ZYGMUNT BAUMAN: LIQUID MODERNITY

Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge, England, & Malden, MA: Polity, 2000, 2012) (From the backcover: "In this important book Zygmunt Bauman introduces the concept which, more than any other, has come to define his vision of contemporary societies: liquid modernity. The transition from 'solid' to 'liquid' modernity is the shift from a world in which human beings were seeking to create a well-ordered world of state structures to a world in which the very idea of order and stability no longer have any purchase, a world in which  change is the only permanence and uncertainty the only certainty. A hundred yeas ago, 'to e modern' meant to strive for a state of perfection; today it means to modernize compulsively, perpetually, with no final state in sight and none desired." [Query: What is the role of law in such a liquid modernity?] From the text: "Shopping is not just about food, shoes, cars or furniture items. The avid, never-ending search for new and improved examples and recipes for life is also a variety of shopping, and a more important variety, to be sure, in the light of the twin lessons that our happiness depends on personal competence but that we are [] personally incompetent, or not as competent as we should and could be if only wee tried harder. There are so many areas in which we need to be more competent, and each calls for 'shopping around'. We 'shop' for the skills needed to earn our living and for the means to convince would-be employers that we have them; for the kind of image it would be nice to wear and ways to make others believe that we are what we wear; for ways of making new friends we want and the ways of getting rid of past friends no longer wanted; for ways of drawing attention and ways to hide from scrutiny; for the means to squeeze most satisfaction out of love and the means to avoid becoming 'dependent' on the loved or loving partner; for ways to earn the love of the beloved and the least costly way of finishing off the union once love has faded and the relationship has ceased to please; for the best expedients of saving money for a rainy day and the most convenient way to spend money before we earn it; for the resources for doing faster the things that are to be done and for things to do in order to fill the time thus vacated; for the most mouth-watering foods and the most effective diet to dispose of the consequences of eating them; for the most powerful hi-fi amplifiers and the most effective headache pills. There is no end to the shopping list. Yet however long the list, the way to opt out of shopping is not on it. And the competence most ended in our world of ostensibly infinite ends is that of skillful and indefatigable shopper." Id. at 74. "We live in a world of universal flexibility, under conditions of acute and perspectives Unsicherheit, penetrating all aspects of individual life--the sources of livelihood as much as the partnerships of love or common interests, parameters of professional as much as cultural identity, modes of presentation of self in public as much as patterns of health and fitness, Safe ports of trust are few and far between, and most of the time trust floats unanchored vainly seeking storm-protected havens. We have learned the hard way that even the most carefully and laboriously made plans have a nasty tendency to go amiss and bring results far removed from the expected, that our earnest efforts to 'put things in order' often result in more chaos, formlessness and confusion, and that our labour to eliminate contingency and accident is little more than a game of chance." Id. a 135-136. [Query: Again, what is the role of law--and lawyers--in such a liquid modernity?]).