A Sociology of Bauman

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THE SOCIOLOGY OF ZYGMUNT BAUMAN


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The Sociology ofZygmunt Bauman

Challenges and Critique

Edited by

MICHAEL HVIID JACOBSEN Aalborg University, Denmark

and POUL PODER

Univeristy of Copenhagen, Denmark


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© Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Poul Poder 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Poul Poder have asserted their right under the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

Published byAshgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing CompanyGower House Suite 420

Croft Road 101 Cherry StreetAldershot Burlington, VT 05401-4405Hampshire GU11 3HR USAEngland

Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

The sociology of Zygmunt Bauman : challenges and critique

1. Bauman, Zygmunt, 1925- 2. Sociology I. Jacobsen, Michael Hviid, 1971- II. Poder, Poul 301'.092

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The sociology of Zygmunt Bauman : challenges and critique / edited by Michael HviidJacobsen and Poul Poder. p. cm.

Includes index. ISBN 978-0-7546-7060-5 (alk. paper) 1. Bauman, Zygmunt, 1925- 2. Sociology. I. Jacobsen, Michael Hviid,1971- II. Poder, Poul.

HM479.B39S63 2008 301.092--dc22 2007041398

ISBN 978-0-7546-7060-5

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall.

http://www.ashgate.com/http://www.ashgate.com/


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Contents

List of Contributors vii

Introduction: The Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman – Challenges and CritiqueMichael Hviid Jacobsen and Poul Poder 1

Part 1 Methodological Issues1 Bauman on Metaphors – A Harbinger of Humanistic Hybrid Sociology

Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Sophia Marshman 19

2 Bauman on Ambivalence – Fully Acknowledging the Ambiguity ofAmbivalenceMatthias Junge 41

Part 2 Ethics

3 Bauman on Ethics – Intimate Ethics for a Global World?Manni Crone 59

4 Bauman on Genocide – Modernity and Mass Murder: FromClassification to Annihilation?Sophia Marshman 75

Part 3 Social Integration

5 Bauman on Freedom – Consumer Freedom as the Integration

Mechanism of Liquid Society Poul Poder 97

6 Bauman on Consumerism – Living the Market-Mediated LifeTony Blackshaw 115

7 Bauman on Globalization – The Human Consequences of a LiquidWorldMark Davis 137

8 Bauman on Strangers – Unwanted Peculiarities Niclas Månsson 155

Part 4 Politics

9 Bauman on Politics – Stillborn DemocracyMikael Carleheden 175

10 Bauman on Power – From ‘Solid’ to ‘Light’? Robert Campain 193


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The Sociology of Zygmunt Baumanvi

11 Bauman on Utopia – Welcome to the Hunting ZoneMichael Hviid Jacobsen 209

Postscript: Bauman on Bauman – Pro Domo Sua

Zygmunt Bauman 231 Index 241


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List of Contributors

Zygmunt Bauman (born 1925), Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the Universityof Warsaw, Poland, and the University of Leeds, England. Internationally acclaimedsociologist who throughout the last four decades has published more than 25 booksin English and numerous articles in a variety of journals. Among the most significant,

prominent and agenda-setting of his book are Modernity and the Holocaust (1989),which won him the Amalfi Prize and the Adorno Prize, Postmodern Ethics (1993), Liquid Modernity (2000) and Society Under Siege (2002). Recently he has published Liquid Fear (2006), Liquid Times (2007) and Consuming Life (2007).

Tony Blackshaw (born 1960), teaches at Sheffield Hallam University, England. Heis author of a number of books and articles which are either on or apply the workof Zygmunt Bauman. The former include Zygmunt Bauman (2005), “Too Good forSociology” in a special issue of The Polish Sociological Review celebrating Zygmunt

Bauman (edited by Michael Hviid Jacobsen & Keith Tester, 2006) and “ZygmuntBauman” in Rob Stones (ed.): Key Sociological Thinkers (2007). The latter include:

Leisure Life: Myth, Masculinity and Modernity (2003) and New Perspectives onSport and ‘Deviance’: Consumption, Performativity and Social Control (with TimCrabbe, 2004).

Robert Campain (born 1963), is an honorary research fellow in the School of SocialSciences, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. He completed his doctoraldissertation in 2005 entitled The Decaying Foundations: A Comparative Study ofthe Work of Zygmunt Bauman and John Carroll in which he examines social orderthrough a comparative analysis of Zygmunt Bauman and John Carroll.

Mikael Carleheden (born 1958), Associate Professor of Sociology at the Departmentof Social and Political Sciences, Örebro University, Sweden. He is presentlyworking out a theory about the structural transformation of modernity on bothmicro and macro level. His latest publications in English are: “The Transformationof Our Conduct of Life: One Aspect of the Three Epochs of Western Modernity”,

Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, No. 13 (2006), and “TowardsDemocratic Foundations: A Habermasian Perspective on the Politics of Education”, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 38 (5) (2006).

Manni Crone (born 1963), Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Departmentof Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She is Master of PoliticalScience from Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris. She wrote her PhD thesis on the

political philosophy of Leo Strauss with a special emphasis on modern and classical


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The Sociology of Zygmunt Baumanviii

ethics (2000). She is currently working on Islamic secularism in France, Islamicconsumer practices and current transformations of Islamic authority.

Mark Davis (born 1978), Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Sociology &

Social Policy at University of Leeds, England. He received his PhD in 2006 havingcompleted a study of the concept of freedom in Zygmunt Bauman’s English-languagewritings. He is currently working on a proposal to establish a research centre inBauman’s honour at the University of Leeds and continues to write on differentaspects of Bauman’s sociology. His forthcoming book, Freedom & Consumption: ACritique of Zygmunt Bauman’s Sociology, will be published by Ashgate in 2008.

Michael Hviid Jacobsen (born 1971), Associate Professor of Sociology at theDepartment of Sociology, Social Work & Organisation at Aalborg University,Denmark. For many years he has written extensively on the work of ZygmuntBauman and published several articles and books including Zygmunt Bauman – den

postmoderne dialektik (2004), Bauman Before Postmodernity (with Keith Tester,2005), Om Bauman – kritiske essays (edited with Poul Poder, 2006), Baumans mosaik (2006), a special issue of The Polish Sociological Review Celebrating Zygmunt

Bauman (edited with Keith Tester, 2006) and Bauman Beyond Postmodernity (withSophia Marshman & Keith Tester, 2007).

Matthias Junge (born 1960), Professor of Sociological Theory and History ofSociological Theory at the University of Rostock, Germany. His recent publicationsinclude: Ambivalente Gesellschaftlichkeit (2000), Zygmunt Bauman: Soziologie

zwischen Postmoderne und Ethik (with Thomas Kron, 2001/2006), Individualisierung (2002), Macht und Moral: Beiträge zur Dekonstruktion von Moral (2003) and

Zygmunt Bauman (2006).

Sophia Marshman (born 1974), lectures in the Media Department at the Universityof Portsmouth, England. Her chief research interest is in the Holocaust and cultural

memory. Recent publications include: “Metaphorically Speaking – Metaphors as aMethodological and Moral Signifier of the Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman”, The

Polish Sociological Review, no. 3 (with Michael Hviid Jacobsen, 2006), and “TheMetaphorical Imagination – Zygmunt Bauman’s Poetics of the Transformation ofModernity”, Sosiologisk Årbok , no. 1-2 (with Michael Hviid Jacobsen, 2007). Sheis currently involved in completing a variety of articles analysing the sociology ofZygmunt Bauman.

Niclas Månsson (born 1965), Senior lecturer in education at the Department ofSocial Science at Mälardalens University, Sweden. His PhD thesis (2005) on negativesocialisation focuses on the stranger in the writings of Zygmunt Bauman. Månssonis a member of the research group Studies of Difference in Educational Settingsand his publications includes “Varför finns det främlingar?” (2005), Invandrare &minoriteter , no. 4, “Två berättelser om moralens ursprung” (2006), Finsk tidskrift ,no. 1, and “Romers möte med den svenska skolan” (2006), in Carl Anders Säfström(ed.): Den mångtydiga skolan. Lund: Studentlitteratur.


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List of Contributors ix

Poul Poder (born 1965), Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Departmentof Sociology, Copenhagen University, Denmark. He introduced the work ofBauman to Danish audience in the beginning of the 1990s and has among other

pieces published “The Telos Interview” in Bauman Reader , (ed.) Peter Beilharz

(2000), Om Bauman – kritiske essays (edited with Michael Hviid Jacobsen, 2006),“Our Present: Postmodern”, in Heine Andersen & Lars Bo Kaspersen (eds.):Classical and modern Social Theory (2000), and “Relatively Liquid InterpersonalRelationships in Flexible Work Life” in The Contemporary Bauman (ed.) AnthonyElliott (2007). Another research area is the sociology of emotion in which he haswritten his PhD thesis entitled Feelings of Power and the Power of Feelings:

Handling Emotion in Organisational Change (2004), and “The Political Regulationof Anger in Organizations” in Regulating Emotions: Culture, Social Necessity, and

Biological Inheritance (2008).


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Introduction

The Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman – Challenges and CritiqueMichael Hviid Jacobsen and Poul Poder

“I don’t care who’s right or who’s wrong. There has to be some better way for people tolive”

– Grace Kelly: High Noon

Introduction

Books on Zygmunt Bauman’s work abound – and in these years with increasingintensity perhaps mirroring the urgency and receptivity of the ideas expounded in

Bauman’s own books. Peter Beilharz’s Zygmunt Bauman: Dialects of Modernity(Beilharz 1999), Dennis Smith’s Zygmunt Bauman: Prophet of Postmodernity(Smith 1999), Keith Tester’s The Social Thought of Zygmunt Bauman (Tester 2004),Michael Hviid Jacobsen’s Zygmunt Bauman (Jacobsen 2004), Tony Blackshaw’s

Zygmunt Bauman (Blackshaw 2005), Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Keith Tester’s Bauman Before Postmodernity and Bauman Beyond Postmodernity (Tester &Jacobsen 2005; Jacobsen, Marshman & Tester) and most recently the edited volumeThe Contemporary Bauman (Elliott 2007).1 All these books contain valuable insightsinto the life and ideas of Zygmunt Bauman. However, most of them remain expositoryrather than exploratory, biographical and chronological rather than thematic andcontextualizing. In this book we wish to bridge these different aims. As the titleThe Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman – Challenge and Critique indicates, this bookis different in important respects which will be explained below. The book aspiresto capture, contextualize and critically appraise many of the central and recurrentthemes in Bauman’s work – themes that constitute cornerstones in his special wayof doing sociology.

1 Add to this already impressive list also Peter Beilharz’s The Bauman Reader (Beilharz2001) and the four-volume set Zygmunt Bauman containing commentaries, articles andreviews (Beilharz 2002). The first book on Bauman’s sociology appeared in 1996 and wasedited by Richard Kilminster and Ian Varcoe in Culture, Modernity and Revolution: Essaysin Honour of Zygmunt Bauman (Kilminster & Varcoe 1996). A useful introduction to thewritings and perspective of Bauman can also be found in the interview book Conversationswith Zygmunt Bauman (Bauman & Tester 2001).


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The Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman2

At the Core of Bauman’s Sociology

Zygmunt Bauman is a sociologist of sorts and various attempts at categorizing his wayof doing sociology has been attempted throughout the years with a multitude of stock

phrases and labels such as ‘storyteller’, ‘socialist’, ‘structuralist’, ‘critical theorist’,‘humanistic Marxist’, ‘existentialist’, ‘hermeneutic sociologist’, ‘postmodernist’or as a hybrid ‘poet-intellectual’ between sociology and poetry. Most introductionsemphasize how Bauman’s work is very difficult to nail down or seems slippery as heeclectically draws on a variety of theoretical sources rather than sticks to a certaintheoretical orientation and because he continuously insists on sitting astride those

barriers intended to separate between traditions, perspectives and schools of thought.In many of the aforementioned introductions there is a tendency primarily to describe

Bauman’s work negatively by mentioning what it is not or to focus on how variousthemes have been played out chronologically throughout Bauman’s work.With this book we want to do something different than focussing on Bauman’s

discussion of, for example, postmodernity or the dialectic of modernity or liquidmodernity. Rather we want to introduce and critically discuss Bauman’s work asa certain kind of sociology in an overall sense. It is important to recognize thatBauman’s sociology is more than an essayistic collection of scattered analyses anddiagnoses of particular and unconnected themes. We contend that there is a need toemphasize this dimension as other Bauman introductions have mostly prioritised the

extraordinary character of his work. His work may be extraordinary in many senses –in style, passion and originality – but it is not transgressing sociology as a discipline.Rather Bauman in his work is directed towards revizing and revitalizing sociologicaltheory through pushing and challenging the outer limits of established and doxicassumptions. Throughout the years he has defended the necessity of sociology evenat times when such a defence seemed quixotic. This book seeks to explore in whatways Bauman confronts classical sociological issues of, for example, morality, powerand globalization in order to counter established concepts, and how he wishes to

engage with issues traditionally located outside the realm of conventional sociologysuch as the issue of freedom, strangeness and ambivalence. Moreover, his work canalso be characterized as a challenge to sociology in itself through his more poeticallyapproach exemplified by his use of metaphors and his politically inspired approachexemplified through his preoccupation with utopianism.

Contrary to many of the prominent sociologists of the day whose efforts attheory construction culminated in the early 1980s, Bauman has never aspired to

build elaborate or all-encompassing theoretical systems such as Niklas Luhmann(1984), Anthony Giddens (1984) or Jürgen Habermas (1981). Nowhere in his many

books will one find a definitive and self-proclaimed theoretical testament. Neitherdoes he present an interwoven set of essential theoretical analytical concepts – e.g.field, habitus and capital – which constitute the backbone of the sociology of PierreBourdieu (1977). However, an essential feature of Bauman’s sociology is his ongoingdialogue with conventional sociological vocabulary through criticizing existingassumptions and by way of developing new understandings through neologisms suchas, for example, ‘adiaphorization’ or ‘allosemitism’ or by way of his metaphoricalcornucopia intended to illustrate the lived experience of a variety of people such as


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Introduction 3

‘flawed consumers’, ‘players’ and ‘legislators’ (see Jacobsen & Marshman 2006).In this way, another special feature of Bauman’s sociology is the concern with the‘human consequences’ of social development. He is not concerned with abstract orethereal social processes, but with the concrete and often merciless repercussions

on those whose lives are most severely affected by social transformations and in hisdescriptions he staunchly remains on the side of those marginalized, hurt or excluded.The questions that Bauman has sought to answer (or rather to pose) have been whatsocial developments have meant with respect to the morality and suffering of human

beings and he generally focuses on everyday human concerns to do with community,love and memory and the pain and happiness they bring (Blackshaw 2005:16).

In further describing the core of Bauman’ sociological work we want to suggestthat his work can best be characterized as an odyssey of the transformation of

modernity with its concomitant intensive and extensive repercussions on all aspectsof human life. As is evident from all his books, he has been preoccupied with this broad topic of modernity’s transformation and its human consequences and thereforehe is truly a generalist rather than a specialist sociologist. This topic defines hissociology rather than his adherence to particular schools of thoughts: “I was seekingfor an answer to the same questions all along, and if I didn’t find it, I movedelsewhere. But I took the questions with me” (Bauman 1992:207). Thus, Baumanfocuses attention on selected aspects of this transformation. As he observes regardinghis own kind of ‘method’: “In all my books I constantly enter the same room, only

that I enter the room through different doors. So I see the same things, the samefurniture, but out of a different perspective” (Bauman in Welzer 2002:109). Baumanenters this furnished ‘room’ containing the story of the transformation of modernitythrough a variety of different ‘doors’ – the Holocaust, ethics, globalization, freedom,consumerism, utopia, ambivalence, the working class, the intellectuals, community,death, love, sexuality, strangers, etc. Although all these ‘doors’ lead to the sameroom, their different location allows a shift in perspective on the ‘furniture’ in theroom. Therefore, all these different doors make it possible to look at the same thing,

but from different perspectives.On a methodological level, Bauman has also contributed with a refreshing andoriginal perspective by proposing ‘defamiliarization’ and ‘sociological hermeneutics’as central tenets of his sociology. Throughout his work he seeks to defamiliarize thesocial world as we have come to understand it, since “concepts tend to outlive thehistorical configurations which gave them birth and infused them with meaning.This tendency is rooted in the natural propensity to absorb and accommodatenew experience into the familiar picture of the world; habitual categories are themain tools of this absorption. New experience does not fit the categories easily”(Bauman 1982:192). In order to allow a new look or a deeper understanding suchdefamiliarization is part and parcel of any critical and innovative sociologicalimagination. As a sociologist, one should therefore seek to ‘defamiliarize thefamiliar’ because familiarity may hamper and hinder inquisitiveness and the impetusto innovate and transform. In Bauman’s view a sociology bend on defamiliarizationis something that should be appropriated not only within the university but by

people outside the confines of academia: “To all those who think that living life in amore conscious way is worth the effort, sociology is a welcome guide” (Bauman &


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May 2001:10). Defamiliarization shatters the impenetrable walls of common sensethat prevents us from experiencing and understanding the world anew. Therefore,defamiliarization is inherently heretical and iconoclastic because by

examining that which is taken-for-granted, it has the potential to disturb the comfortablecertitudes of life by asking questions no one can remember asking and those with vestedinterests resent even being asked … It may open up new and previously unsuspected

possibilities of living one’s life with other with more self-awareness, more comprehensionof our surroundings in terms of greater self and social knowledge and perhaps also withmore freedom and control (Bauman & May 2001:10).2

The same insistently inquisitive quality is to be found in Bauman’s so-called‘sociological hermeneutics’ – as distinct from, but not opposed to ‘hermeneutic

sociology’ – which is bent on asking the most pertinent of questions and criticallyexamining and interpreting the most problematic of answers and which, when

put to use, intensify our ability to penetrate into the actual workings of the world.As he stated in recent conversation, his sociological hermeneutics “demands thatwhenever we pursue the meaning of human thoughts or actions we ought to lookinto socially shaped conditions of people whose thoughts or actions we intendto understand/explain” (Jacobsen & Tester 2007:324). In this way, Bauman’ssociological hermeneutics are akin to C. Wright Mills’s ‘sociological imagination’which sought to make its practitioners and users able to transcend the trappings of

personal problems or the seductions of individual illusions by linking biography tohistory and structural developments (Mills 1959). To Bauman, sociology cannot stopshort of being an ongoing, collaborative interpretation of the human world in orderto understand how it may eventually be improved.

As mentioned, Bauman’s sociology is very much defined by his persistentengagement with one central topic and his ongoing concerns with what socialdevelopments and transformations mean with respect to the freedom, justice,morality and the suffering of fellow human beings. A way of understanding why

Bauman has been so persistently engaged in this set of concerns – the effect ofsocial transformations on individual lives – can be to attend to his own personal and

biographical past which became a dramatic topic of discussion in the spring of 2007during the completion of this book.

2 Bauman started out as an outsider, as an Eastern European Jewish exile in an English

outskirts university, but gradually moved into the centre of intellectual and academic attentionin which he today occupies the position as one of the most widely read and acclaimedcontemporary sociologists. In this way, Bauman’s intellectual trajectory is an archetypalspecimen of what Pierre Bourdieu (1988) once dubbed ‘consecrated heretics’ or ‘heresiarchs’

– autonomous scholars who, according to Bourdieu, are heretics because they questionthe doxa and criticize the conventions of their discipline by proposing new and heretoforeuncharted conceptual and theoretical territory to be discovered, and consecrated becausethey – despite their marginal position in official academic reproduction – end up upholding

prestigious positions and succeed in communicating with the wider public.


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Introduction 5

A Life in the Shadow of Totalitarianism

In order to understand why Zygmunt Bauman has been so persistently engaged withunderstanding especially the issues of morality and totalitarianism, autonomy and

heteronomy, the possibilities of and obstacles to decent and moral human existencein the shadow of inhumanities considering his personal background is helpful. Atleast, we suggest that his thorough academic engagement is understandable onthe basis of his own personal experiences of being a victim, but possibly also a

perpetrator of totalitarianism.On November 18th 1925, Bauman was born into a poor Jewish family in

Poznan, Poland. When he was 14 years old in September 1939 his family fled the Nazi occupation of Poland and came to live in the Soviet Union during the Stalin

regime. Here some of his formal schooling took place and initially he had ambitionsof becoming a physicist and started studies at a Soviet university, but the outbreak ofWorld War II made him join the military instead. He joined the exiled Polish Armyin the Soviet Union in 1943 at the age of 18 and quickly rose through the ranks.By the end of the war he was wounded, but was still capable of participating in theRed Army’s liberation of Berlin in May 1945. Upon his return to post-war Polandhe initially reached the rank of Captain in the reconstructed Polish army, later to

become one of the youngest Majors in the Polish army (Smith 1999:39). In 1948,at the Warsaw Academy of Social Sciences, Zygmunt met his wife and life-long

companion, Janina, who as an inhabitant in the Warsaw ghetto had initially survivedthe Nazi persecutions and who later for more than two years managed to hide fromthe Nazis in the houses of ordinary helpful people thereby escaping deportation tothe death camps (see Bauman 1986).

Zygmunt officially became a member of the Communist Party in 1951 (Bielefeld2002:113ff) and as Janina later described, he was initially a devoted believer inthe ideas and ideals of a better socialist society promised and proclaimed by theCommunist Party. In 1953 he started an academic career as a sociologist when he at

the age of twenty-eight was dismissed from the army during anti-Semitic and ‘de-Judaising’ purges. He completed his MA in the social sciences at the University ofWarsaw in the early 1950s and earned himself a position as lecturer at the Facultyof Social Sciences in 1954. In the following years he received his PhD and madetrips to the London School of Economics and the University of Manchester, wherehe conducted research on, amongst other themes, the English labour movementand the socialist party. From the early 1960s he started editing Polish sociology

journals (Bunting 2003:23), functioned as principal editor of Studia Socjologiczneand published several articles on specific Polish issues before in 1964 obtaining

the position as Chair of General Sociology at Warsaw. Throughout this period healso published numerous books on topics such as British socialism, critiques ofAmerican sociology, everyday life and culture many of which were later re-issuedin English (Tester & Jacobsen 2005:223-224). In 1966 he was elected President ofthe Executive Committee of the Polish Sociological Association. During this periodhe remained a loyal, yet increasingly critical member of the Communist Party, butthis came to a swift and dramatic halt in January 1968 when he handed in his partymembership card.


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Several incidents had lead up to this dramatic decision – particularly one incidentin 1965 when a critical letter on the state of Polish socialism authored by two studentsat the university was subjected to the scrutiny of a committee consisting of LeszekKołakowski, Wlodzimierz Brus and Bauman who allowed the letter to be publicized.

As a consequence, Bauman was eventually dismissed from his position as Chair ofSociology in late March 1968 accused of bearing responsibility for the student revoltagainst the Party and of corrupting the Polish youth. Also this round of purges boreclear signs of anti-Semitism on behalf of the system and ended Bauman’s illusionsof the wonders and promised ideals of state socialism. Together with his wife andhis children he had to flee the country first to Israel via a refugee camp in Austria.For three years they stayed in Israel and later enjoyed brief spells in Canada andAustralia where Bauman took up short-term teaching positions. In 1970 they arrived

at their, until now, final destination, Leeds in England. Here Bauman taught andfunctioned as leader of the sociology department until his retirement in 1990. In brief, throughout his life Bauman has suffered several deeply personal experiencesas being a victim of totalitarianism in different forms such as Nazism and anti-Semitism. Naturally, such deep-seated experiences cannot but influence and informhis way of doing sociology. As he contended in his inaugural speech as professorof sociology at the University of Leeds in the early 1970s: “In the professional lifeof a sociologist his most intimate, private biography is inextricably entangled withthe biography of his discipline; one thing the sociologist cannot transcend in his

quest for objectivity is his own, intimate and subjective encounter-with-the-world”(Bauman 1972:185). Thus, Bauman’s ‘encounter-with-the-world’ as a victim oftotalitarianism has, without any doubt, played a significant role in his own choice oftopics and perspectives.

Recently, however, the Polish historian Bogdan Musial in Frankfurter Allgemenine Zeitung has claimed that Bauman, apart from being himself a victim of totalitarian purges, participated in the political cleansing of opponents of the regime while in the pay of the Polish Secret Service. Bauman responded to Musial’s allegations, which

were also published in the rightwing Polish magazine Ozon, by stating that: “What istrue in his article is not new, because everybody knew I was a communist, and that Iserved also for several years in the ‘internal army’” (Edemariam 2007), the only newfact being that he joined the secret service for three years when he was 19. About thiscooperation with intelligence Bauman explains that it came about as an accident ofhistory as the Fourth Division, in which Bauman was placed during World War II,was co-opted for the job rather than the Second or Third Division. His job consistedin writing political pamphlets for soldiers and he was expected to inform on peoplewho were fighting against the communist project. Bauman was thus sitting in hisoffice and writing and this was hardly a field in which you could collect interestingor disclosing eye-opening information: “Every good citizen should participatein counter-espionage. That was one thing that I kept secret, because I signed anobligation that it would be kept secret … So that’s the only thing. All the other‘news’, so called, is completely in error” (Edemariam 2007).

When asked if his work in the Secret Service might have had adverseconsequences he answered: “I can’t answer that question. I don’t believe there wasany. At the same time, I was part of a wider scene, and of course everything you do


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Introduction 7

has consequences”. When confronted with the question whether his three years inthe Secret Service were a mistake he responded: “They’re part of my biography. I

bear full responsibility for that. At that time it seemed to me the right thing to do... Some choices in everybody’s biography can be looked upon as wrong choices,

except that it doesn’t seem to be a wrong choice at that time. When I was 19 yearsold I didn’t know as much as I know now that I’m 82” (Edemariam 2007). Baumanwent on to say: “I have never made it a secret that I am a socialist. I was leftwing, Iam leftwing, and I will die leftwing” (Edemariam 2007). Bauman sees his ‘outing’ as

part of a new kind of witch-hunt under way in Poland where right-wing people workto legitimize the rightwing government of Lech Kaczynski and Jaroslaw Kaczynski

by discrediting left-wing intellectuals. And what is missing from the stories is thatimmediately after he left the Secret Service he was the object of persecution for

15 years. He was spied on, his flat and telephone bugged and so on (Edemariam2007).The last word in this affair has probably not been written yet, and we are not to

decide who is speaking most truthfully. Historians will maybe write that story ormaybe not in due time if the allegations turn out lacking tangible documentation.From our own personal experience with Bauman we have many times sensed thathe was not interested in talking about his personal life during the times of war andcommunist regime. We do not undertake to speculate on the conscience of Bauman,and we have mentioned this so-called ‘affair’ because it illustrates how Bauman’s

life has been influenced by the evils of totalitarianism.Reflecting on this circumstance, it does not surprise why his books to such a

marked degree centres on the issue of how totalitarianism, heteronomy and othersocietal forms make immoral actions possible – but also how totalitarianism andevil make it possible to stand out as one of the few moral beings among acquiescing

perpetrators or passive bystanders. However, no matter how the affair instigated by Musial’s revelations eventually turns out, Bauman’s sociological body of workhas to be assessed on other than moral terms, as his past life neither qualifies nor

disqualifies his writings. There is not necessarily a one-to-one identity between thelived life of an author and his or her writings..

Against Heteronomy, Totalization and the Assumptions of Modern Sociology

As we mentioned above, Zygmunt Bauman has blessed sociology with a wide rangeof compelling analyses, novel concepts and challenging understandings which haveall been incorporated into the overarching story of the transformation of modernity

and connected to the accompanying human consequences. With respect to assessingthe selected core features of Bauman’s sociology each contributor has been askedto present Bauman’s ideas and discuss their strengths and weaknesses and thenevaluate their significance for sociology and contemporary social theory. One wayto explain the selection of certain features of Bauman’s wide-ranging work is to saythat all included issues in this book reflect Bauman’s ongoing critical reflection onheteronomy or totalization on various levels – individual, relational and societal – byway of which he challenges several tacit assumptions of modern sociology.


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The contributions to the book can, in a broad sense, be organized or classifiedunder the headings of Methodological Issues, Ethics, Social Integration and

Politics. Concerning the methodological and stylistic issue of how to do sociology,Bauman has – despite not being overtly concerned with methodological questions

– continuously been stressing how all theory is selective in choosing a certain focusand empirical data to support this focus (Bauman 2004). Consequently, no theorycan be all-encompassing or all-telling and therefore totalizing theory is a misguidedeffort. Thus, ambivalence and the fragmentary are not momentary irritants in ourdesire to understand, but remain part and parcel of the human way of comprehendingthe world. Bauman is also stressing how metaphors are crucial, but equally partialinstruments in understanding social life. Methodologically, Bauman has also

been eager to work out the significance of ambivalence in social life and in the

apprehension of it. In this volume we have therefore included contributions of amore methodological orientation.In Chapter 1, “Bauman on Metaphors – A Harbinger of Humanistic Hybrid

Sociology”, Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Sophia Marshman investigate howBauman’s writings stylistically can be seen as a humanistic hybrid between sociologyand more literary expositions, between social science and poetics. One of the primarymeans stemming from this hybridity is Bauman’s frequent recourse to metaphors asa fertile way of describing and analysing the human world – metaphors such as‘tourist’ and ‘vagabond’ which have captured the sociological imagination of many

scholars around the world. By mixing sociology with literary sources and poeticformulations such as metaphors, Bauman dissolves clear-cut divisions between thedifferent realms of human knowledge and exposes a more lenient attitude towardshow to conduct and report sociological knowledge. Jacobsen and Marshman applaudBauman’s ability to present a poignant metaphorical arsenal for combined analyticaland moral purposes. According to them, Bauman’s utilization of metaphors attests toa ‘humanization through metaphors’ strategy aimed at pointing to the inhumanitiesand injustices in modernity and liquid modernity alike and to the possibility of a

more humane world waiting somewhere beyond these social formations. However,they are also cautious to add that metaphors cannot stand alone as ornamentationsof sociological knowledge – they need sociological substance and analytical clarityand validity.

In Chapter 2, “Bauman on Ambivalence – Fully Acknowledging the Ambiguity ofAmbivalence”, Matthias Junge shows how Bauman’s contribution to a sociologicalunderstanding of ambivalence is much needed because sociologists have oftenignored the more explicit phenomenon of ambivalence as central to the constructionof social order. A crucial point of Bauman’s work is that ambivalence has cometo stay and therefore sociology should be better at appreciating the inherentlyambivalent character of social life. Junge initially locates the work of Bauman onambivalence within wider sociological theory claiming that Bauman’s perspectiveis one of the few explicating how ambivalence remains a pivotal aspect of ourunderstanding of phenomena such as culture, language, order, ethics, risk or waste.Junge also shows, through a selected reading of Bauman’s oeuvre from the earlywork to the more recent, how Bauman’s appreciation of ambivalence has undergonea refinement throughout the years. Junge appreciatively concludes the chapter with


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Introduction 9

the observation that Bauman’s conceptualization of ambivalence is itself ambiguous,oozing with what the author calls an ‘experimental plurality of perspectives’ thatincites us to work with fuzzy and ambiguous concepts and phenomena.

Bauman has treated the issue of ethics and morality in a variety of texts and one

basic point he continues to argue is that morality is to be understood as individuallyor personally felt responsibility based on an inherent and pre-societal moral impulse(Bauman 1993). Morality cannot be legislated or subsumed under universal andall-encompassing principles. To him, morality is a matter of personal choice and

personal sacrifice in contingent circumstances and he thus challenges most of thesociological theories dealing with ethics and morality. We have therefore includedtwo contributions that deal with how ethical and moral issues are treated in Bauman’swork.

Manni Crone, in Chapter 3 entitled “Bauman on Ethics – Intimate Ethics for aGlobal World?”, explores one of the central tenets and continuing topics in Bauman’swritings, namely his widely acknowledged theorizing on morality and ethics andthe transformation from modern legislative ethics to a postmodern morality ofresponsibility and proximity. Crone presents and locates Bauman’s critique of modernlaw-based ethics followed by an exposition of his alternative and more postmodernsociological perspective on morality. Bauman suggests that sociology should notinvestigate how society creates morality which is the question conventional theory,that sees society as the guardian of morality posits. Rather, it should research into

how different social forms manipulate morality, differently. While the author supportsBauman’s critique of the modern law-based ethics, she contends that Bauman onlygoes half-way in formulating a genuine alternative to existing sociological theoriesof morality. She also remains critical to the possibilities of expanding a ‘moralityof proximity’ to global contexts and how an unspoken ethical demand on the microlevel may be transformed into a matter of politics and justice on the macro level.Crone notes, however, an apparent shift in Bauman’s work in recent years – a shiftleading to the support of global cosmopolitan law and politics.

In Chapter 4, “Bauman on Genocide – Modernity and Mass Murder: FromClassification to Annihilation?”, Sophia Marshman explores the sociologicalimportance of Bauman’s neo-classical study Modernity and the Holocaust . Thisstudy severely challenges established ideas about the civilization of modern societysince Bauman demonstrates how Holocaust was also a modern phenomenon and notsimply a return to pre-modern uncivilized barbarism, and therefore the Holocaustcan be seen as a window into the potentialities of modern societies. Marshmandiscusses criticism of Bauman’s thesis that the spread of ‘instrumental rationality’is accounting for why the Holocaust became a reality. The author concludes thatBauman’s unique contribution to a sociological understanding of the Holocaustconsists in his work on classification. Bauman seeks to universalize the lessonsof the Holocaust and its dangerous ascriptive criteria of difference. Moreover, theauthor illustrates how Bauman has carried on to show that also in the liquid modern

period do we incessantly seek self-definition through contrast with the irredeemable‘other’.

The sociological core issue of social order or social integration is somethingthat Bauman has dealt with in various ways. Theoretically, he argues in favour of


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dispensing with the idea of determining totality or social system. His more chaos-acknowledging concept capturing the social totality is ‘habitat’ which refers to theover-all context of living consisting of historically created goals and means and inwhich actions and meanings is possible. The constant changes of the habitat cannot

be explained objectively, that is, without reference to the subjective actions of theactors involved. If some of the actors had acted differently, the habitat would alsohave turned out differently. The states of the habitat are contingent and the habitatis therefore a chaotic and ambivalent condition for all actors. However, the most

powerful and thereby free actors can, naturally, handle this contingent conditionalong the lines of their interest and wishes in highest degree (Bauman 1992). Societyor the totality does not determine in advance the actions and meanings of the actorsas is implied in paradigms that stress humans as being socialized to play out their

cultural background. Such paradigms and their understandings of integration favourthe creation and exclusion of strangers. Bauman instead stresses an understandingof integration which conceptualizes freedom as intrinsic to processes of socialintegration. These ideas – and in connection to these how globalization is not merelyan integrating but also a disintegrating phenomenon – are spelled out in the followingcontributions.

In Chapter 5, “Bauman on Freedom – Consumer Freedom as the IntegrationMechanism of Liquid Society”, Poul Poder provides an exposition of Bauman’sanalysis of individual freedom as developed during the last couple of decades.

Bauman criticizes the common sociological assumption of thinking agency(freedom) as a generic feature of actors. Poder therefore argues that Bauman’s theoryis a significant contribution to a genuine sociological understanding of freedom.By theorizing resources and security as positive conditions of freedom, Baumanmoves the understanding of freedom further than the understanding of freedom qualiberation or emancipation from old tradition and structures common to conventional‘negative’ individualization theory. Bauman’s analysis of contemporary individualfreedom is original by suggesting that social integration is ensured through individual

consumer freedom rather than through domination and ideological indoctrination,common values or habit and tradition. However, it is also explained how Bauman’sanalysis has certain limitations and intimated how his positive theory of freedom can

be further developed.In Chapter 6, “Bauman on Consumerism – Living the Market-Mediated Life”,

Tony Blackshaw argues that Bauman’s work on consumerism offers deep insights intowhat it means to live a market-mediated life. According to Bauman, consumerismshould not be seen merely as a particular set of activities contained in a certainsphere of social life as it is mostly done. Rather, it is more to the point to understandconsumerism as referring to a whole way of life, which is why Bauman speaks of‘consuming life’. In discussing other theorists’ take on consumerism, Blackshawunderlines how consumerism for Bauman is less an ideological conspiracy in whichwe all collude as a competition between sellers and buyers who try to get the bestvalue for their money. In conclusion, Blackshaw suggests that Bauman’s messageis that liquid modern individuals need to develop the ability to get away from thedominant re-usable language of consumerism to form an alternative discourse thatspeaks itself for the first time.


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Introduction 11

In Chapter 7, “Bauman on Globalization – The Human Consequences of a LiquidWorld”, Mark Davis critically explores Bauman’s analysis of globalization, whichcentres on the human consequences of globalization in contrast to a lot of globalizationliterature that centres on economic or political processes, financial transactions of

global markets, technological advances or the World Wide Web. Initially, Davisintroduces to the central themes in Bauman’s analysis of globalization, which isthe relationship between globalization and his wider theoretical model of ‘liquidmodernity’; the re-stratification of the world’s population into those that are free tomove globally on the one hand, and those that are condemned to a life lived locallyon the other; and, finally, the prevalence of fear and insecurity at both the macro-and micro-levels of ‘liquid life’ in the age of ‘negative globalization’. Bauman seesglobalization as forming two dominant cultural-types, namely the ‘tourist’ and the

‘vagabond’. However, the author is critical of Bauman’s analysis for being limited bya ‘will to dualism’, which he believes remains a problematic tendency in Bauman’swork precisely because of the importance such dualities are given in his analysis.To take the present example of ‘tourists’ and ‘vagabonds’, Davis finds it far fromeasy to identify particular empirical social groups that fit the descriptions Bauman

provides.In Chapter 8, “Bauman on Strangers – Unwanted Peculiarities”, Niclas Månsson

discusses Bauman’s perspective on strangers as a central theme running throughhis writings during the 1980s and 1990s. Månsson starts out by delineating the

gradually evolving perspective on strangers in Bauman’s work and by locating italongside other traditions dealing with strangers within sociology. The author showshow Bauman provides an original analysis of the social construction of strangers asrepresenting ambivalence respectively in solid modernity and liquid modernity andhow strangers are still part and parcel of human existence and the outcome of anyattempt to construct social order. Månsson also describes those specific strategies thatare deployed by different types of societies in order to either incorporate or eradicatethe stranger ranging from assimilating via expelling to eliminating politics and

practices. The chapter is concluded by Månsson’s Bauman-inspired understandingof the necessity to learn to live with ambivalence – and thus also with strangers.Politics and more widely the issue of power has been an undercurrent running

throughout the work of Bauman, never really present, yet always touched uponimplicitly or lingering between the lines. His mistrust of iron-clad political ideologuesor all-encompassing political programmes – due to their totalizing and totalitariantendencies – has meant that his own work on politics has always been ‘in searchof’ rather than arriving at a specific political agenda. Despite Bauman’s effort tocarve out a political mentality of the contemporary age of apathy (Bauman 1999),it remains characteristic of his work that he has always been reluctant to explicatethe actual content of ‘the good society’ or ‘the common good’ and yet he has neversurrendered the utopian hope of a better society.

Consequently, Mikael Carleheden in Chapter 9, “Bauman on Politics – StillbornDemocracy”, explains how Bauman considers that what happens ’at the base’ ratherthan the brighter legal-political formalities ‘at the top’ to be of greater bearing on theconditions of human life. Bauman challenges the widespread idea that democracy isa very defining feature of modern society. Thus, the commonly thought connection


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between freedom and democracy on the one hand, and modernity on the other, is broken and opens for an analysis of the contradictions between democracy and othertypes of modern institutions such as industrialism, bureaucracy and commercialism.Carleheden contends that we have a lot to learn from Bauman’s analysis of such

contradictions. However, in critique of Bauman he also argues that Bauman’s theoryis too one-sided and tends to lead social criticism into a dead-end.

In Chapter 10, “Bauman on Power – From ‘Solid’ to ‘Light’?”, Robert Campainoutlines Bauman’s understanding of power from a ‘hard/solid’ modernity to ‘soft/liquid’ modernity. According to Bauman, also power becomes softer as he arguesthat we now live in a post-panoptical period where disengaging techniques of speed,slippage, escape, elision and avoidance become characteristic forms of powercontributing to de-institutionalization rather than institutionalization. Campain

pinpoints strengths and limitations of Bauman’s insights and particularly criticizesthe extent to which Bauman’s broad definitions of modernity and liquid modernityrepresent and capture the complexity of contemporary social arrangements asquestions of agency – politics and resistance to power – need to be examined. A main

point of the author’s argument is to emphasize how power is central to the, in onesense, only important question of ‘What shall we do and how shall we live?’, as theways power is exercised – by individuals in their daily interactions with one another,and at the broader social and global level – go to the heart of the human condition.Consequently, a sociological imagination must always be seeking to examine the

way in which power is employed and the consequences for human freedom and theexercising of moral responsibility.

Chapter 11, “Bauman on Utopia – Welcome to the Hunting Zone” by Michael Hviid Jacobsen, explores another central aspect of Bauman’s work that has receivedsurprisingly sparse attention, namely his utopianism and utopian analysis. Baumanchallenges conventional sociological wisdom in that he defends the necessity ofutopianism in social thinking, yet remains critical of the widespread tendency toregard utopia as an end-state or final destination. To him utopia is a constantly

receding horizon, a knife pressed against the throat of the future. Throughouthis work – from the early writings in English to the latest – utopia has remaineda central tenet, concern and presence in Bauman’s writings both as a temper ormentality and in recent years also as a thematic optic for understanding wider socialtransformations. Central to Bauman’s perspective is utopia as a critical counter-culture

– utopia as immanence and transcendence. However, utopia remains an ambivalent phenomenon in his writings because utopia as critical counter-culture may inspirehope of a better present and future but, when enforced or realized, eclipse the chanceof such betterment ever to follow. Throughout the chapter, Jacobsen illustrateshow utopianism relates to a host of other central concepts and themes in Bauman’ssociology. He ends up welcoming Bauman’s utopianism as a fertile addition to socialtheory, but also pinpoints that the inconclusiveness of Bauman’s utopianism presentsan obstacle to more substantial theorizing.

In the book’s Postscript, “Pro Domo Sua” (“About Myself”), Zygmunt Bauman,for the first time more substantially, reflects on the twists and turns of his lifelongsociological vocation and on those who have inspired his work. He particularlyemphasizes how he took the book The Rebel by the French existentialist writer


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Introduction 13

Albert Camus and The Prison Notebooks by the revolutionary social theorist AntonioGramsci to his heart in a way that has been formative on his sociological outlook onthe world. He also describes his passage into and out of the postmodernity debateand other aspects central to the development of his thinking. All in all, this postscript

reads as an important and illuminating self-reflection on behalf of Bauman.

How this Book Can Be Used

Compared to many other introductions to, or discussions of, the work of ZygmuntBauman mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, and towards the end of thisintroductory chapter want to emphasize some differences in order to explicate whatthis book in particular offers and consider how it may be used.

Firstly, as explained above, this book introduces to and evaluates Bauman withrespect to essential features and themes of his sociological work and it highlights howBauman is devoted to sociology as a theoretical discipline by focussing on how hechallenges many ingrained and taken-for-granted ideas of contemporary sociology.In brief, this introduction to his work seeks to introduce Bauman through actualizinghis significance for the theoretical and analytical discipline of sociology. It does notlimit itself to Bauman’s most recent writings which explore ‘liquid modernity’ as akey metaphor (Elliott 2007),3 as such time restriction is unproductive to our aim of

critically appreciating how the sociology of Bauman has contributed to sociology atlarge.Secondly, other introductions (Jacobsen 2004; Tester 2004; Beilharz 2000; Smith

1999) on the overall apply a chronological way of introducing as they map Bauman’s project by taking as their launching-pad to tell the story about his Marxist beginningsand then carry on through what can be seen as different phases of intellectualinfluences and development. In this book we do not expose Bauman’s ideas in thecontext of the development of his authorship. Instead, our focus is on the selectedtheoretical themes in order to discuss Bauman’s contribution in terms of its both

more specific and broader sociological implications.Thirdly, this book contains specialized treatment of each topic. Each contribution

therefore engages in a critical evaluation of Bauman’s theorizing with the aim ofsuggestion how it may contribute to sociological theory more generally and how itmay be improved. By focussing on the pros and cons of Bauman’s perspective, eachchapter intends to show both the promises as well as the shortcomings of Bauman’ssociology.

Given these differences compared to other books on Bauman our book can be

used as an introduction to the basic framework of Bauman’s sociology, but alsoas way of getting a complex and critical understanding of his theorizing and its

3 Zygmunt Bauman’s ‘liquid turn’ has in recent years resulted in numerous books rangingfrom Liquid Modernity (2000) through Liquid Love (2003), Liquid Life (2005) and Liquid

Fear (2006) to Liquid Times (2007). These titles all testify to the prevalence and importanceof the metaphor of liquidity in Bauman’s latest writings justifying his classification as thetheorist of liquidity.


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significance for contemporary sociology. In brief, Bauman’s work is contextualizedand not merely treated isolated as an entity in itself.

Bibliography

Bauman, Janina (1986): Winter in the Morning: A Young Girl’s Life in the WarsawGhetto and Beyond, 1939-1945. London: Virago.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1972): “Culture, Values and Science of Society”. University of Leeds Review, 15 (2):185-203.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1982): Memories of Class: The Pre-History and After-Life ofClass. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1992): Intimations of Postmodernity. London: Routledge.

Bauman, Zygmunt (1993): Postmodern Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell.Bauman, Zygmunt (1999): In Search of Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press.Bauman, Zygmunt (2000) Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.Bauman, Zygmunt (2003): Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds. Cambridge:

Polity Press.Bauman, Zygmunt (2004): “Liquid Sociality”, in Nicholas Gane (ed.): The Future of

Social Theory. London: Continuum.Bauman, Zygmunt (2005): Liquid Life. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt (2006): Liquid Fear . Cambridge: Polity Press.Bauman, Zygmunt (2007): Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge:Polity Press.

Bauman, Zygmunt & Tim May (2001): Thinking Sociologically, 2nd Edition.Oxford: Blackwell.

Bauman, Zygmunt & Keith Tester (2001): Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman.Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bielefeld, Ulrich (2002): “Conversation with Janina Bauman and Zygmunt Bauman”.Thesis Eleven, 70:113-117.

Beilharz, Peter (1999): Zygmunt Bauman: Dialectic of Modernity. London: SagePublications.

Beilharz, Peter (ed.)(2001): The Bauman Reader . Oxford: Blackwell.Beilharz, Peter (2002 ): Zygmunt Bauman (Four-Volume Set, Sage Masters in Modern

Social Theory). London: Sage Publications.Blackshaw, Tony (2005): Zygmunt Bauman. London: Routledge.Pierre Bourdieu (1977): Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre (1988): Homo Academicus. Stanford, CA: Stanford UniversityPress.Bunting, Madeleine (2003): “Zygmunt Bauman: Passion and Pessimism”. The

Guardian Review, April 5.Edemariam, Aida (2007): “Professor with a Past: Interview with Zygmunt Bauman”.

Guardian, April 28.Elliott, Anthony (ed.)(2007): The Contemporary Bauman. London: Routledge.Giddens, Anthony (1984): The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.


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Introduction 15

Habermas, Jürgen (1981): Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Frankfurt amMain: Suhrkamp.

Jacobsen, Michael Hviid (2004): Zygmunt Bauman – den postmoderne dialektik .Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag.

Jacobsen, Michael Hviid & Sophia Marshman (2006): “Metaphorically Speaking –Metaphors as a Methodological and Moral Signifier of the Sociology of ZygmuntBauman”. Polish Sociological Review, 3 (155):307-325.

Jacobsen, Michael Hviid & Keith Tester (2007): “Sociology, Nostalgia, Utopia andMortality: A Conversation with Zygmunt Bauman”. European Journal of SocialTheory, 10 (2):305-325.

Jacobsen, Michael Hviid, Sophia Marshman & Keith Tester (2007): Bauman Beyond Postmodernity: Conversations, Critical Appraisals and Annotated Bibliography

1989-2005. Aalborg: Aalborg University Press.Kilminster, Richard & Ian Varcoe (eds.) (1996): Culture, Modernity and Revolution: Essays in Honour of Zygmunt Bauman. London: Routledge.

Luhmann, Niklas (1984): Soziale Systeme: Grundriss einer allgemeinen Theorie.Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Mills, Charles Wright (1959): The Sociological Imagination. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.

Smith, Dennis (1999): Zygmunt Bauman: Prophet of Postmodernity. Cambridge:Polity Press.

Tester, Keith (2004): The Social Thought of Zygmunt Bauman. London: Palgrave/Macmillan.

Tester, Keith & Michael Hviid Jacobsen (2005): Bauman Before Postmodernity: Invitation, Conversations and Annotated Bibliography 1953-1989. Aalborg:Aalborg University Press.

Welzer, Harald (2002): “On the Rationality of Evil: An Interview with ZygmuntBauman”. Thesis Eleven, 70:100-112.


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PART 1Methodological Issues


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Chapter 1

Bauman on Metaphors – A Harbinger of Humanistic Hybrid Sociology

Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Sophia Marshman

“The greatest thing by far is the command of metaphor. This alone cannot be impartedto another: it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye forresemblances”

– Aristotle: The Poetics

“A novel examines not reality, but existence. And existence is not what has occurred,existence is the realm of human possibilities, everything that man can become, everything

he is capable of. Novelists draw up the map of existence by discovering this or that human possibility”

– Milan Kundera in Lubomir Doloźel: Heterocosmica

Introduction

The influence of the great works of literature on the sociology of Zygmunt Baumanis every bit as evident as the influence his own acutely observed sense of the ‘moral’

and the ‘humane’ has had on his practice of sociology. For while Bauman’s work isinfused with literary references, elegant prose, unfolding narratives and metaphorswhich are at once delicate and powerful, it is the ends to which he uses these devicesthat reveals his uncommon and constant commitment to ‘humanity’. Throughouthis work, Bauman consciously and consistently blurs the sacredly upheld dividingline between theory and method by way of literary means and poetically inspiredtechniques. Thus, his sociological imagination is simultaneously a poetic imagination.As a consequence, many contemporary biographers, commentators and sociologists

(such as Keith Tester, Peter Beilharz, Dennis Smith and Tony Blackshaw) havefocused their attention on the unorthodox or alternative angle of Bauman’s wayof practicing sociology. Bauman’s work today lingers, not uneasily as one should

perhaps expect, but rather comfortably between social science and literary expositionor storytelling. He himself recently revealed in an interview with Maaretta Jaukkurihow “there is a striking similarity between the sociological and the artistic vocations.They operate on the same ground, they feed from the same table; hence one wouldexpect them to be engaged in some sort of ‘sibling rivalry’, but also to complement,


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correct and inspire each other and learn from each other”. In his writings, Baumantherefore consciously dissolves such artificial oppositions and collapses them intoa unique, distinct and humanistically inspired hybrid sociological voice and in hiswhole way of diagnosing society and describing the plight of people inhabiting it,

his work often comes closer to the novel than to the conventional and often prosaicsociological exposition (Jacobsen, Marshman & Tester 2007). Therefore, apart fromdescribing the intrinsic ambivalence of human living, his own work also oozes withambivalence – ambivalence between sociological description and literary decoration.As Tony Blackshaw recently asserted as a characteristic of Bauman as a so-called‘poet-intellectual’:

It is not so much that Bauman is a relativist unfazed by the prospect of mixing the‘fantastical’ or the ‘magical’ together with the ‘real’, so much that he works with theassumption that it would be ridiculous to think that anybody – not just a sociologist –could work under the illusion that ‘fantasy’, ‘magic’ and ‘reality’ are something apart(Blackshaw 2006:295).

This much neglected narrative, poetic or literary aspect of Zygmunt Bauman’s work,this hybridity between the magical and the real, and his ability to merge prosaicsociological interpretation with more poetically inspired insights constitute the topicof this chapter.

Dutch sociologist Pieter Nijhoff once remarked how “it should be conceded fromthe start that Bauman’s style of working might be threatening to some conventionsamong scholars” (Nijhoff 1998:87). Indeed, Bauman’s far from traditional approachto practicing and writing sociology has led some to question his methodology, yetBauman is not concerned with methodological issues as such. He fully recognizesand embraces the inherently schizophrenic and often neglected nature of hisdiscipline lingering somewhere between science and literature/art (Lepenies 1988;

Nisbet 1976) and the fact that there are many different ways of doing sociology.Thus, Nijhoff’s characteristic of Bauman continued by observing how his

argumentation does not follow the clearly marked and narrow road of connected concepts.His discourse combines terminology from different contexts: by transferring expressions

– concrete and abstract, colloquial and esoteric, narrative and analytical – he dovetails infact all sorts of separate spheres and sectors (Nijhoff 1998:96).

Nowhere is this dovetailing tendency more evident than in Bauman’s extensive useof metaphors in his analysis of the human beings inhabiting and the social formsconstituting the different types of modernity forming and transforming throughout

the last couple of centuries. The main purpose of his metaphors, as the metaphorsof many equally prominent sociologists, is to try to capture the intricate connections between social structure and lived experience and by proposing metaphorical labels poetically and poignantly mirroring such lived experience from the vantage-pointof those human beings being described. Thus, the only prerogative is that thesociologist – no matter what his specific subject matter or topic, no matter his choiceof methods or research strategies – utilizes his sociological and moral imagination.Essentially, Bauman is not ‘hung up’ on distinctions between the worlds of science


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Bauman on Metaphors 21

and of literature, he is not concerned with reducing his work to the tasks of a‘research technician’ who, in the apt words of Charles Wright Mills, meticulouslygrinds social reality in the ‘fine little mill of The Statistical Ritual’ while worshipping‘The Scientific Method’ (Mills 1959:72). Mills, like Bauman, was extremely critical

of this image of the research technician with his ‘human engineering’ and ‘social prediction’ buttressing ‘the bureaucratic ethos’ as a role model for sociology becausethe consequences would prove disastrous and detrimental to moral and humanexistence:

To say that ‘the real and final aim of human engineering’ or of ‘social science’ is to‘predict’ is to substitute a technocratic slogan for what ought to be a reasoned moralchoice. That too is to assume the bureaucratic perspective within which – once it is fullyadopted – there is much less moral choice available (Mills 1959:117).

Thus, as soon as one examines Bauman’s use of metaphor, it becomes immediatelyclear that he is not such a technician, nor would he desire to be. According to Mills,such men suffer from a ‘methodological inhibition’ making them utterly ill-suitedfor understanding the social reality they claim to capture with their ‘abstractedempiricism’. Let us also recall the well-chosen words of Peter L. Berger insistingthat “in science as in love a concentration on technique is quite likely to lead toimpotence” (Berger 1963:24). Such impotence, however, is absent from Bauman’s

heterodox and humanistic sociology. What is being attempted is not a fusion of theliterary and the sociological for the sake of grandiloquence alone; rather Baumanis attempting a kind of humanization through metaphor . Put simply, Baumanuses metaphor as a device to recall us to our common humanity, as a means of re-awakening our sense of responsibility for the Other and of human possibility.

Therefore, the poetically inspired sociological imagination may potentiallyalso contain the seeds not only of hermeneutical understanding but also of politicalmobilization and social transformation, as it may kindle the political imaginationof scholars and practitioners alike. It might be argued that Bauman’s chief concern

when writing and practicing sociology is to demolish common sense assumptionsabout the world and everyday life, whether they be the imaginary ‘social fantasies,of ‘ordinary’ people, as Norbert Elias once dubbed them, or the unreflected ‘domainassumptions’ of academics, as asserted by Alvin W. Gouldner. One realizes that the

beauty of Bauman’s writing lies not in it’s utilization of ‘pretty’ language, or inits allusions to the ‘great and the good’ of the literary world. Bauman’s eruditionis so powerful because his writing suggests that this kind of sociology can have atransformative capacity, can make people think about things more deeply, can shock

the reader out of their moral ennui, and can – at least potentially – instigate socialaction.This chapter then, is an exploration of the stakes of Zygmunt Bauman’s use of

metaphors. Attention is paid to how Bauman’s sociological style connects with asociological concern to emancipate human potential from the constraints of thesupposedly ‘necessary’, ‘natural’ or ‘inevitable’. It is Bauman’s hope that the worldmight become a site and a product of human action, as opposed to a prison house ofheteronomy. The purpose of this piece is fourfold. In the first part, the chief focus is


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with Bauman’s ‘sociology of possibility’. The key question here relates to the ‘catch’of his metaphorical approach? Just as the fisherman casts a net into the sea in order tocatch fish, so too Bauman casts his net of metaphors into the social world to ‘catch’insights into our daily lives which have previously slipped through the sociological

‘net’. In the second part of the piece, the discussion moves on to an appraisal of theimplications of this strategy for the practice of sociology itself. Bauman does not

present himself as an ‘expert’, as somebody who knows all the answers. His approachutterly avoids any tendency towards the hubristic or lethal ‘what is to be done’ mode.Instead, Bauman’s sociology is about dialogue, communication, and essentially

bringing together that which institutions and common sense normally keep apart. AsBauman asserts, being ‘moral’ invariably means going against the grain of prevailingsocial climate, not with it. As he iconoclastically states: “Clearly then, moral acts

meant breaching rather than following the socially designed and monitored norms”(Bauman in Bauman & Tester 2001:53). In this, Bauman had been heavily influenced by Hannah Arendt’s belief that “the ability to go against one’s society could be a prerequisite of a moral act” (Bauman in Bauman & Tester 2001:34). In the third part, we will examine the moral ‘content’, as it were, of Bauman’s metaphors andhow they may guide us – as individuals and as society – in creating a more humansocial order. In order to do so, we need to recognize – and act upon – the ubiquity ofhuman suffering. In the final part, we will seek to gather the strings by focusing onBauman’s so-called ‘humanization through metaphors’ whereby we wish to point to

the inherently moral character of his metaphors – metaphors invented and utilizedin the service of human responsibility and possibility. In view of the concerns ofBauman’s work, this piece is less an exercise in exegesis and intended more to be aninvitation to return to the original texts.

The ‘Catch’ of Metaphors, Mark One: Capturing Inclusion and Exclusion

Bauman’s use of metaphor is part and parcel of his wider ‘sociology of possibility’,

his confidence that literature, or literary and artistic techniques, open up horizonsinstead of closing them down and that such devices may assist in denaturalizingthe world. Metaphors are not only conceptual devices – they are potentially reality-shattering and agenda-changing social acts aimed at presenting an image of howthe world ‘ought’ to be or ‘should’/‘could’ be. Therefore, metaphors play a crucialrole in Bauman’s practice of moral sociology. He uses metaphors in order todevelop and practice critical social thought. This might be said to fit very well withthe unmistakable utopian strand in Bauman’s work; with the idea that humanity

could/should embrace the open-ended possibilities rather than surrendering to theidea that things ‘are as they are’ and ‘there is no alternative’ (Jacobsen 2004, 2006).Bauman’s metaphors are intended to make us see and think more clearly about whatis happening, but also about what could happen. His metaphors make us reconsiderthe world around us. They are inherently moral , they give voice to the voiceless,they recall us to our inescapable human and moral responsibility for ‘the Other’and point to the hidden possibilities behind the immediately observable reality,to a world not yet closed down by mechanical models, mathematical reasoning


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or rational argument, to a world capable of being re-enchanted and transformed.Like utopia or morality, metaphor points to imagination rather than logic, to infinityrather than totality, to possibility rather than probability. In the case of ZygmuntBauman, his metaphors are methods of possibility pointing to a world existing

parallel to reality as we know, recognize and perceive it. He encourages us to seethings differently, and here metaphors belong to or exemplify Bauman’s favouritesociological strategy: defamiliarization. Defamiliarization consists of makingthe obvious non-obvious, looking at life from unexpected and unexplored angles,constructing the well-known as strange, but “most importantly, it may open upnew and previously unsuspected possibilities of living one’s life with more self-awareness, more comprehension” (Bauman 1990:15). Metaphor is the archetypallinguistic weapon in such defamiliarization strategy. Armed with it, Bauman seeks

to transcend and transform our commonsensical and doxic assumptions about theapparent inevitability, naturalness or immutability of the world we inhabit, its history,its direction, its possibilities and our positions within it. Bauman observes that welive in a society “which no longer recognizes any alternative to itself and thereforefeels absolved from the duty to examine, demonstrate, justify (let alone prove) thevalidity of its outspoken and tacit assumptions” (Bauman 2001:99).

As a consequence of man’s (and indeed also sociologists’) inability to ‘see thewhole of society’, metaphors fruitfully perform, at least, four interrelated functions insocial science research or writings. First, they are transforming – by their invocation

they creatively change our conception of the world as it is and allows us to catcha glimpse of a world redeemed from the limitations of realism. Second, they aretransferring – they use the language of one domain and transfer it to another, oftenin a quite absurd fashion (take as an example Erving Goffman’s metaphor of thetheatre to highlight aspects of social interaction in everyday life), thereby creatingfruitful resemblances. Third, they are transmuting – they reorganize and reconfigureour ingrained ideas and notions about the social world and its fundamental workingswhereby we may perceive it more clearly or more creatively. Finally, they are

transcending – they allow us to transcend conventional academic doxa or commonsense with refreshing perspectives or surprising juxtapositions. In short, withmetaphors sociologists may hope to see further or deeper than they would be allowedto without metaphors (Antoft, Jacobsen & Kupferberg 2007).

Metaphors, however, are but one example of Bauman’s overall methodologicalembeddedness somewhere along – or transcending – the dividing-line betweensocial science and literature. Although the way that Bauman writes is tremendouslysignificant, what he writes about is obviously of paramount importance. Onemight argue that Bauman’s extensive and frankly awe-inspiring body of work has

by and large addressed the plight of those ‘cast out’ from society, those who have been marginalized, forgotten, and ultimately ‘wiped out’. Bauman’s own personalexperience of exile undoubtedly aids his ‘outsider’ perspective, yet the longevity and

passion of his commitment to the plight of the underdog suggests a deeper and moreworthy source for this concern. The way that Bauman practices sociology is informed

by his compassion, his instinctive sense of what is ‘right’ in the face of much easierand ‘economically viable’ yet also less ‘humane’ options. Bauman’s metaphors dealwith the ‘big issues’ like the Holocaust or globalization, yet their relevance and utility


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extends into our everyday lives, informing the ways in which we daily negotiateour shared humanity. Thus, Bauman’s many metaphors and archetypes – e.g., ofhumans (‘tourists’, ‘vagabonds’ and ‘gamblers’), of societies (‘solid’ and ‘liquid’modern) and of utopias (‘gamekeeping’, ‘gardening’ and ‘hunting’) (see Jacobsen &

Marshman 2008) – urge us to look at the human failings and historical catastrophesof the not so distant past and present in order to exercise greater personal and societalvigilance and responsibility in the present and in the future which is not yet. Let us

briefly look as some selected metaphors from Bauman’s cornucopia. Notions of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ dominate most of Bauman’s writing, questions

of who is to be ‘excluded’ and who is to be ‘included’; of who can be incorporatedinto the ‘ideal’ order and who remains forever unassimilable. Bauman addressesthe question of which individuals constitute the ‘waste’ of liquid modernity, and

his use of the ‘disposal’ metaphor calls to mind a more sinister history, that of Jewsas ‘weeds’ and Nazis as ‘gardeners’. Bauman’s gardening metaphor was used tomaximum effect in his appraisal of the Holocaust as the ‘natural’ (for modernitywas intrinsically anti-nature) and inevitable product of modernity. Bauman observedthat modern society was managed like a garden. By following a strict plan/design/

blueprint, a pipedream of purity, a perfect garden/society could emerge; one thatwas purged of any wild, undesirable elements. The ‘gardeners’ of modernity, ofwhich the Nazis were the very best/worst example, were armed “with a vision ofharmonious colours and of the difference between pleasing harmony and revolting

cacophony; with determination to treat as weeds every self-invited plant … withmachines and poison adequate to the task of exterminating the weeds” (Bauman1989:57). In the era of ‘solid modernity’, it was the Jews who were defined asweeds that were unable to be “incorporated into the rational order, whatever theeffort” (Bauman 1989:65). Such ‘weeds’ were fit only for extermination. Here weencounter the danger of metaphors when in the wrong hands. The term ‘weed’ wasas much a euphemism as a metaphor. The Nazis used such metaphorical languageto remove the Jews from the sphere of moral consideration and human obligation.

This links to Bauman’s powerful work on adiaphorization, on the social productionof indifference. Bauman – following the lead from Raul Hilberg – cautions us thatsuch seeds of indifference are sown in gradually reinforced stages; first a group of

people are ‘classified’ as other, then they are cast-out of our moral/social order: theyare not ‘people like us’, the normal rules governing the ‘moral’ treatment of othersdo not apply to them. Bauman asserts that once such people have been removedfrom sight morally (through categorization and demonization) and physically (inthe era of solid modernity by removing them to concentration camps and in theera of liquid modernity by confining them to refugee camps and the no-go-areas ofsocial housing), the bureaucracy and industrial techniques honed in the era of solidmodernity are more than equal to the task of removing them from the world withoutleaving a trace, full stop.

In keeping with this, Bauman’s work on postmodernity/‘liquid modernity’ has been dedicated to providing a voice for the ‘new weeds’; the poor, the indolent, thesocially excluded, essentially those flung to the margins of society by the unstoppablemarch of global capitalism and consumer society. In liquid modernity, the poor areclassified as deviant and without purpose. Beggars, homeless people, drug-takers,


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single mothers and illegal immigrants all find themselves grouped into one category – ‘the underclass’ – and in the process they are stigmatized and criminalized.Bauman asserts that this happens for a reason: “Linking poverty with criminality hasanother effect: it helps to banish the poor from the universe of moral obligations”

(Bauman 1998a:77). Bauman’s human metaphors are thus made more substantivewhen they are developed to discuss refugees, ‘the poor’, the socially excluded, thehuman waste: essentially, the underclass. The underclass is made up of those ‘weeds’that ‘afflict’ all societies, be they of the solid or liquid era. There is continuity inBauman’s metaphor of the ‘weed’. Yesteryear, in the era of solid modernity, the Jewswere the paradigmatic weeds. Today, in our liquid modern times, single mothers,college drop-outs, drug-takers, asylum-seekers, and the like, serve the same purpose.According to Bauman: “‘Underclass’ evokes an image of a class of people who are

beyond classes and outside hierarchy, with neither chance nor need of readmission; people without role, making no useful contribution to the lives of the rest, and in principle beyond redemption” (Bauman 1998b:66).

It is very important to consider the centrality and distinctive continuity that theissue of ‘exclusion’ (whether due to race in the past or the inability to ‘consume’effectively in the present) has enjoyed throughout Bauman’s writing. Bauman’saforementioned and much discussed metaphor of the tourist/vagabond is part of his‘moral sociology’ which forces us to ask and answer the ‘tough questions’ aboutourselves and our society – especially of mobility as the major stratifying factor

in contemporary society. Thus, instead of accepting the notion that ‘the poor willalways be with us’ we need to look at the social and structural reasons behind andupholding this ‘reality’. Bauman’s writing, his use of insightful human metaphorsforcing us to think differently about our social and cultural arrangements, recalls usto our moral responsibility for the Other. As he asserts: “The poor will always bewith us, but what it means to be poor depends on the kind of ‘us’ they are ‘with’”(Bauman 1998b:1). So what, according to Bauman, is it like to be poor in our timesof ‘liquid modernity’? Poverty used to be about “direct jeopardy to physical survival

– the threat of death from hunger, medically unattended disease or the lack of shelter”(Bauman 1998a:37). Poverty, of course, is still characterized by these elements infurther flung parts of the globe, but, as Bauman points out, in a consumer society,‘poverty’ means something different. It means having one’s access to a ‘normal’life barred. In western liberal democracies, the poor are less likely to suffer and diein obvious relation to their poverty. They are less likely to starve or be worked todeath. Welfare provision may technically keep the poor afloat, but it cannot allowthem to participate in a life which is increasingly defined and dictated throughconsumption – conspicuous or utterly inconspicuous – through what one consumes.Bauman observes that in the past the poor were tolerated for a number of reasons. Inless secular times than our own, the poor were seen as ‘God’s unfortunate children’and ‘objects of charity’. The poor were also to be maintained as a ‘reserve armyof labour’ (Bauman 1998a:90). The poor used to have a ‘purpose’, their miserable

plight had its ‘romantic’ ring to it, they seemed to contain within them a certainrevolutionary potential. Today’s poor do neither inspire the same indignation, northe same hope, in the intellectuals who observe them. Of the ‘flawed consumers’ ofliquid modernity, Bauman asserts: “They suffer. Intellectuals feel and express their


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pity, but somehow refrain from proposing to marry their thought with this particularvariety of suffering” (Bauman 1987:179). As such, Bauman’s human metaphors can

be regarded as presenting oppositional images of human existence – or what AlbertRothenberg defined as ‘the encapsulation process of janusian thinking’ – which

differs from mere dualistic thinking by actively conceiving two or more opposite orantithetical ideas, images or concepts simultaneously (Rothenberg 1979:55, 362).Therefore, Bauman’s metaphors of ‘tourist’ and ‘vagabond’, but also of ‘liquid’ and‘solid’ modernity, as we shall see, embody the essence of such janusian thinkingin simultaneously, consciously and creatively focusing on opposites, polarities,extremes or antitheses in analyses and descriptions of the social and human world.

Bauman’s metaphor of the transformation from ‘solidity’ to ‘liquidity’ alsocaptures the sense of a world where all of the ‘solids’ have indeed and perhaps

irredeemably been ‘melted into air’. Bauman’s metaphorical thought here is obviouslyinformed and inspired by Marshall Berman who observed that the collapse of solidmodernity “pours us all into a maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and r

Documents

A Sociology of Bauman