Zymunt Bauman

A detailed Summary of Zymunt Bauman

Zygmunt Bauman was born in Poznan, Poland in 1925. He moved to Britain with his wife Janina in the 1950's, and took up a position as Lecturer at both the University of Warsaw and the University of Tel Aviv. He held several visiting professorships before he became Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds in Yorkshire from 1972 until his retirement in 1990. Bauman is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at both the University of Leeds and University of Warsaw (www.sociologyonline.com). "He has been described by the British sociologist, Anthony Giddens as: 'the theorist of postmodernity...he has developed a position with which everyone has to reckon'" (www.sociologyonline.com).

While heading the Department of Sociology at Leeds, Bauman brought great qualities of intellectual leadership. "From the start he saw his task as one of inspiring students, and among his academic colleagues promoting a collegial atmosphere in which new academic projects were welcomed and free and open discussion encouraged in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance and understanding" (www.leeds.ac.uk). Since his retirement, Bauman and his reputation has continued to benefit sociology at Leeds.

Zygmunt Bauman is a prolific writer kn

Bauman suggests that modernity is about what is rational, and what is rational can turn into evil. One example of this was depicted in his research on the Holocaust, where he attempts to show the true face of modernity. Bauman shows how in the death camps everything was rationalized:

Social Theory. Ed. Bryan s. Turner.

California: Stanford University Press, 1989.

Like stated above, Bauman believes that there exists a union between the modernist and postmodernist train of thought. He suggests that "postmodernity is modernity coming to age... it is coming to terms with its own impossibility (Elliot 1996,p5). He believes that postmodernism as a theory is not only real but necessary, and that it provides an explanation of the condition of postmodernity (Turner 1996,p305). Bauman thinks that modernity's greatest problem is its substitution of amoral objectives for ethically valued ends (Cohen 1996,p120).

Bauman believes that contemporary culture exercises both postmodern and modern orders simultaneously, which leads to Bauman's central thesis: "postmodernity as modernity without illusions" (Elliot 1996,p22).

In an interview with Zygmunt Bauman published on October 25, 1999, Marian Kempny asked what the most important influences on his intellectual development were. Bauman responded "If some 'moment of revelation' must be located, I guess the encounter with Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks comes closest to the idea of such an event" (www.ub.es). Bauman goes on to explain that his background was mostly in the Marxist theory, with all of its historical determination and solid structures. Gramsci's writings made him realize that this rigid framework "was actually a fluid, liquid flow of cultural transmutations...and such a viewpoint has opened up a completely new approach to understanding and analyzing social reality" (www.ub.es). Bauman suggests, "Gramsci immunized me once and for all against the naive hope that cultural phenomena might be construed in terms of systems, structures, and functions" (www.ub.es).

The Holocaust, in Bauman's point of view, shows the two-faced reality of modernity, because this horrible occurrence took place in its midst:

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Approximate Word count = 1640
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: People