Liquid Consumer Security

Abstract Systemic risks––pandemics, economic recessions, professional precarity, political volatility, and climate emergencies––increasingly erode previously taken for granted stabilities consumers’ confidence in the future. How do consumers manage risk uncertainty when ontological security are on decline? Traditionally, have built a sense of through solid consumption (e.g., home ownership, accumulating possessions). A four-year ethnography digital nomadism, however, demonstrates that looming can render source vulnerability an unwanted anchor turbulent times call agility adaptability. We outline emergence liquid consumer security, defined as form felt stems from avoidance its risks responsibilities. Liquid inheres absence attachments, or rootedness, is derived circumventing temporal demands, financial liabilities, commitments requires, which emerge sources risk. It achieved recursive process engaging three strategies: 1. Solid minimization; 2. Security reconstruction marketplace, 3. Ideological legitimation. Contributions to consumption, social theories risk, nomadism discussed.