On the back cover of Liquid Modernity it is suggested that the book constitutes the conclusion of the analysis undertaken in the two previous books published by Polity Press, Globalization: The Human Consequences (1998) and In Search of Politics (1999). Now there is much to recommend these works to the reader intent on gaining a critical insight into the changes that are reshaping the way we live in the new millennium. One of Bauman’s strengths is that he develops a sociological imagination that is panoramic, moving from the universal to the particular, the local to the global, all the time trying to make sense of how our existential condition is intertwined with broader changes in economy, culture and politics. In these three books one find discussions on subjects as diverse as the symbolic use of mobile phones, the spatial ordering of modern cities, the prison system in the United States, and the war in Kosovo. At the same time, Bauman’s other great strength is that he incorporates the perspectives of intellectuals that may well be unfamiliar to an Anglo-American audience. Bauman’s recent work is filled with insights from the likes of Cornelius Castoriadis, Rene Girard, Hans Jonas, Emmanuel Levinas, and a host of other ‘continental’ thinkers.

Liquid Modernity treads over a similar terrain as the other two books but looks at some of the themes (such as work, community, emancipation, time) from a slightly different angle. The most prominent difference is the use of a distinction between ‘heavy’ or ‘solid’ modernity and ‘liquid’ or ‘light’ modernity. In this sense, the distinction is virtually identical to the one between ‘first’ modernity and ‘second’ modernity developed by Ulrich Beck. Heavy modernity is the modernity represented by the work of Karl Marx and Max Weber, the modernity of the panopticon and the factory, instrumental rationality, the ‘job for life,’ and territorial conceptions of space, economy, identity and politics. Liquid modernity is the modernity of uncertainty (regarding ethics and our belief in expert systems), flexible forms of work and organization, informational war, and deterritorialized politics and economy.

This is a distinction that does seem to have some purchase on developments in the flexible ‘tame zones’ of the contemporary world . But the opposition between heavy and liquid modernity does seem rather overstated. As David Harvey makes clear in his reading of Marx in The Limits to Capital, regimes of capital accumulation have to mutate to construct new organizational forms to maintain and intensify surplus value in the light of various disturbances. From this perspective, the move through different organization forms (through, say, the family firm to the Taylorist factory to the deterritorialized and ‘networked’ multinational) is all part of the same motion of accumulation. The instrumental rationality that drove existence in heavy modernity is the same that drives the flexible capitalism of liquid modernity. So do we need to create an intellectual separation here, banishing theorists such as Marx to the industrial wastelands of solid modernity? Of course, one cannot grasp all developments in the contemporary world by returning to Capital but it still has immense explanatory power in helping us understand developments that are fundamental to both our existential condition and the broader designs for a global space of production and consumption. And what about the large sectors of the global populace that are still mired in the conditions of the last century? Bauman does not explore Marx’s writings in sufficient detail to give this discussion any space to grow.

The sections of Kosovo are interesting in their use of the writings of René Girard but the absence of any engagement with the literatures developed inside the discipline of International Relations is striking. Bauman is attempting to make an observation about violence, community and identity but there is no attempt to deploy rich arguments developed by theorists exploring a similar ‘continental’ terrain, such as David Campbell, James Der Derian and Michael Dillon. In particular, Campbell has explored the violence in Bosnia with the use of ‘tools’ that have been important to Bauman’s recent work (such as the writings on ethics by Emmanuel Levinas). Bauman does ventures outside of critical social theory to make an observation about geopolitics but instead of drawing on intellectuals that have been writing about the politics of security from a critical perspective he draws upon the ideas of Henry Kissinger. Kissinger is described as ‘a sober and perceptive analyst and the grandmaster of politics understood (in a somewhat old-fashioned way) as the art of the possible.’ One searches for a hint of irony but none is found. For an intellectual who has been so concerned with developing critiques of the brutal instrumental rationality of modernity this appears as a disturbing lapse in judgement.

But Liquid Modernity is still a powerful exploration of the forces that are making our flexible existence insecure and uncertain. The range of issues explored, and the diversity of intellectuals drawn upon, makes this a provocative and stimulating read: it is useful place for the reader interested in critical social theory to begin to explore ‘continental’ writings from the past few decades. Unlike the intellectuals of the Third Way (such as Anthony Giddens), Bauman is still, for all his protestations to the contrary, involved with the political struggles articulated by Marx and other theorists of heavy modernity: the search for politics that Bauman is nurturing is about developing alternatives to the neoliberal project that casts human beings into a state of ‘everlasting uncertainty’ (as Marx described it). However, it is debatable whether the type of society that Bauman envisages can be fully understood by departing from Marx. Liquid Modernity is a book that deserves to be read but his schema for understanding modernity needs to be read critically (perhaps in conjunction with Harvey’s The Limits to Capital).

Mark Lacy studies International Relations at Sussex University.