Culture in a Liquid Modern World

In its original formulation, 'culture' was intended to be anagent for change, a mission undertaken with the aim of educating'the people' by bringing the best of human thought andcreativity to them. But in our contemporary liquid-modern world,culture has lost its missionary role and has become a means ofseduction: it seeks no longer to enlighten the people but to seducethem. The function of culture today is not to satisfy existingneeds but to create new ones, while simultaneously ensuring thatexisting needs remain permanently unfulfilled. Culture today likensitself to a giant department store where the shelves areoverflowing with desirable goods that are changed on a daily basis- just long enough to stimulate desires whose gratification isperpetually 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 is constantlycalled upon to learn from everyone else.