This is the first single-authored critical engagement with the major works of Zygmunt Bauman. Where previous books on Bauman have been exegetical, here an unwavering light is shone on key themes in the sociologist’s work, exposing serious weaknesses in Bauman’s interpretations of the Holocaust, Western modernity, consumerism, globalisation and the nature of sociology. The book shows how Eurocentrism, the neglect of issues of gender and a lack of awareness of the racism faced by Europe’s non-white ethnic minorities seriously limit Bauman’s analyses of Western societies. At the same time, it points to Bauman’s repeated insistence on the need for sociologists to take a moral stance in favour of the world’s poor and downtrodden as being his most valuable legacy. The book will be of great interest to sociologists. Its readability will be valued by undergraduates and postgraduates and it will attract a readership well beyond the discipline.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Introduction
Part I: The dark side of modernity
The question of modernity
Modernity and the Enlightenment
Bauman on the Enlightenment and modernity
The Holocaust’s modernity
The ambivalences of modernity: a preliminary interrogation of Bauman’s Eurocentric, white, male gaze
Part II: Living with postmodernity
Modernism and postmodernism
Legislators and Interpreters: extending the critique of Bauman’s first exposition of postmodernity and postmodernism
Sociology and postmodernity
Aspects of Bauman’s sociology of postmodernity: a critical commentary
Postmodern ethics: Bauman’s Levinasian turn
Part III: Floating, slipping, sliding, drowning, boiling and freezing: the perils of liquid life
Why had Bauman become a postmodernist?
The whys and wherefores of the demise of postmodernism
‘Liquid’ modernity vs ‘reflexive’ modernity: Bauman’s problem of agency, again
‘Metaphoricity’ in Bauman’s sociology
On the liquid metaphor: what is this liquid in ‘liquid modernity’?
‘Solid’ modernity
‘Liquid’ writing and liquid modernity: some ethical considerations
Liquid modernity: the bare essentials
Aspects of liquid modernity: critical reflections
Conclusion: a sociologist of hope or a prophet of gloom?
Index
Über den Autor
Ali Rattansi was Professor and is now Visiting Professor of Sociology at City, University of London. His many books include Marx and the Division of Labour, Postmodernism and Society and the Oxford University Press Very Short Introductions to Racism and Multiculturalism.
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