44 Letters From the Liquid Modern World

Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) was Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds

• 1 On writing letters – from a liquid modern world 12 Crowded solitude 63 Parents and children conversing 104 Offline, online 145 As the birds do 186 Virtual sex 227 Strange adventures of privacy (1) 268 Strange adventures of privacy (2) 309 Strange adventures of privacy (3) 3410 Parents and children 3811 Teenager spending 4212 Stalking the Y generation 4613 Freedom's false dawn 5014 The arrival of child-women 5415 It is the eyelash's turn 5816 Fashion, or being on the move 6217 Consumerism is not just about consumption 6718 Whatever happened to the cultural elite 7119 Drugs and diseases 7520 Swine flu and other reasons to panic 7921 Health and inequality 8322 Be warned 8723 The world inhospitable to education? (part one) 9124 The world inhospitable to education? (part two) 9525 The world inhospitable to education? (part three) 9926 Ghosts of New Years past and New Years to come 10227 Predicting the unpredictable 10628 Calculating the incalculable 11129 Phobia’s twisted trajectories 11530 Interregnum 11931 Whence the superhuman force – and what for? 12332 Back home, you men? 12833 Escape from crisis 13234 Is there an end to depression? 13635 Who says you have to live by the rules? 14136 The phenomenon of Barack Obama 14637 Culture in a globalized city 14938 The voice of Lorna’s silence 15339 Strangers are dangers . . . Are they, indeed? 15740 Tribes and skies 16341 Drawing boundaries 16742 How good people turn evil 17243 Fate and character 17844 Albert Camus, or: I rebel, therefore we exist . . . 182Notes 186

"Bauman is geniunely interested in changing attitudes between generations (about parenting, privacy, shopping, risk and the like), and the evolution of mores in fashion, culture, and education, never resorting to the boo-hurrah dichotomies employed by true professionals of this genre. Sympathy for the young is ever-present: there is much about the ambiguous goods of texting, Facebook and the like, and Bauman already saw modern existence as 'a life of continuous emergency' even before the financial crisis struck. Overall: magnificently untweetable."Steven Poole, The Guardian