When Freud wrote his classic Civilization and itsDiscontents, he was concerned with repression. Moderncivilization depends upon the constraint of impulse, the limitingof self expression.Today, in the time of modernity, Bauman argues, Freud's analysis nolonger holds good, if it ever did. The regulation of desire turnsfrom an irritating necessity into an assault against individualfreedom. In the postmodern era, the liberty of the individual isthe overriding value, the criterion in terms of which all socialrules and regulations are assessed. Postmodernity is governed bythe 'will to happiness': the result, however, is a sacrificing ofsecurity.The most prominent anxieties in our society today, Bauman shows,derive from the removal of security. The world is experienced asoverwhelmingly uncertain, uncontrollable and frightening.Totalitarian politics frightened by its awesome power; the newsocial disorder frightens by its lack of consistency and direction.The very pursuit of individual happiness corrupts and underminesthose systems of authority needed for a stable life.This book builds imaginatively upon Bauman's earlier contributionsto social theory. It consolidates his reputation as theinterpreter of postmodernity. The book will appeal to second-yearundergraduates and above in sociology, cultural studies, philosophyand anthropology.

Introduction: Discontents - Modern and Postmodern.1. The Dream of Purity.2. Making and Unmaking of Strangers.3. The Strangers of the Consumer Era: from the Welfare State toPrison.4. Morality Begins at Home: or the Rocky Road to Justice.5. Parvenu and Pariah - the Heroes and Victims of Modernity.6. Tourists and Vagabonds - the Heroes and Victims ofPostmodernity.7. Postmodern Art, or the Impossibility of the Avant-garde.8. On the Meaning of Art and the Art of Meaning.9. Culture as Consumer Co-operative.10. On the Postmodern Deployment of Sex: Foucault's Historyof Sexuality Revisited.11. Immortality, Postmodern Version.12. Postmodern Religion?.13. On Communitarianism and Human Freedom, or How to Square theCircle.Afterword: The Last word - and it Belongs to Freedom.Notes.Index.