapidly changing nature of the social world. In this worldview, not only have the foundations of social life become slippery and hard to grasp, the very things that people rely on are subject to constant re-configuration and re-negotiation. Such liquidity has become the default position for normal life. Now fluidity is the norm instead of solidity. As Bauman says:
Liquid life is a precarious life, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty. The most acute and stubborn worries that haunt such a life are the fears of being caught napping, of failing to catch up with fast moving events, of being left behind, of over-looking ‘use by’ dates, of being saddled with possessions that are no longer desirable, of missing the moment that calls for a change of tack before crossing the point of no return. (Bauman 2005: 2)
