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Zygmunt Bauman
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Le livre testament de Zygmunt Bauman, l'un des plus penseurs les plus importants de notre modernité. Une alerte nécessaire sur la tentative de repli et d'idéalisation du passé qui caractérise notre époque.
À la mort de Zygmunt Bauman, en janvier 2017, Roger Pol- Droit soulignait dans le Monde que le lire, c'est toujours " rencontrer une éthique contemporaine sans dogme ni concession ". Philosophe et sociologue aussi érudit qu'inclassable, né en Pologne mais ayant vécu l'essentiel de son existence en Grande-Bretagne, cet intellectuel européen par excellence éclaire notre temps à l'instar d'un Norbert Elias ou d'un Georg Simmel. Rétrotopie, publié à titre posthume quelques mois après sa disparition, peut être considéré comme une manière de testament - et comme une mise en garde de poids.
C'est que Bauman, avant de disparaître, constatait partout un refus général de se confronter véritablement aux grands défis de ce xxie siècle naissant - et, notamment, aux questions soulevées par des flux migratoires. Partout, on observe l'avènement d'une forme d'aspiration rétrograde, la volonté d'en revenir à un passé plus ou moins mythifié : soit le meilleur moyen d'éluder les questions les plus brûlantes tout en entamant un processus de régression possiblement catastrophique. " Le défi de la modernité, nous rappelle Bauman, est de vivre sans illusion et sans être désillusionné. "
Il reste à relever et ce livre nous y aide puissamment.
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LA PRESSE EN PARLE " Avec Retrotopia que Bauman écrivit juste avant de mourir à l'âge de 91 ans, cette grande voix alerte une nouvelle fois sur les mécanismes et les dangers des replis identitaires, rappelle que le sort funeste des migrants est scellé au nôtre, et invite à dépasser la peur pour créer d'urgence de nouvelles utopies. "
L'Obs " Court, dense, inattendu, voilà un livre qui s'impose comme le testament d'un grand intellectuel européen. "
Livres Hebdo " Le livre testament du sociologue décédé en 2017, [...][qui] y met en garde contre une "épidémie de nostalgie". "
La Croix " On y constate que le fameux sociologue polonais, exilé en Grande-Bretagne, n'avait rien perdu de son étonnante sagacité. ", Brice Couturier,
France Inter " Quand nous constatons la liquéfaction des institutions sociales, c'est du Bauman. Quand nous ne savons plus où sont les pouvoirs mais que nous pouvons certifier qu'ils ne sont plus là où nous sommes, c'est du Bauman. " Jean Lebrun,
France Inter " Cet ouvrage éclaire brillamment les périls auxquels sont confrontées nos sociétés modernes. Sociétés rongées par une "épidémie de nostalgie". "
Actualitté " À la fin de sa vie, Bauman s'inquiétait du refus général de se confronter véritablement à un grand défi du nouveau siècle [...]. Retrotopia, [...] essai publié quelques mois après sa mort, [...] peut être tenu pour son testament intellectuel. "
Le Soir " Sociologue, philosophe, penseur agile et inclassable, Bauman a achevé juste avant de mourir l'essai intitulé Retrotopia. Cette publication posthume confirme, si besoin était, l'extrême acuité de son regard. [...] Quels que soient les prises de distance et les désaccords que ce livre peut susciter, il faut s'y plonger sans hésitation. " Roger-Pol Droit,
Le Monde " Ni optimisme béat façon " croissante verte ", ni collapsologie paralysante, mais de la lucidité exigeante face aux défis de notre temps. "
Usbek et Rica " Ce dernier essai du grand sociologue ne se limite pas à offrir des clés de compréhension : il constitue une mise en garde troublante dont on on pourra tirer de nombreux enseignements. Volume refermé, on reste sidéré par l'incroyable lucidité du penseur. "
Livres critique -
" Mes critiques disent : "Les gens ont besoin de certitudes et vous instillez le doute.' Ils ont raison. "
" S'il existe un bon âge pour jauger sa vie et en faire le récit, c'est maintenant. " Zygmunt Bauman a bientôt soixante-dix ans lorsqu'il commence à écrire à ses filles pour leur raconter " le monde qui a existé avant qu'elles ne viennent au monde ". Né, juif, en Pologne en 1925, le grand sociologue, qui qualifiait nos sociétés modernes de liquides, aura traversé un siècle marqué par l'antisémitisme, la guerre, le communisme et l'exil. Sa vie porte leur empreinte indélébile.
Il revient dans ces pages, avec une rare liberté de ton et sans aucune auto-complaisance, sur les épisodes majeurs de sa trajectoire personnelle : ses années d'enfance en Pologne ; la Seconde Guerre mondiale et l'après-guerre ; sa vie dans la Pologne communiste et le départ forcé de son pays natal en 1968 - qu'il quitte tout d'abord pour Israël avant, très vite, de s'installer en Grande-Bretagne, où il vivra et enseignera jusqu'à la fin de sa vie.
En partie constitués de lettres initialement destinées à sa famille, qu'Izabela Wagner a soigneusement éditées, complétées et agencées, ces fragments de vie forment un récit autobiographique captivant, inséparable des réflexions de ce grand penseur sur certains des enjeux majeurs de l'époque : l'identité, l'antisémitisme et le totalitarisme. En cela, ils constituent un remarquable témoignage intellectuel et politique sur l'histoire du continent européen au XXe siècle.
" Rarement un sociologue aura su si finement observer "ce qui se passe' réellement dans une société. "
Robert Maggiori,
Libération" Zygmunt Bauman est l'analyste mondial sans doute le plus réputé de nos sociétés contemporaines. "
Patrice Bollon,
Philosophie Magazine" Sociologue, philosophe, penseur agile et inclassable. "
Roger-Pol Droit,
Le Monde" Avec la "modernité liquide', le sociologue polonais Zygmunt Bauman a formulé l'un des concepts les plus forts de l'après post-modernité. "
Ingrid Luquet-Gad,
Les Inrockuptibles -
Un essai incisif du grand sociologue Zygmunt Bauman, père du concept de société liquide, sur la crise des réfugiés.
Depuis toujours, des réfugiés, emmenés par la guerre et la faim, toquent à la porte de mieux lotis. Pour ceux qui se trouvent derrière ces portes, ces importuns ont toujours d'abord été des étrangers, des étrangers porteurs de peur et d'angoisse.
Nous sommes, aujourd'hui, confrontés à une forme extrême de ce motif historique. Alors que les médias sont obsédés par une " crise migratoire " qui menacerait notre mode de vie, on voit naître une véritable panique morale. L'idée que le bien-être de nos sociétés est menacée est désormais largement répandue.
C'est cette panique morale que dissèque Zygmunt Bauman dans ce petit essai incisif paru en 2016.
Il revient sur la manière dont hommes et femmes politiques ont exploité la peur pour la répandre d'abord chez les plus déshérités d'entre nous. À ceux-là, on promet d'ériger des murs, non des ponts. Mais si cette promesse rassure à court terme, elle est condamnée à l'échec sur le long terme.
Car la crise à laquelle nous sommes confrontés concerne l'humanité dans son ensemble. Nous sommes, plus que jamais, dépendants les uns des autres. Raison pour laquelle il nous faut inventer de nouvelles manières de vivre ensemble.
" Un ouvrage bref et passionné. "
Libération -
Les enfants de la société liquide
Zygmunt Bauman, Thomas Leoncini
- Fayard
- Essais
- 19 Septembre 2018
- 9782213711232
Selon Zygmunt Bauman, notre ère postmoderne a vu l'avènement d'une « société liquide », dans laquelle la communauté cède le pas à l'individualisme, le changement est la seule chose permanente et l'incertitude la seule certitude.
Connu dans le monde entier pour ses travaux éclairants sur notre monde, Zygmunt Bauman avaient entamé, peu avant sa mort, un dialogue avec Thomas Leoncini, un journaliste italien de soixante ans son cadet.
Celui-ci se fait le porte-parole des générations nées dans une « société liquide » et en perpétuelle mutation, abordant les enjeux du monde contemporain dans toute leur profondeur. Bauman les étudie avec un recul salutaire, des dynamiques de l'agressivité - et en particulier le phénomène du harcèlement -, aux questions que posent l'existence d'internet ou les transformations sexuelles et amoureuses.
Partisan d'une collaboration générationnelle, « qui génère le présent et générera le futur », le sociologue et philosophe de renommée mondiale s'adresse à tous avec simplicité et nous offre ici un formidable point d'entrée dans sa pensée.
Professeur émérite à l'université de Leeds et sociologue, Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) a publié de nombreux ouvrages, dont Le Coût humain de la mondialisation, L'Amour liquide, La Société assiégée, La Vie liquide dans la collection « Pluriel ». Thomas Leoncini est un journaliste italien né en 1985.
Propos de Zygmunt Bauman traduits de l'anglais par Christophe Jacquet ; propos de Thomas Leoncini traduits de l'italien par Marc Lesage
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Notre monde n'a jamais été aussi riche ni si inégalitaire. N'en déplaise aux fondamentalistes de la croissance économique, le fossé continue de se creuser entre les uns, de plus en plus riches, et les autres, de plus en plus pauvres. À l'heure actuelle, une infime minorité de la population mondiale concentre près de la moitié des richesses totales. La « main invisible » des marchés opère pour une petite caste, étranglant tous les autres.
Dans cet essai incisif, Zygmunt Bauman condamne les mirages de la société de consommation, du toujours plus. Il poursuit sa réflexion sur les ravages de la mondialisation, en attaquant les systèmes élitistes. Il montre leur inefficacité économique et sociale, ainsi que les dangers qui pèsent désormais sur la démocratie. -
We are living in an open sea, caught up in a continuous wave, with no fixed point and no instrument to measure distance and the direction of travel. Nothing appears to be in its place any more, and a great deal appears to have no place at all. The principles that have given substance to the democratic ethos, the system of rules that has guided the relationships of authority and the ways in which they are legitimized, the shared values and their hierarchy, our behaviour and our life styles, must be radically revised because they no longer seem suited to our experience and understanding of a world in flux, a world that has become both increasingly interconnected and prone to severe and persistent crises.
We are living in the interregnum between what is no longer and what is not yet. None of the political movements that helped undermine the old world are ready to inherit it, and there is no new ideology, no consistent vision, promising to give shape to new institutions for the new world. It is like the Babylon referred to by Borges, the country of randomness and uncertainty in which `no decision is final; all branch into others'. Out of the world that had promised us modernity, what Jean Paul Sartre had summarized with sublime formula `le choix que je suis' (`the choice that I am'), we inhabit that flattened, mobile and dematerialized space, where as never before the principle of the heterogenesis of purposes is sovereign.
This is Babel. -
With the advent of liquid modernity, the society of producers is transformed into a society of consumers. In this new consumer society, individuals become simultaneously the promoters of commodities and the commodities they promote. They are, at one and the same time, the merchandise and the marketer, the goods and the travelling salespeople. They all inhabit the same social space that is customarily described by the term the market.
The test they need to pass in order to acquire the social prizes they covet requires them to recast themselves as products capable of drawing attention to themselves. This subtle and pervasive transformation of consumers into commodities is the most important feature of the society of consumers. It is the hidden truth, the deepest and most closely guarded secret, of the consumer society in which we now live. In this new book Zygmunt Bauman examines the impact of consumerist attitudes and patterns of conduct on various apparently unconnected aspects of social life politics and democracy, social divisions and stratification, communities and partnerships, identity building, the production and use of knowledge, and value preferences.
The invasion and colonization of the web of human relations by the worldviews and behavioural patterns inspired and shaped by commodity markets, and the sources of resentment, dissent and occasional resistance to the occupying forces, are the central themes of this brilliant new book by one of the worlds most original and insightful social thinkers. -
'Liquid life' is the kind of life commonly lived in our contemporary, liquid-modern society. Liquid life cannot stay on course, as liquid-modern society cannot keep its shape for long. Liquid life is a precarious life, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty. The most acute and stubborn worries that haunt this liquid life are the fears of being caught napping, of failing to catch up with fast moving events, of overlooking the `use by' dates and being saddled with worthless possessions, of missing the moment calling for a change of tack and being left behind. Liquid life is also shot through by a contradiction: it ought to be a (possibly unending) series of new beginnings, yet precisely for that reason it is full of worries about swift and painless endings, without which new beginnings would be unthinkable. Among the arts of liquid-modern living and the skills needed to practice them, getting rid of things takes precedence over their acquisition. This and other challenges of life in a liquid-modern society are traced and unravelled in the successive chapters of this new book by one of the most brilliant and original social thinkers of our time.
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A victim of the Nazis, then the communists. Twice a refugee, yet always remaining a committed socialist. In countless ways, Zygmunt Bauman lived the political upheavals of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He was an actor within them. Bauman's own lived history informed his politics, which found expression in varying degrees in his sociology, as he wrote extensively on socialism, democracy, bureaucracy, morality, Europe and the Jewish experience. This volume brings together hitherto unknown or rare pieces by Bauman on the themes of history and politics by drawing upon previously unpublished material from the Bauman Archive at the University of Leeds. A substantial introduction by the editors provides readers with a lucid guide through this material and develops connections to Bauman's other works. The second volume in a series of books that will make available the lesser-known writings of one of the most influential social thinkers of our time, History and Politics will be of interest to students and scholars across the arts, humanities and social sciences, and to a wider readership.
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L'âge de la Régression
Arjun Appaduraï, Zygmunt Bauman, Donatella Della Porta, Nancy Fraser, Eva Illouz, Ivan Krastev, Bruno Latour, Paul
- Premier Parallèle
- 13 Avril 2017
- 9791094841495
Un grand débat international sur la situation contemporaine, porté par 15 intellectuels du monde entier : Arjun Appadurai, Zygmunt Bauman, Nancy Fraser, Bruno Latour, Eva Illouz, Ivan Krastev, Paul Mason, Pankaj Mishra, Robert Misik, Oliver Nachtwey, Donatella della Porta, César Rendueles, Wolfgang Streeck, Slavoj Zizek.
Nous vivons un tournant historique.
Non, nous n'avons pas assisté à la "fin de l'Histoire". Loin de marquer le début du règne d'une démocratie universelle et d'un capitalisme heureux, la chute du mur de Berlin a inauguré une période de tourments politiques.
Ascension de partis nationalistes (pensons par exemple au Front national), démagogie (telle que l'incarne Donald Trump), souverainisme (Brexit), tendances autoritaristes d'Europe centrale et d'Europe de l'Est (Hongrie et Pologne), appels à la " grandeur " et à la " pureté " nationale (Narendra Modi en Inde, Vladimir Poutine en Russie), vague générale de xénophobie et de crimes haineux, brutalisation des discours politiques, complotisme, " ère post-vérité ", appels à l'érection de murs toujours plus nombreux, toujours plus hauts...
Tout se passe comme si nous assistions à un grand retour en arrière.
Comme si la peur, la violence et le repli sur soi l'emportaient sur les espoirs jadis nourris par la mondialisation.
Quinze intellectuels, chercheurs et universitaires de renommée internationale explorent les racines profondes de la situation qui est la nôtre aujourd'hui, et qu'il est permis d'appeler une "grande régression". Ils la replacent dans son contexte historique, s'attachent à élaborer des scénarios possibles pour les années à venir, et débattent des stratégies susceptibles de la contrecarrer.
" Un ouvrage passionnant. " Télérama
" Une boîte à outils pour penser la période actuelle. "
France Inter " Les intellectuels de L'Âge de la Régression tentent de construire une nouvelle grille de lecture. (...) Une opération saute frontière pour diagnostiquer un mal global. Un livre en commun pour un monde qui se claquemure. "
Libération.
" La manifeste mondial contre le populisme. (...) Ouvrage magistral (...) qui acte l'effondrement d'un monde né après la chute du Mur en 1989. "
L'Obs. -
What Use is Sociology?
Zygmunt Bauman, Keith Tester, Michael Hviid Jacobsen
- Polity
- 6 Février 2014
- 9780745679884
What's the use of sociology? The question has been asked often enough and it leaves a lingering doubt in the minds of many. At a time when there is widespread scepticism about the value of sociology and of the social sciences generally, this short book by one of the world's leading thinkers offers a passionate, engaging and important statement of the need for sociology.
In a series of conversations with Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Keith Tester, Zygmunt Bauman explains why sociology is necessary if we hope to live fully human lives. But the kind of sociology he advocates is one which sees 'use' as more than economic success and knowledge as more than the generation of facts. Bauman makes a powerful case for the practice of sociology as an ongoing dialogue with human experience, and in so doing he issues a call for us all to start questioning the common sense of our everyday lives. He also offers the clearest statement yet of the principles which inform his own work, reflecting on his life and career and on the role of sociology in our contemporary liquid-modern world.
This book stands as a testimony to Bauman's belief in the enduring relevance of sociology. But it is also a call to us all to start questioning the world in which we live and to transform ourselves from being the victims of circumstance into the makers of our own history. For that, at the end of the day, is the use of sociology. -
Today we hear much talk of crisis and comparisons are often made with the Great Depression of the 1930s, but there is a crucial difference that sets our current malaise apart from the 1930s: today we no longer trust in the capacity of the state to resolve the crisis and to chart a new way forward. In our increasingly globalized world, states have been stripped of much of their power to shape the course of events. Many of our problems are globally produced but the volume of power at the disposal of individual nation-states is simply not sufficient to cope with the problems they face. This divorce between power and politics produces a new kind of paralysis. It undermines the political agency that is needed to tackle the crisis and it saps citizens' belief that governments can deliver on their promises. The impotence of governments goes hand in hand with the growing cynicism and distrust of citizens. Hence the current crisis is at once a crisis of agency, a crisis of representative democracy and a crisis of the sovereignty of the state.
In this book the world-renowned sociologist Zygmunt Bauman and fellow traveller Carlo Bordoni explore the social and political dimensions of the current crisis. While this crisis has been greatly exacerbated by the turmoil following the financial crisis of 2007-8, Bauman and Bordoni argue that the crisis facing Western societies is rooted in a much more profound series of transformations that stretch back further in time and are producing long-lasting effects.
This highly original analysis of our current predicament by two of the world's leading social thinkers will be of interest to a wide readership. -
Refugees from the violence of wars and the brutality of famished lives have knocked on other people's doors since the beginning of time. For the people behind the doors, these uninvited guests were always strangers, and strangers tend to generate fear and anxiety precisely because they are unknown. Today we find ourselves confronted with an extreme form of this historical dynamic, as our TV screens and newspapers are filled with accounts of a 'migration crisis', ostensibly overwhelming Europe and portending the collapse of our way of life. This anxious debate has given rise to a veritable 'moral panic' - a feeling of fear spreading among a large number of people that some evil threatens the well-being of society.
In this short book Zygmunt Bauman analyses the origins, contours and impact of this moral panic - he dissects, in short, the present-day migration panic. He shows how politicians have exploited fears and anxieties that have become widespread, especially among those who have already lost so much - the disinherited and the poor. But he argues that the policy of mutual separation, of building walls rather than bridges, is misguided. It may bring some short-term reassurance but it is doomed to fail in the long run. We are faced with a crisis of humanity, and the only exit from this crisis is to recognize our growing interdependence as a species and to find new ways to live together in solidarity and cooperation, amidst strangers who may hold opinions and preferences different from our own. -
In this new book Zygmunt Bauman and Riccardo Mazzeo examine the contentious issue of the relation between literature (and the arts in general) and sociology (or, more generally, a branch of the humanities claiming scientific status). While many commentators see literature and sociology as radically different vocations, Bauman and Mazzeo argue that they are bound together by a common purpose and a shared subject matter. Despite the many differences in terms of their methods and their ways of presenting their findings, novels and sociological texts are not at cross-purposes. Indeed, it is precisely their differences that make them at once indispensable to each other and mutually complementary.
The writers of novels and of sociological texts may explore their world from different perspectives, seeking and producing different types of `data', but their products bear the unmistakable marks of their shared origin. They feed each other and depend on each other in terms of their agenda, their discoveries and the contents of their messages. In a world characterized by the continuous search for new sensations and the fetishism of consumption, they bring fundamental existential questions back to the public agenda. Literature and sociology reveal the truth of the human condition only when they stay in one another's company, remaining attentive to each other's findings and engaged in a continuous dialogue. For only together can they rise to the challenging task of untangling and laying bare the complex intertwining of biography and history as well as of individual and society that totality we are constantly shaping while being shaped by it. -
There is nothing new about evil; it has been with us since time immemorial. But there is something new about the kind of evil that characterizes our contemporary liquid-modern world. The evil that characterized earlier forms of solid modernity was concentrated in the hands of states claiming monopolies on the means of coercion and using the means at their disposal to pursue their ends ends that were at times horrifically brutal and barbaric. In our contemporary liquid-modern societies, by contrast, evil has become altogether more pervasive and at the same time less visible. Liquid evil hides in the seams of the canvass woven daily by the liquid-modern mode of human interaction and commerce, conceals itself in the very tissue of human cohabitation and in the course of its routine and day-to-day reproduction. Evil lurks in the countless black holes of a thoroughly deregulated and privatized social space in which cutthroat competition and mutual estrangement have replaced cooperation and solidarity, while forceful individualization erodes the adhesive power of inter-human bonds. In its present form evil is hard to spot, unmask and resist. It seduces us by its ordinariness and then jumps out without warning, striking seemingly at random. The result is a social world that is comparable to a minefield: we know it is full of explosives and that explosions will happen sooner or later but we have no idea when and where they will occur.
In this new book, the sequel to their acclaimed work Moral Blindness Zygmunt Bauman and Leonidas Donskis guide the reader through this new terrain in which evil has become both more ordinary and more insidious, threatening to strip humanity of its dreams, alternative projects and powers of dissent at the very time when they are needed most. -
Management in a Liquid Modern World
Monika Kostera, Zygmunt Bauman, Irena Bauman, Jerzy Kociatkiewicz
- Polity
- 22 Décembre 2015
- 9781509502233
Management has been one of the driving forces of the last century, indeed an idea and a language that colonized most other institutions, areas of human activity and walks of life, even those that had until recently been regarded as completely unmanageable, such as art, academia and creativity. Some it supported and others it destroyed, but there are few areas in modern societies that have been untouched by it. What is the meaning of management now almost omnipresent and all-powerful in our current bleak times, in our current state of 'interregnum' that is characterized by an increasing sense of insecurity and hopelessness, a time when, paradoxically, the seemingly omnipotent force of management does not seem to work? Does it have a role to play today and in the future? What can it become and whom should it serve when the interregnum is over and a new, hopefully more humane, system begins to dawn? These are some of the questions explored in this timely new book by Zygmunt Bauman, one of the greatest thinkers of our times, architect and Urban Studies professor Irena Bauman, and two organization and management scholars, Jerzy Kociatkiewicz and Monika Kostera.
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Management in a Liquid Modern World
Monika Kostera, Zygmunt Bauman, Irena Bauman, Jerzy Kociatkiewicz
- Polity
- 29 Octobre 2015
- 9781509502257
Management has been one of the driving forces of the last century, indeed an idea and a language that colonized most other institutions, areas of human activity and walks of life, even those that had until recently been regarded as completely unmanageable, such as art, academia and creativity. Some it supported and others it destroyed, but there are few areas in modern societies that have been untouched by it. What is the meaning of management now almost omnipresent and all-powerful in our current bleak times, in our current state of 'interregnum' that is characterized by an increasing sense of insecurity and hopelessness, a time when, paradoxically, the seemingly omnipotent force of management does not seem to work? Does it have a role to play today and in the future? What can it become and whom should it serve when the interregnum is over and a new, hopefully more humane, system begins to dawn? These are some of the questions explored in this timely new book by Zygmunt Bauman, one of the greatest thinkers of our times, architect and Urban Studies professor Irena Bauman, and two organization and management scholars, Jerzy Kociatkiewicz and Monika Kostera.
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Sketches in the Theory of Culture is a remarkable work by all measures. Written by Zygmunt Bauman when he was still a professor in Poland, and originally intended for publication in 1968, it was suppressed by the Polish government in the wave of repression following the protests in March of that year. For decades, it was thought to be lost. Astonishingly, it survived in the form of an uncorrected set of proofs which was recently discovered, and is the basis of this edition.
Now published in English for the first time, this book sheds new light on Bauman's work prior to his emigration and illuminates the intellectual climate of Poland in the late 1960s. Bauman's pursuit of a semiotic theory of culture includes a discussion of processes of individualization and the intensification of global ties, anticipating themes that became central to his later work. Though this book stands as a testament to a historical moment, it also transcends it. `[W]e live in an age that seems, for the first time in human history, to acknowledge cultural multiplicity as an innate and fixed feature of the world, one which gives rise to new forms of identity that are at ease with plurality, like a fish in water', writes Bauman - a statement that is as true today as it was when he penned it in the 1960s.
Sketches in the Theory of Culture is a strikingly prescient reflection on culture and society by one of the most influential social thinkers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities and to the many readers of Bauman's work. -
Zygmunt Bauman's new book is a brilliant exploration, from a sociological point of view, of the 'taboo' subject in modern societies: death and dying. The book develops a new theory of the ways in which human mortality is reacted to, and dealt with, in social institutions and culture. The hypothesis explored in the book is that the necessity of human beings to live with the constant awareness of death accounts for crucial aspects of the social organization of all known societies. Two different 'life strategies' are distinguished in respect of reactions to mortality. One, 'the modern strategy', deconstructs mortality by translating the insoluble issue of death into many specific problems of health and disease which are 'soluble in principle'. The 'post-modern strategy' is one of deconstructing immortality: life is transformed into a constant rehearsal of 'reversible death', a substitution of 'temporary disappearance' for the irrevocable termination of life. This profound and provocative book will appeal to a wide audience. It will also be of particular interest to students and professionals in the areas of sociology, anthropology, theology and philosophy.
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Modern civilization, Bauman argues, promised to make our lives understandable and open to our control. This has not happened and today we no longer believe it ever will. In this book, now available in paperback, Bauman argues that our postmodern age is the time for reconciliation with ambivalence, we must learn how to live in an incurably ambiguous world.
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The global financial crisis has shattered the illusion that all was well with capitalism and forced us to confront the great challenges we face today with a new sense of urgency. Few are better placed to do this than Zygmunt Bauman, a social thinker whose writings on liquid modernity have pioneered a new way of seeing the world in which we live at the dawn of the 21st Century. Our liquid modern world is characterized by the transition from a society of producers to a society of consumers, the natural extension of which is the society of perpetual debtors. The ruling idea of the society of consumers is to prevent needs from being satisfied and to create demand; its natural extension is to enable consumers to consume more by borrowing. Debt was transformed into a crucial profit-earning asset of capitalism in liquid modern times. The present-day 'credit crunch' is not the outcome of the banks' failure but rather the fruit of their success in transforming the majority of men and women, young and old, into a race of debtors. They got what they were looking for: a society of debtors whose condition of being in debt was made self-perpetuating, with more debts being offered, and more undertaken, as the only way of escaping from the debts already incurred. Starting from this reflection on the current global financial crisis and prompted by the probing questions of his interlocutor, Citlali Rovirosa-Madrazo, Bauman examines in an historical perspective some of the most pressing moral and political issues of our time, from international terrorism and the rise of religious and secular fundamentalism to the decline of the nation-state and the threats posed by global warming, issues whose seriousness and urgency attest to the fact that we are living today not only on borrowed money but also on borrowed time.
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The production of `human waste' - or more precisely, wasted lives, the `superfluous' populations of migrants, refugees and other outcasts - is an inevitable outcome of modernization. It is an unavoidable side-effect of economic progress and the quest for order which is characteristic of modernity.
As long as large parts of the world remained wholly or partly unaffected by modernization, they were treated by modernizing societies as lands that were able to absorb the excess of population in the `developed countries'. Global solutions were sought, and temporarily found, to locally produced overpopulation problems. But as modernization has reached the furthest lands of the planet, `redundant population' is produced everywhere and all localities have to bear the consequences of modernity's global triumph. They are now confronted with the need to seek - in vain, it seems - local solutions to globally produced problems. The global spread of the modernity has given rise to growing quantities of human beings who are deprived of adequate means of survival, but the planet is fast running out of places to put them. Hence the new anxieties about `immigrants' and `asylum seekers' and the growing role played by diffuse `security fears' on the contemporary political agenda.
With characteristic brilliance, this new book by Zygmunt Bauman unravels the impact of this transformation on our contemporary culture and politics and shows that the problem of coping with `human waste' provides a key for understanding some otherwise baffling features of our shared life, from the strategies of global domination to the most intimate aspects of human relationships. -
Born Liquid is the last work by the great sociologist and social theorist Zygmunt Bauman, whose brilliant analyses of liquid modernity changed the way we think about our world today. At the time of his death, Bauman was working on this short book, a conversation with the Italian journalist Thomas Leoncini, exactly sixty years his junior. In these exchanges with Leoncini, Bauman considers, for the first time, the world of those born after the early 1980s, the individuals who were `born liquid' and feel at home in a society of constant flux. As always, taking his cue from contemporary issues and debates, Bauman examines this world by discussing what are often regarded as its most ephemeral features. The transformation of the body - tattoos, cosmetic surgery, hipsters - aggression, bullying, the Internet, online dating, gender transitions and changing sexual preferences are all analysed with characteristic brilliance in this concise and topical book, which will be of particular interest to young people, natives of the liquid modern world, as well as to Bauman's many readers of all generations.
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We are spurred into action by our troubles and fears; but all too often our action fails to address the true causes of our worries. When trying to make sense of our lives, we tend to blame our own failings and weaknesses for our discomforts and defeats. And in doing so, we make things worse rather than better. Reasonable beings that we are, how does this happen and why does it go on happening?
These are the questions addressed in this new book by Zygmunt Bauman - one of the most original and perceptive social thinkers writing today. For Bauman, the task of sociology is not to censor or correct the stories we tell of our lives, but to show that there are more ways in which our life stories can be told. By bringing into view the many complex dependencies invisible from the vantage point of private experience, sociology can help us to link our individual decisions and actions to the deeper causes of our troubles and fears - to the ways we live, to the conditions under which we act, to the socially drawn limits of our imagination and ambition. Sociology can help us to understand the processes that have shaped the society in which we live today, a society in which individualization has become our fate. And sociology can also help us to see that if our individual but shared anxieties are to be effectively tackled, they need to be addressed collectively, true to their social, not individual, nature.
The Individualized Society will be of great interest to students of sociology, politics and the social sciences and humanities generally. It will also appeal to a broader range of readers who are interested in the changing nature of our social and political life today.