An Introduction to and Critique of Zygmunt Bauman's Concept of Liquid Love

An Introduction to and Critique of Zygmunt Bauman's Concept of Liquid Love

Hamideh Mohammadzadeh[1]

Quarterly Journal of Applied Studies in Social Sciences and Sociology

Year 6, No. 3 (Serial No. 25), Summer 2023 (1402 AH solar)

Abstract

The aim of the present article is to introduce and critique Zygmunt Bauman's concept of liquid love. To this end, we first briefly introduce this major thinker, then turn to the typology of love as set out by social thinkers, including Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck, and finally examine the concept of liquid love from Zygmunt Bauman's perspective. To begin the discussion of liquid love, it was necessary first to examine the concept of liquid modernity and only then to turn to this concept; finally, we have taken up the criticisms that can be levelled at this Polish thinker's view of the concept, among them a consumerist and instrumentalist approach to love and its commodification, an emphasis on the quantity of relationships and interactions rather than their quality, and so on. It can be said that the criticisms directed at this concept apply mostly to the capitalist and consumerist life of Western society, which treats human feelings and emotions as objects and commodities and strips human sentiments and emotions of their value.

1- Introduction

Zygmunt Bauman, the Polish intellectual and sociologist, was born on 19 November 1925 in Poznań, Poland, and died in 2017 at the age of 91. During the events of 1968, he was expelled from Poland because of antisemitic policies and went to Leeds in England, where he took up a post at the University of Leeds. He retired in the early 1990s but continued to teach and research at the university as an eminent professor. An interesting point about this sociologist is that he wrote most of his works after retirement; his books deal with subjects such as modernity, the Holocaust, postmodernity, liquid modernity, freedom, consumer culture, strategies of death and life, globalization, poverty, community, love, waste, identity, Europe, and more. One of Bauman's most important works is Liquid Modernity (2000). This book and the concepts used in it, such as liquidity, being-liquid, the melting of solids, instability, fragility, uncertainty and so on, became the basis and foundation for writing the book Liquid Love and for advancing a view under that name. In this article, too, we aim to offer a comprehensive and complete introduction to the concept of liquid love as well as a critique of it. To that end, we first turned to the views of thinkers such as Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck on love, and then went on to introduce liquid love from Bauman's standpoint, adding some criticisms as well.

2- Thinkers' Views on Love

Anthony Giddens[2] is among the thinkers who have addressed the transformation of the meaning and concept of love in the modern world. In his book "The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies"[3] (1992), he seeks to explain the concept of love in the modern world by introducing a new, emancipatory form of the free relationship, which, in his view, is becoming widespread. Taking a historical genealogical approach, Giddens speaks of three types of love, which he names passionate love[4], romantic love[5] and confluent love[6]. In his view, passionate love expresses a general connection between love and sexual attachment, or an urgency that is cut off from everyday life. Passionate love throws a person out of this-worldly life and creates a readiness to consider radical options such as sacrifice. For this reason, passionate love is dangerous for the order of society and for the performance of social duties. In all cultures this type of love is not regarded as the basic principle of a desirable marriage, and it is usually seen as a kind of rebelliousness. Giddens regards romantic love as the harbinger of marriage formed on the basis of mutual attraction and presents it as a narrative within a personal life. He considers the beginning of romantic love to be more or less contemporaneous with the emergence of the novel, and believes that a new kind of love took shape which extended the "reflexivity" of pure love. According to Giddens, the idea of romantic love for the first time linked love with freedom and established a connection between freedom and self-realization. He also sees romantic love as related to rationality and as a potential path to controlling the future. Before arriving at the pure relationship of the modern era, Giddens describes another state called confluent love, and regards this type of love, in contrast to romantic love, as active and contingent, since confluent love signals the flourishing of individuality and the democratization of intimacy (Giddens, 1992: 37–41; 2000: 80; Gross[7], 2002: 535).

Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim[8] are other thinkers who, in the books "The Normal Chaos of Love"[9] (1995) and "Distant Love"[10] (2014), have explained the concept of love in the modern world. According to their argument, the traditions, rules and guidelines that once governed personal relationships no longer apply, and individuals now face an endless series of choices, which are part of building, adjusting and modifying, improving or ending the bonds they form with one another (Giddens, 2010: 259). Love is a search for oneself, a struggle for real contact and connection with oneself and with the other, to share in body and in thought, to face one another without any barrier, to confess and be forgiven, to understand, to affirm and support what has been and what is, a longing for home and hearth and for a refuge against the doubts and anxieties that modern life produces (Beck, 1995: 175–176). In their words, love is at once despair-inducing and consoling. "It is a powerful force that follows its own rules and inscribes its messages in the expectations, anxieties and behavioural patterns of man." In our turbulent and fluctuating world, love has become a new source of faith. Their answer to the formation of second marriages is people's need for love. Given the insatiable thirst for love in the modern world, they write: people marry for love and also divorce for love; they are caught in an endless cycle of hoping, regretting and trying again (Giddens, 2010: 260, 262). Other thinkers, such as Eva Illouz[11], Christopher Lasch[12], Alain Badiou[13], Erich Fromm[14] and others, also have important theories in this field, but because of the length it would entail and the departure from the main aim of the article, there is no room to present their theories here.

3- An Introduction to Liquid Love from Zygmunt Bauman's Perspective

Zygmunt Bauman[15], the Polish sociologist, took his concept of liquid love[16] from Giddens's confluent love (Bauman, 2000: 85), and in 2003 used the term, in his famous book "Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds"[17], to describe the changes that have arisen in relations between the two sexes in the liquid modern setting, explaining the concept and introducing its characteristics and features. Of course, the book Liquid Modernity[18] (2000), Bauman's most important book, narrates a new age with particular features such as fragility, instability, uncertainty, liquidity and so on; these features govern most of the phenomena Bauman has examined, such as life, fear, leisure, organization, love and more, and he also has books with such titles, such as Liquid Life, Liquid Fear, Liquid Times and so on. In Bauman's view, modernity has brought about changes in people's lives and worlds in two stages: he calls the first stage solid modernity[19] and the second stage liquid modernity. Although the permanent feature of modernity has been "the melting of solids" from the very beginning, the first stage of modernity, by melting the solids left over from traditional society, left the field open for the onslaught and dominance of instrumental rationality[20] (as Max Weber puts it) and for the determining role of the economy (as Marx enumerated it) (Kanani and Mohammadzadeh, 2016: 122). Under the conditions of liquid modernity, identity is no longer a project of stability, imposed order or shared group affiliations. Identity no longer resides in a sense of belonging, in the ease of stable emotions, or in place or national community. In liquid modernity, identity becomes something perpetually changeable, with several promoted and optimized foundations, skilled and adapted to a lasting condition of ambivalence and disorder. This situation has spread to the psychological levels of human beings too, and has made them flexible and adaptable people. In liquid modernity, individuals must act under conditions of uncertainty and keep a reckoning of the profit and loss of their actions (Bauman, 2005: 128).

In Liquid Love, Bauman seeks to explain, record and understand the extraordinary instability of human bonds, the sense of insecurity arising from this instability, and the conflicting desires arising from the wish to tighten bonds while at the same time keeping them loose. The main protagonist of his book, by his own account, is the human "relationship"[21], and its central characters are women and men: those who long for security, unity and affection and who want a helping hand to rely on in times of trouble, people who are desperately in need of "relating" yet at the same time fearful of "being related," especially of being related "permanently." He regards relationships in liquid modern life as the most acute, most widespread, most sensitive and most problematic instance of incongruity and multiplicity; so that today the "relationship," despite the dangers it carries, is the hottest topic in every nook and cranny. The intense attention to the satisfaction derived from relationships is due to the fact that they are not truly and fully satisfying, or they come at an exorbitant cost. For this reason he regards the "relationship" as one of the main factors behind the boom in counselling in the world today (Bauman, 2005: 10). For Bauman, the only meaning of love is "to take the plunge and surrender oneself to fate." In any love there are at least two beings, each of whom is deeply unknown in the other's equations. This is what makes love a plaything of fate. It is an enigmatic and mysterious future of which nothing can be said in advance, and which cannot be prevented or postponed. To love is to open oneself to this fate. It means openness to the loftiest human condition, a condition blended from two inseparable components, fear and joy; openness to this fate means, at best, the entry of freedom into the realm of being, a freedom embodied in the other (Bauman, 2005: 27). In his book Bauman has described beautifully the changes and transformations of relationships in the modern world. He likens relationships to ribena[22], which must be diluted when consumed, since otherwise it is dangerous to people's health (Bauman, 2005: 14). Or he speaks of "pocket relationships": relationships that can be brought to bloom when needed, but, once the need has passed, are tucked away entirely in one's pocket. These relationships are always present and ready, and at the same time disposable and throwaway; no one can keep them for long or even enjoy them (Bauman, 2004: 35; 2003: 20). Or relationships must be checked constantly, like cars, to make sure they are sound. SCDs[23], or "semi-detached couples," the "relationship revolutionaries," are those who have burst the suffocating bubble of being husband and wife and go about their own business (Bauman, 2005: 14). Their coupledom is part-time. They loathe the idea of sharing a home and family and prefer to keep their houses, bank accounts and circles of friends separate, sharing their time and space with one another only when they feel inclined to do so. Overall, he believes that relationships are moving in a direction in which commitment, especially long-term commitment, is a kind of trap that people must steer clear of. Counsellors teach people that "if you wish to form a relationship, keep your distance; if you want to feel satisfied with your friendship, give no commitment and take none. Always keep all the doors open." In other words, commitment to a relationship that is "pointless and meaningless in the long run" is a double-edged sword (Bauman, 2005: 70). Thus, as Bauman says, people in this liquid setting have fallen into contradiction. That is, their wish, desire, goal and dream is "to relate," but in practice, more than anything else, they are looking for ways to prevent their relationships from being consolidated and fixed. It is unclear whether they are seeking to know how to make a relationship firm or how, if necessary, to leave it without harm or damage and with an easy conscience. For this reason, relationship and relating give way to connections and connecting, and partners give way to networks. Unlike "relationships," "kinships," "partnerships" and similar notions, which stress mutual commitment and silently negate its opposite, namely freedom and non-commitment, the "network" is the emblem of a matrix for simultaneous connecting and disconnecting. Networks cannot be imagined without the possibility of performing these two activities at once. In a network, connecting and disconnecting are equally legitimate and have the same standing and importance. The "network" suggests moments of "being in touch" in periods of simultaneous free roaming. In a network, connections are established as soon as they are requested, and can be severed at will. Connections are "virtual relationships." Unlike old relationships, connections seem suited to the condition of liquid modern life, in which there is the hope and expectation that "romantic possibilities" will pass through ever more rapidly, and, with the promise of being "more satisfying and more fulfilling," will push one another off the stage. Unlike "old" relationships, entering and exiting "virtual" relationships is easy (Bauman, 2005: 14).

Bauman regards consumerism and becoming-consumer as features of the modernity of the second half of the twentieth century, which make for a fundamental distinction between the way of life of this age and that of past ages. The spirit of customer-orientation has permeated the changing nature of interpersonal relationships. These relationships have become increasingly dependent on the market, to the point that today they reflect the market's unpredictability (Bauman, 2001: 86). Today shopping centres bring about rapid arousal and instant gratification of desires. "In these centres, surrender to desires is fleeting and raises the hope that it will have no lasting consequences that could prevent other moments of joy. In the case of partnerships, especially sexual partnerships, following desires means keeping open the door to other 'romantic possibilities' that may be more satisfying and more gratifying." "The powerful forces of the consumer market have made acting on desires a part of everyday behaviour. As a result, romantic commitment seems an uncertain, difficult and uncomfortable undertaking." When desire is the guide and leader of partnerships, partnership follows the pattern of shopping and demands nothing more than the skills of a mediocre and not very experienced consumer. Like other consumer goods, a partnership is good for immediate consumption and casual use, and, though entirely disposable and throwaway, serves its purpose. Experts tell people that a relationship is an investment like any other. If you invest in a relationship, the most important return you expect to obtain is security. Security, in its various senses, includes quick help in time of need, support in grief and distress, company in loneliness, rescue in times of trouble, consolation in defeat, admiration in victory, and also security in the sense of the swift satisfaction of a need. Relationships are investments like any other kind of investment; shareholders open the stock-exchange pages of the newspaper every morning to see whether to keep their shares or let them go. The same is true of the other kind of stock, namely relationships. The only difference is that in this case there is no stock exchange, and no one will assess the odds of your chances. So you have to do it alone every day. You must always be alert and never make a mistake; "being in a relationship" means a great deal of trouble, but above all it means constant uncertainty and doubt. You can never be completely and truly sure what you should do, or whether you have done the right thing, or whether you have done it at the right time (Bauman, 2005: 35–38). We want love, like everything else, to yield a return for us. We are long-time shoppers and insist on our rights as customers: love and sex too should give us what we expect from our other purchases. "Pure sexual relationship" takes on meaning against the background of a kind of credible money-back guarantee and the advanced patterns of buying or renting goods in the modern world, and the partners in a "pure sexual encounter" can feel secure, because they know that "no strings" or bonds will repair and compensate for the irritating instability of their commitment (Bauman, 2005: 90). In Bauman's view, the invasion of the forces and agents of the consumer market into the community, and its colonization, creates the most frightening danger, one that threatens the present form of togetherness and human affection. The most important and perhaps most fateful success of the market's assault so far is the gradual but continuous collapse of the skills of socialization, or sociability. In matters concerning relations between persons, unskilled actors find themselves more than ever in a state of agency, that is, in a heteronomous mode. The seductive appeal of heteronomous action stems from the delegation of responsibility. What accelerates and strengthens the destruction of socialization skills is the tendency, inspired by the dominant consumerist way of life, to treat others as objects of consumption and to judge them on the model of the consumer object, on the basis of the pleasure derived from them and by the criterion of "value for money." In the course of this, the intrinsic worth of others as unique human beings has vanished from view. Human solidarity is the second casualty of the consumer market's victories (Bauman, 2005: 122–124).

Based on what Bauman says in his book about liquid love, the clearest example of this kind of love and of the relationships that result from it can be seen in online relationships and virtual networks. The emergence of virtual proximity makes human bonds at once more numerous and more superficial, more intense and shorter-lived. Connections are far too superficial and brief to turn into strands of affection. They are focused on the task at hand and do not overflow; they involve the partners in nothing beyond the time and subject of the messages sent and received. Unlike human relationships, which are notorious for their insatiability and their tendency to spread, making and breaking contact requires less time and effort. Distance does not prevent being in touch, but being in touch does not prevent distance and separation either. Virtual proximity can, both literally and metaphorically, be ended with the press of a button. The most effective achievement of virtual proximity is the separation of communication from relationship. Unlike the old proximity based on natural location, virtual proximity neither requires that threads of attachment be formed beforehand nor necessarily leads to their formation. "Being connected"[24] costs less than "being engaged"[25], but at the same time it is far less useful for creating and maintaining threads of attachment (Bauman, 2005: 106–107). On the subject of online dating, Bauman refers to Louis France[26], who says that today's generation grows up with the internet and has limited social skills; moreover, online dating has advantages that personal encounters lack. In a relationship, once the ice is broken, it stays broken and melted once and for all, but online dating is an entirely different matter: you can always press the delete button. Not replying to e-mails is the easiest thing in the world. France says that users of computer-linked dating facilities can arrange dates with peace of mind, because they are sure they can always return to the market for another round of shopping. The fact that starting an interaction is easy and ending it easier still attracts many people of this generation. After an interaction or relationship on the internet ends, there are always others with whom one can form another relationship. Bauman also refers to Jeff Gavin[27], who compares online relationships to a catalogue, and who believes that on the internet one can date without fear of real-world consequences. In any case, this is exactly the feeling we can have when shopping for a partner online. It is just like leafing through the pages of a mail-order catalogue without any obligation to buy, with a money-back guarantee on the first page in case of dissatisfaction. Online relationships are like a supermarket, where you obtain endless possibilities and pleasures without any consequence (Bauman, 2004: 81; 2003: 65; 2005: 110). Bauman claims that the number of people who use the term love to describe different life experiences has increased today. Moreover, in these relationships people do not swear that the current relationship will be their last. The romantic belief in "till death do us part" has become outdated because of changes in kinship structures, and today people believe that having several romantic relationships brings experience in this area; he says that we have learned how to fall in love quantitatively, not qualitatively. He also claims that romantic relationships are seen today as capital. When you enter a relationship, you invest money and time, you make an effort, and you hope to gain a profit. The end of the relationship leads to the loss of the investments, but, on the other hand, one should not be dissatisfied with relationships. Love is an uncertain investment, an estimate of the future of relationships that do not exist (Bauman, 2004: 18–28).

4- A Critique of the Concept of Liquid Love

As said above, Bauman's key concept is "liquid modernity," and in consequence he sees all phenomena, such as love, life, fear, leisure and so on, as liquid; he has several books with such titles, and on this basis he presents his own analysis of the nature of love. Therefore, if we wish to critique Bauman's view, we must either critique the liquidity of modernity in his thought, or look at his analysis of love from the standpoint of what Bauman's way of analysing the liquidity of love causes him not to see and to ignore. For example, on the basis of the features we enumerated for the age of liquid modernity, in which the liquidity of love exists, what becomes of the parties' "loyalty, commitment and trust" toward one another in Bauman's view, and what place do they find in love? It should of course be noted that Bauman's analysis of modernity and love is descriptive in outlook and that Bauman takes no prescriptive stance on the matter. That is, if Bauman says that loyalty, commitment and trust in love have disappeared, and that people are constantly seeking to change their beloved and to experience many relationships and friendships, and that salvation in love lies in having many lovers, he does not mean that we too should be unfaithful. Bauman merely enumerates and describes the features and characteristics of the age in which we live, and his aim is neither to impose these features nor to endorse them; the features governing this period, like those of other periods, have their own particular advantages and disadvantages.

On the basis of the description of liquid modernity and love from Zygmunt Bauman's perspective that we have given, and the features this thinker has enumerated for them, criticism can be directed at these concepts from various dimensions and angles; in this article, the critique of liquid love in particular is our concern.

One of the most important and fundamental criticisms and objections that can be made of love as seen by Bauman is the consumerist outlook, and following from it the commodifying and instrumentalist outlook, or more precisely the materialist outlook, on human beings and on the relationships, interactions and friendships among them. Bauman regards consumerism as a phenomenon of the modern era, in which people use goods and, once their need is satisfied, throw them away. He regards this phenomenon as different from the accumulation of goods, in the sense that consumption and discarding make room for the use of other goods. Hence, for Bauman, the aim of the consuming human being is the rate of turnover, conversion and replacement of goods. In other words, liquidity and instability are the distinctive and conspicuous feature of consumer society and also of fashion-oriented society, in which new fashions and designs, such as food and clothing, mobile phones, even new poems and new feelings, replace earlier fashions. As is evident, then, consumer culture and capitalism have today extended to new human relationships and interactions, which are spoken of in terms of liquid love or unstable, shaky, fragile and fragmented bonds, so that human beings regard one another as consumer goods that meet their needs and see the experience of love like any other commodity (Blackshaw[28], 2015: 263; Hobbs et al.[29], 2016: 1–2). This fragility may be the unavoidable cost of people's right to pursue their individual goals. This new fragility in human bonds can be seen as the result of the "consumerist syndrome." This syndrome defeats our social relationships, because people increasingly perceive the world as a collection of consumer goods and see the purpose of life as the attainment of lasting contentment and pleasure. The ethic of consumption is very strong in liquid society, and in it the pleasure principle prevails over the reality principle. The consumerist syndrome gradually comes to control all kinds of human relationships, and this makes forming human bonds in the long run more difficult, though not impossible. The difficulty of forming bonds is due to a shift in values in favour of "contacts" rather than "partnerships." Contacts that can form and end become the main criteria. This makes people insecure, at a time when they need friendship more than ever (Elliott[30], 2007: 112–115; Davis[31], 2008: 48). Thus, with the spread of consumer culture into relationships, human relationships and romantic relationships have come to suffer from liquidity, uncertainty and ambiguity. It can therefore be said that relationships, like goods, have an expiry date, and their period of use is limited, and any dissatisfaction or new relationship can be a licence for the relationship's expiry date to run out. Thus the intrinsic worth of others as unique human beings is ignored, and the promise of a romantic experience is treated like any other commodity (Blackshaw, 2015: 274; Hobbs et al., 2016: 1–2). So, in Bauman's view, love resembles a tool or commodity that, when needed, we can pull out of our clothes pocket and, after using it and once the need is satisfied, throw away, just like disposable, throwaway items. Modern people have become entangled in relationships from which they only take pleasure, yet which they can leave at the first sign of problems and hardship, and this idea points to the consumerist character of love in the age of liquid modernity. Consumer culture, which favours immediate use, instant satisfaction and the gratification of need, depends on characteristics contrary to those required for cultivating love, such as courage, faith or discipline. To improve the state of life and relationships, we must strengthen our capacity for loving; with a consumerist and instrumentalist view of others, one cannot love anyone, and forming relationships, loving, caring and being loved cannot be learned from lifestyle magazines or self-help books (Turkowski[32], 2006: 380). Love, affection and even forming relationships and bonds are not like George Ritzer's[33] "cathedrals of consumption"[34], where after the religious rites we wander the shopping arcades and buy what we need and put back on the shelves what we do not; love represents people's feelings, emotions and affection for one another, not like food, clothes and mobile phones, which we acquire and use whenever we need them and then throw away. This consumerist and instrumentalist view of love causes redoubled loneliness, anxiety, depression and a lack of enjoyment in forming emotional relationships (Blackshaw, 2015: 274; Davis, 2008: 55).

From Bauman's viewpoint, the relationships of contemporary humans are liquid, fragile and unstable. Relationships are established the moment they are requested and can be severed at will. On this basis, irresponsibility, lack of commitment and the excessive individualization of relationships, or the formation of relationships based on individual need, is another criticism that can be made of this concept of Bauman's. Individualization is a concept that describes the structural and sociological transformation of social institutions and of the relationship between the individual and society. Individualization frees people from traditional roles and their constraints in various ways. First, individuals are de-traditionalized from classes based on pure status and from social classes. This, which is among the consequences of modernity and modernism, can be seen in relations between individuals, family structure, living arrangements, leisure activity, the geographical distribution of the population, membership in trade unions and clubs, and so on. On the one hand, epochal changes are taking place, especially in the domains of sexual relations, law and education. On the other hand, apart from sexual relations, these changes exist more in people's consciousness and on paper than in behaviour and social conditions. Historically, this is a mixture of new awareness and old conditions, which in people's minds intensifies the continuing and cumulative inequality between women and men and between rich and poor (Beck, 2002: 212–214). Thus the liquid individualistic society of modernity has turned long-term commitments into a rarity, long-term obligation into a rare expectation, and the duty of mutual assistance founded on "whatever will be, will be" into an unrealistic and worthless promise (Best[35], 2018: 7; Hobbs et al., 2016: 4). The interval between solid and liquid modernity has created an unprecedented and new set of conditions for activities related to individual life, and this has led individuals to face challenges they had not previously encountered. Social forms and various institutions have little capacity to keep the moulds and frameworks of human activity and long-term life plans fixed, and cannot succeed in this respect either. Individuals are therefore forced to find other paths for organizing their lives, and along the way they braid a series of short-term and unfinished projects together and stack them on top of one another. These braided projects will not lead to a firm and connected thread by means of which notions such as transition and progress could be used purposefully. Such disjointed and separate lives and activities require people who are flexible and can adapt themselves, who are constantly ready and willing to change tactics on the basis of the same brief information, who are indifferent to commitments and loyalties without any expression of regret, and who look for opportunities according to their available abilities. In liquid modernity, individuals must act under conditions of uncertainty and keep a reckoning of the profit and loss of their actions (Bilherz[36], 2001: 339).

Bauman's statements, repeated throughout Liquid Love, that the more often one falls in love the more experience one gains, or that "till death do us part" no longer matters, that one should neither give nor take commitment, that relationships are unstable and fragile, and so on, show that the quantity of a relationship has replaced its quality. Another criticism concerns this very quantification, numericization and normalization of diverse relationships, and also the lack of coherence, integrity and solidity in the relationship: we continue the relationship for as long as we wish, and once we are satisfied or find a new prospect, the previous relationship and friendship ends and a new one is begun; the quality and type of these relationships do not matter, and what matters is that when one grows tired or is dissatisfied, the relationship and friendship can be set aside without any trouble or difficulty and a new relationship started (Tester[37], 2004: 174; Penchadhayi[38], 2006: 4). This is the social and cultural condition of the contemporary world, from which we have inherited ambivalence, social change and instability (Bilherz, 2001: 339; Binkley[39], 2008: 602). Liquid modernity is active everywhere, and everywhere it replaces the quality of relationships with quantity. In liquid modern life there is no lasting and stable bond, and any relationship we maintain for a while must be loosened so much that it can be dissolved as easily as possible when circumstances change. Hence young people today favour online dating over face-to-face meetings, because e-mail romances end easily. But these virtual bonds and relationships do not make women and men happy; that is, people do not become happier than they were in earlier relationships, because although they gain something, they lose something else. The defining feature of modern relationships is "freedom from commitment" (Fern[40], 2006: 32).

In The Individualized Society (2001: 168), Bauman likens love to a blank cheque, and in Liquid Love to shopping centres and catalogues, which expresses that love and human feelings are, for him, akin to commercialization or commodification. The next criticism concerns this very aspect of the commercialization and commodification of love. The modern idea of love is a wave of varied and colourful desires and wishes rather than a feeling or relationship that brings contentment and satisfaction, just as when we enter shopping centres and begin to stroll and wander through various shops and choose the goods we need and, if dissatisfied or if they are not what we want, exchange them for other goods; in human relationships too, in virtual space, we begin to wander through various dating sites and networks and make contact with many people, and whenever the relationship is not pleasing or satisfying we easily press the delete button and replace the previous relationship with a new one, just as in shopping centres we exchange one item for another. This transformation and metamorphosis in relations with the opposite sex also has contradictory consequences for the mental horizon and phenomenal world of social actors (Tester, 2004: 174; Penchadhayi, 2006: 2).

Another criticism that can be made of Zygmunt Bauman's concept of liquid love, one that relates more to online relationships, is the prevalence of a phenomenon called anonymity, which gives rise to multiple identities, or, better to say, identity pluralism among individuals. The virtual world is in truth a kind of meta-space and mental space that is everywhere yet nowhere, a liquid and boundless space that is easily and always accessible to everyone but that, as easily as it is created, vanishes and fades away. In such a space, users can present, perform and even conceal various identities within virtual websites and social networks (Jones[41], 2004: 21; Bollingham[42], 2013: 103). The cornerstone of internet culture is anonymity[43], anonymous communication and role-playing in virtual space. The internet environment is uniquely suited to anonymous or pseudonymous communication. Online[44] users are free to decide how much information to give about themselves or to remain unknown; they can also choose a refuge for themselves behind a pseudonym. This kind of identity-making (anonymous and pseudonymous identity) has complex consequences; on the one hand, it expands communication, and on the other, it can encourage wrongdoing and, in particular, create the impression that the user cannot be held responsible for his actions and words; anonymity also allows users to behave in a hostile or friendly manner without feeling at risk from the reaction or response of others (McIntyre[45], 2004: 1; Ean[46], 2011: 126). Identity is no longer a project of stability, imposed order or shared group affiliations, and has no place in a sense of belonging, in the ease of stable emotions, or in place or national community; it becomes something perpetually changeable and adapted to a lasting condition of restlessness and disorder. Weak social bonds and high levels of individual mobility create new patterns of identity-awareness, grounded in the logic of minimizing institutional commitments, the flexibility of interpersonal responsibility and the acceptance of a lasting condition of social fragmentation (Binkley, 2008: 602).

Other criticisms can also be made of Bauman's view of love, such as dehumanization and the devaluation of human emotions and feelings, the spread of a sense of insecurity and lack of safety among individuals, the formal, superficial and shallow character of relationships, and so on.

5- Conclusion

Liquid love is a product of the age of late modernity and of postmodern approaches in the West. In this model the concept of love is redefined and placed within a framework of extreme relativism. This new model of relationship violates the strict and absolutist commitments of romantic love and denies the necessity of intimate and committed relationships. The hallmark of liquid love is not a move toward patterns of concealment but rather open polyamory, and its aim is "more variety," "less commitment" and "more freedom" in relationships that take a relatively friendly form.

These claims of Bauman's, that the number of people who use the term love to describe different life experiences has increased today, that in these relationships people do not swear that the current relationship will be their last, that the romantic belief in "till death do us part" has become outdated because of changes in kinship structures and that today people believe having several romantic relationships brings experience in this area, that we have learned how to fall in love quantitatively and not qualitatively, and, most important of all, that romantic relationships are seen today as capital, so that when you enter a relationship you invest money and time, make an effort and hope to gain a profit, and that the end of the relationship leads to the loss of the investments, though on the other hand one should not be dissatisfied with relationships, and that love is an uncertain investment and an estimate of the future of relationships that do not exist: all of these are matters that this article has critiqued. As a final word, Bauman accepts Erich Fromm's statement about love, "in the love of an individual, one cannot attain true satisfaction without humility, courage, faith and discipline," and believes that these qualities are absent in Western culture, which is a consumer culture; it can therefore be said that the criticisms made of this concept apply mostly to the capitalist and consumerist life of Western society, which treats human feelings and emotions as commodities and strips human feelings and emotions of their value.

References

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[1] PhD student in Cultural Sociology, University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran. (Corresponding author) mohammadzadehahmideh@yahoo.com, mohammadzadeh@phd.guilan.ac.ir

[2] Anthony Giddens

[3] The Transformation of Intimacy (Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies)

[4] Passionate Love

[5] Romantic Love

[6] Confluent Love

[7] Gross

[8] Ulrich Beck & Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim

[9] The Normal Chaos of Love

[10] Distant Love

[11] Eva Illouz

[12] Christopher Lasch

[13] Alain Badiou

[14] Erich Fromm

[15] Zygmunt Bauman

[16] Liquid Love

[17] Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds

[18] Liquid Modernity

[19] Solid Modernity

[20] Instrumental Rationality

[21] Relationship

[22] Ribena: a type of alcoholic beverage

[23] Semi-detached couples

[24] Being connected

[25] Being engaged

[26] Louis France

[27] Jeff Gavin

[28] Blackshaw

[29] Hobbs & etal

[30] Elliott

[31] Davis

[32] Tarkowski

[33] Temple of Consumption

[34] George Ritzer

[35] Best

[36] Beilharz

[37] Tester

[38] Panchadhyayi

[39] Binkley

[40] Fearn

[41] Jones

[42] Bullingham

[43] Anonymity

[44] On line

[45] McIntyre

[46] Iane