ABSTRACT
Zygmunt Bauman is not remembered as a theorist of love and intimacy. Among specialist researchers in these areas, Bauman is a relative unknown, in marked contrast to his prominence within the social sciences, where he is one of the most cited scholars. In Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds (2003) Bauman argued that within liquid modernity a consumer-driven, adiaphoric, sexual free-for-all had emerged, rooted in an intense unregulated individualism. Sexuality was identified by Bauman as one of the areas of social life that had become privatised; that the state had withdrawn from regulation. The principal purpose of this chapter is to evaluate Bauman’s account of sexuality, love and intimacy in relation to sex and relationships policy and practice in schools. In contrast to Bauman’s thesis, more sexual activities have become criminalised, people previously marginalised as sexually Other are encouraged to incorporate their relationships within previously heterosexual arrangements such as marriage, and more populations are regulated in terms of their most intimate of behaviours. The argument that ‘liquid love’ is one application too far for Bauman’s liquefaction thesis is that sex and relationships policy and practice in schools highlight a commonality that exists between solid and liquid modernity in terms of the regulation of personal life.
