Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman E-Book

Zygmunt Bauman

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: PCVS-Polity Conversations Series
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 286

Beschreibung

Zygmunt Bauman is one of the leading figures in contemporary social thought. His work ranges across issues of ethics, culture and politics. It never forgets that social thought ought to help men and women make sense of their lives and aspire towards something different. His books and essays always focus on the here and now: violence and moral indifference, globalization, consumerism, politics and individualization. They cast a sharp eye on the panaceas of 'there is no alternative'; the embrace of community and the fads of the 'counselling boom'; through which men and women are told that they can achieve biographical solutions to what are, in fact, systemic problems. In this new book, Zygmunt Bauman and Keith Tester engage in five accessible conversations that uncover and explore the assumptions and commitments underpinning Bauman's ground-breaking social thought. The conversations show how those commitments have influenced Bauman's analyses of modernity, postmodernity and 'liquid modernity'. The book ranges widely, from autobiographical reflection through to pointers for the understanding and future of Bauman's social thought. The conversations illustrate the moral substance of Bauman's refusal to accept that the world cannot be made different. They show why social thought is a human necessity. Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman is a book which will offer fresh insight into Bauman's work for those who are familiar with it, and provide an engaging and helpful entry point for those who are new to it.

Leseprobe

Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman

Zygmunt Bauman and Keith Tester

Polity

Copyright © Zygmunt Bauman and Keith Tester 2001

The right of Zygmunt Bauman and Keith Tester to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2001 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd

Editorial office: Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Marketing and production:Published in the USA byBlackwell Publishers LtdBlackwell Publishers Inc.108 Cowley Road350 Main StreetOxford OX4 1JF, UKMaiden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 0-7456-2664-5 ISBN 0-7456-2665-3 (pbk)ISBN: 978-0-7456-5713-4 (eBook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and has been applied for from the Library of Congress.

Typeset in 11 on 13 pt Berling by SetSystems Ltd, Saffron Walden, Essex Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Conversation 1Context and Sociological Horizons

Conversation 2Ethics and Human Values

Conversation 3The Ambivalence of Modernity

Conversation 4Individualization and Consumer Society

Conversation 5Politics

Notes

Bibliography

And Polo said: The inferno of the living is not something that will be: if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.’

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Preface

The conversations which constitute the bulk of this book took place over the spring and summer of 2000. They were carried out with three main aims in mind.

First, the conversations were held to give Zygmunt Bauman an opportunity to outline some of the deep currents beneath the surfaces of the many texts with which he has changed the nature of a significant proportion of contemporary social thought.

Second, the conversations sought to provide a context in which Bauman could explore some of his ideas in a relatively relaxed manner and, thereby, summarize what he takes to be some of the key concerns of the body of work that bears his name.

Third, the conversations were held to enable Bauman to reflect upon the meanings which his texts have come to possess, as they have spun out of the control of the author and come to take on what amounts to a life of their own.

If this book achieves any of those aims it will have succeeded admirably and, hopefully, it will therefore encourage new generations of social thinkers to go to Bauman’s books for themselves and grapple with their challenges, insights and inspirations.

Zygmunt Bauman’s work is, to say the least, voluminous and its quantity increases at a prodigious rate. Furthermore, the English-language work for which Bauman is best known was preceded by a number of books and essays which he wrote in his native Poland, before his expulsion in 1968. It would have been a foolish task for these conversations to attempt to summarize and reflect upon the complete body of his work. Consequently, the book focuses mostly on Bauman’s ‘English period’ work. It must also be noted that these conversations took place during a specific moment in Bauman’s intellectual career, at a time when his groundbreaking concern with postmodernity was being replaced with a new orientation of his thought around a conception of liquid modernity’, at a time when certain of the ethical commitments which make his work so distinctive were being reconfigured through conceptions of politics and justice.

It is necessary to make it perfectly clear that Zygmunt Bauman exercised (and sought) no control over the questions I asked, and neither did he make any attempt (nor did he wish) to influence the comments on his work which I offer in the introduction (and for which I alone am responsible).

Zygmunt Bauman displayed an extraordinary good humour, friendliness and warmth during the putting together of this book. As ever, I would like to acknowledge the considerable debts I owe to him. I would also like to thank Ross Abbinnett, Chris Shilling and John Thompson for their good advice.

Keith Tester

Introduction

It will be useful to organize this introduction by asking and answering three questions. Who is Zygmunt Bauman? What does he do? Why does he do it? Needless to say, an introduction of this length cannot pay any adequate attention to the breadth and complexity of Bauman’s thought. I do not pretend that it can. The aim of this introduction is very modest. It seeks simply to provide a way into Bauman’s social thought for those who are unfamiliar with it. Reading Bauman’s books is not comforting but it does make you think differently about the world, yourself and, perhaps most importantly of all, your relationships to and with others.

Who is Zygmunt Bauman?

One way of answering the first question is to refer to one of the claims that have been made about Bauman’s work. It has been said that he is ‘one of the most interesting and influential commentators on… our human condition’. That quotation is from Dennis Smith’s biography of Bauman, and Smith also thinks that ‘Bauman is part of the story he tells’ (Smith 1999: 3). Smith’s point is that Bauman’s books and essays are one of the most significant bodies of work for understanding the nature of the world in which we live, and that Bauman is an especially keen observer of the key trends and forces of the present because he has experienced them in an especially sharp way.

Smith speculates that many of Bauman’s intellectual concerns reflect his life experiences. This is going too far, but the nub of the point is well made. It is hard to imagine that Bauman’s experiences have had no impact upon the themes and temper of his social thought. Bauman was born into a poor Jewish family in Poland in 1925. With his family he fled to the Soviet Union from the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939. There, he joined the Polish Army and fought on the Russian Front. Bauman started an academic career in the early 1950s, and was a professor at the University of Warsaw until he was exiled during an anti-Semitic campaign by the Communist authorities in 1968. He became Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds in 1971, where he remained until his formal retirement in 1990. One point which it is worth pulling out of this biographical sketch is the fact that when Bauman writes in English he is writing in what is at least his language (having been born in Poland and schooled in the Soviet Union).