Culture in a Liquid Modern World

In its original formulation, ‘culture’ was intended tobe an agent for change, a mission undertaken with the aim ofeducating ‘the people’ by bringing the best of humanthought and creativity to them. But in our contemporaryliquid-modern world, culture has lost its missionary role and hasbecome a means of seduction: it seeks no longer to enlighten thepeople but to seduce them. The function of culture today is not tosatisfy existing needs but to create new ones, while simultaneouslyensuring that existing needs remain permanently unfulfilled.Culture today likens itself to a giant department store where theshelves are overflowing with desirable goods that are changed on adaily basis - just long enough to stimulate desires whosegratification is perpetually postponed.

In this new book Zygmunt Bauman - one of the most brilliant andinfluential social thinkers of our time - retraces theperegrinations of the concept of culture and examines its fate in aworld marked by the powerful new forces of globalization, migrationand the intermingling of populations. He argues that Europe has aparticularly important role to play in revitalizing ourunderstanding of culture precisely because Europe, with its greatdiversity of peoples, languages and histories, is the space wherethe Other is always one’s neighbour and where each isconstantly called upon to learn from everyone else.