Zygmunt Bauman

Bauman in Warsaw, 2005

Zygmunt Bauman (born 1925 in Poznań, Poland) is a British sociologist of Polish-Jewish descent. From 1971 until 1990 he was professor of sociology at the University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom. In the late 1980s, he gained prominence through his studies on the connection between the culture of modernity and totalitarianism.

Bauman's research interest focused around social stratification, the labour movement, before shifting to more global concerns, such as the nature of modernity etc. The most prolific period of his career began after his retirement from teaching at Leeds, when he rose to prominence outside the circles of professional sociologists with a book on the presumed connection between the ideology of modernity and the Holocaust. His central contention was that the Holocaust was essentially not an accidental lapse into pre-civilised irrational barbarity, but a logical (although not inevitable) consequence of modern civilisation and its belief in large-scale social engineering. In the 1990s, Bauman's interest shifted from the failure of modernity towards the hardships created by postmodernity. Although he is often referred to as a "postmodern" thinker, his skepticism of the concept clearly sets him apart from the more optimistic representatives of postmodernism; neither does he share the notion of a relativistic postmodern science. In recent years, he dismissed the notion of "modernity" vs. "postmodernity", using the concepts "solid" and "liquid" modernity instead. Bauman caused some controversy within sociology with his contention that moral human behaviour cannot primarily be explained by social determination or rational deliberation, but rather rests on some innate, pre-societal impulse in individuals. From the late 1990s, Bauman exerted a considerable influence on the anti- or Alter-globalization movement.

Biography

Bauman was born to non-practising Jewish parents in Poznań, Poland, in 1925. The familiy escaped into the Soviet zone of occupation, after Poland was invaded by Nazi-German troops in 1939 at the beginning of World War II. He later served in the Soviet-controlled Polish First Army, with which he participated in the battles of Kolberg (now Kołobrzeg) and Berlin and in which he also worked as a political education instructor.

According to semi-official statements of a historian with the Polish Institute of National Remembrance made in the conservative magazine Ozon in May 2006, from 1945 to 1953 Bauman held a similar function in the Corps for Domestic Security (KBW), a military unit formed to combat the remnants of the anti-communist, Ukrainian and German underground in Poland. Bauman, the magazine states, distinguished himself as the leader of a unit that captured a large number of underground combatants, for which he was awarded the Polish Cross of Valour in 1950. Further, the author cites evidence that Bauman worked as an informer for the Military Intelligence from 1945 to 1948. However, the nature and extent of his collaboration remain unknown, as well as the exact circumstances under which it was terminated.Template:See-note

While serving in the KBW, Bauman studied first sociology at the Warsaw Academy of Social Sciences, a university-level communist party school. He went on to study philosophy at the University of Warsaw - sociology had temporarily been cancelled from the Polish curricula as a "bourgeois" discipline -, where his teachers included Stanisław Ossowski and Julian Hochfeld.

In the KBW, Bauman had risen to the rank of major when he was suddenly dishonourably discharged in 1953, after his father had inquired about the possibility of emigration to Israel with the Israeli embassy in Warsaw. This led to a severe temporary estrangement between the father and son, as Bauman not only did not share his father's Zionist tendencies, but was strongly anti-Zionist himself. During the period of unemployment that followed, Bauman completed his M.A. degree. He became a lecturer at the University of Warsaw in 1954, where he remained employed until 1968.

During a stay at the London School of Economics, where his supervisor was Robert McKenzie, he prepared a comprehensive study on the British socialist movement, which became his first major book. Published in Polish in 1959, a translated and revised edition appeared in English in 1972.

Bauman went on to publish several books, including Socjologia na co dzień ("Sociology for everyday life", 1964), which reached a large popular audience in Poland and later formed the foundation for the English-language text-book Thinking Sociologically (1990).

Initially, Bauman remained close to the official Marxist doctrine. However, he grew increasingly critical of the communist government under the influence of Antonio Gramsci's and Georg Simmel's work. Due to his critical position towards the regime, he was never nominally awarded the title of professor, even though he had completed his habilitation. However, Bauman de facto held the chair of his erstwhile teacher Julian Hochfeld, after Hochfeld had become vice-director of UNESCO's Department for Social Sciences in Paris in 1962.

In March 1968, an anti-Semitic purge in Poland (March 1968 events) drove most surviving and remaining Polish Jews out of the country, including many intellectuals who had fallen from grace with the communist government. Bauman, who had lost his chair at the University of Warsaw, was one of them. He first went to Israel to teach at Tel Aviv University, before accepting a chair in sociology at the University of Leeds, where he intermittently also served as head of department. Since then, he has published almost exclusively in English, his third language.

Bauman is married to writer Janina Bauman and has three daughters, among whom is the painter Lydia Bauman.

References

1. ^ Piotr Gontarczyk, "Towarzysz 'Semjon': Professor Zygmunt Bauman, intelektualny patron nowej lewicy, był oficerem i agentem komunistycznej bezpieki" [Comrade "Semjon": Professor Zygmunt Bauman, the intellectual patron of the New Left, was an officer and agent of the communist security apparatus], in: Ozon, no. 23/2006 [1].

Major Awards

Bauman was awarded the European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences in 1992 and the Theodor W. Adorno Award of the city of Frankfurt in 1998.

File:Zygmunt Bauman Adorno-Prize.JPG

Bauman with the Theodor W. Adorno Award, 1998

Works

• 1959: Socjalizm brytyjski: Źródła, filozofia, doktryna polityczna [British Socialism: Sources, Philosophy, Political Doctrine]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
• 1960: Klasa, ruch, elita: Studium socjologiczne dziejów angielskiego ruchu robotniczego [Class, Movement, Elite: A Sociological Study on the History of the British Labour Movement]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
• 1961: Z zagadnień współczesnej socjologii amerykańskiej [Questions of Modern American Sociology]. Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza.
• 1962, (co-edited with S. Chodak, J. Strojnowski, J. Banaszkiewicz): Systemy partyjne współczesnego kapitalizmu [The Party Systems of Modern Capitalism]. Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza.
• 1962: Spoleczeństwo, w ktorym żyjemy [The Society We Live In]. Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza.
• 1962: Zarys socjologii. Zagadnienia i pojęcia [Outline of Sociology. Questions and Concepts]. Warszawa 1962: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
• 1964: Zarys marksistowskiej teorii spoleczeństwa [Outline of the Marxist Theory of Society]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
• 1964: Socjologia na co dzień [Sociology for Everyday Life]. Warszawa: Iskry.
• 1965: Wizje ludzkiego świata. Studia nad społeczną genezą i funkcją socjologii [Visions of a Human World: Studies on the social genesis and the function of sociology]. Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza.
• 1966: Kultura i społeczeństwo. Preliminaria [Culture and Society, Preliminaries]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
• 1972: Between Class and Elite. The Evolution of the British Labour Movement. A Sociological Study. Manchester: Manchester University Press ISBN 0719005027 (Polish original 1960)
• 1973: Culture as Praxis. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 0761959890
• 1976: Socialism: The Active Utopia. New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers. ISBN 0841902402
• 1976: Towards a Critical Sociology: An Essay on Common-Sense and Emancipation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 0710083068
• 1978: Hermeneutics and Social Science: Approaches to Understanding. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0091325315
• 1982: Memories of Class: The Pre-history and After-life of Class. London/Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 0710091966
• c1985 Stalin and the peasant revolution: a case study in the dialectics of master and slave. Leeds: University of Leeds Department of Sociology. ISBN 0907427189
• 1987: Legislators and interpreters - On Modernity, Post-Modernity, Intellectuals. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801421047
• 1988: Freedom. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335155928
• 1989: Modernity and The Holocaust. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press 1989. ISBN 080142397X
• 1990: Paradoxes of Assimilation. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
• 1990: Thinking Sociologically. An introduction for Everyone. Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0631163611
• 1991: Modernity and Ambivalence. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801426030
• 1992: Intimations of Postmodernity. London, New York: Routhledge. ISBN 0415067502
• 1992: Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0745610161
• 1993: Postmodern Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-18693-X
• 1995: Life in Fragments. Essays in Postmodern Morality. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0631192670
• 1996: Alone Again - Ethics After Certainty. London: Demos. ISBN 1-898-30940-X
• 1997: Postmodernity and its discontents. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0745617913
• 1998: Work, consumerism and the new poor. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335201555
• 1998: Globalization: The Human Consequences. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0745620124
• 1999: In Search of Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0745621724
• 2000: Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press ISBN 074562409X
• 2001: Community. Seeking Safety in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0745626343
• 2001: The Individualized Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0745625061
• 2001: Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0745626645
• 2002: Society Under Siege. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0745629849
• 2003: Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds, Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0745624898
• 2003: City of fears, city of hopes. London: Goldsmith's College. ISBN 1904158374
• 2004: Wasted Lives. Modernity and its Outcasts. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0745631649
• 2004: Europe: An Unfinished Adventure. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0745634036
• 2004: Identity: Conversations with Benedetto Vecchi. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0745633080
• 2005: Liquid Life. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0745635148
• 2006: Liquid Fear. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0745636802 (due September 28, 2006)

External links

• Articles By Zygmunt Bauman
• Bauman's resume on the official staff list of the University of Leeds's School of Sociology and Social Policy
• Free full-text download of Alone Again - Ethics After Certainty (1996) from the official publisher Demos (PDF)
• Europe of Strangers - Oxford University Transnational Communities Programme Working Paper (PDF)
• Interview and profile of Bauman from The Guardian
• Book Review: Zygmunt Bauman's 'Modernity and the Holocaust'