Baumen's Liquid Modernity is a stunning book that has resonances with everyday life and culture all the time. One of his themes, emancipation, identifies that society has put the right of the individual over the right of citizen - or as he puts it the search for a 'just society' has given way to 'human rights'. In the search for freedom we have made freedom impotent by making it such a debased currency that it means little or nothing at all.
I can help but make connections between this thought and the current controversy about the veil and the policeman. Is society giving people so much freedom that freedom means nothing? Are we to focused on giving individuals their human rights without focusing on the wider issues in society as a whole?
I'm worried that the ideology of a tolerant society has become a straight jacket that prevents human freedom rather than giving it...I'm still formulating this, and i've had most of a bottle of wine, so bear with me if this is not too coherent!!
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