Description
Book SynopsisThe global financial crisis has shattered the illusion that all was well with capitalism and forced us to confront the great challenges we face today with a new sense of urgency. Few are better placed to do this than Zygmunt Bauman, a social thinker whose writings on liquid modernity have pioneered a new way of seeing the world in which we live at the dawn of the 21st Century.
Our liquid modern world is characterized by the transition from a society of producers to a society of consumers, the natural extension of which is the society of perpetual debtors. The ruling idea of the society of consumers is to prevent needs from being satisfied and to create demand; its natural extension is to enable consumers to consume more by borrowing. Debt was transformed into a crucial profit-earning asset of capitalism in liquid modern times. The present-day ''credit crunch'' is not the outcome of the banks'' failure but rather the fruit of their success in transforming the majority of men and wome
Trade Review
"Liquid Times and Living on Borrowed Times offer deep insights into post-modern life. Specifically, it exposes the essential social and philosophical changes that lie at the heart of the conditions that led to the global financial crisis ... the ideas in these books are fascinating."
Satyajit Das, Willmot
Table of Contents
Introduction by Citlali Rovirosa-Madrazo 1
Part One 13
Conversation I
The credit crunch: an outcome of the Bank's failure, or a fruit of its outstanding success? Capitalism is not dead 15
Conversation II
The welfare state in the age of economic globalization: the last remaining vestiges of Bentham's Panopticon. Policing or helping the poor? 34
Conversation III
This thing called 'the state': revisiting democracy, sovereignty and human rights 45
Part Two 97
Conversation IV
Modernity, postmodernity and genocide: from decimation and annexation to 'collateral damage' 99
Conversation V
Population, production and re-production of human waste: from contingency and indeterminacy to the inexorability of biotechnology (beyond Wall Street) 108
Conversation VI
Secular fundamentalism versus religious fundamentalism: the race of dogmas or the battle for power in the twenty-first century 127
Conversation VII
DNA inscription: a new grammatology for a new economy. From homines mortales to DIY 'post-humans' in the advent of genetocracy 141
Conversation VIII
Utopia, love, or the lost generation 157
Notes 172
Index 191
