Society under Siege

Society is under siege – under attack on two fronts: from theglobal frontier-land where old structures and rules do not hold andnew ones are slow to take shape, and from the fluid, undefineddomain of life politics. The space between these two fronts, untilrecently ruled by the sovereign nation-state and identified bysocial scientists as ‘society' is ever more difficult toconceive of as a self-enclosed entity. And this confronts theestablished wisdom of the social sciences with a new challenge:sovereignty and power are becoming separated from the politics ofthe territorial nation-state but are not becoming institutionalizedin a new space. What are the consequences of this profoundtransformation of social life? What kind of world will it createfor the twenty-first century?

This remarkable book – by one of the most original socialthinkers writing today – attempts to trace thistransformation and to assess its consequences for the lifeconditions of ordinary individuals. The first part of the book isdevoted to the new global arena in which, thanks to the powerfulforces of globalization, there is no 'outside', no secluded placeto which one can retreat and hide away, and where the territorialwars of the past have given way to a new breed of 'reconnaissancewars'. The second part deals with settings in which life politicshas taken hold and flourished. Bauman argues that the greatchallenge facing us today is whether we can find new ways toreforge the human diversity that is our fate into the vocation ofhuman solidarity.