This text covers Bauman’s contribution to sociology and social theory. This ideal teaching text analyzes Bauman's shift from a sociology of postmodernity to liquid modernity, and provides a critical assessment of the contemporary Bauman, appraising his novel theory of liquid modernity in terms of its implications for self-identity, interpersonal relationships, culture, communications, and the broad-ranging institutional transformations associated with globalization.
In addition to various extracts from Bauman's work, the book also contains a spirited reply from Zygmunt Bauman to both his sympathetic and unsympathetic critics. Bauman concludes by providing a new perspectives on his theory of liquid modernity, its differentiation from the modernity/postmodernity debate and its relation to current developments in contemporary social theory.
Introduction Zygmunt Bauman: A Social Theorist for Our Time
Anthony Elliott
1 From Postmodernity to Liquid Modernity: What’s in a Metaphor?
Larry Ray
2 Love, Justice, and Death
Charles Lemert
3 Bauman’s Irony
Keith Tester
4 Human Waste and Wasted Lives: Bauman and Ethics
Iain Wilkinson
5 Liquid Sexualities: Gender Discontent After Bauman
Ann Branaman
6 Solid Modernity, Liquid Utopia: Liquid Modernity, Solid Utopia
Michael Hviid Jacobsen
7 Another Bauman: The Anthropological Imagination
Peter Beilharz
8 Zygmunt Bauman and criminology: ‘a guiding narrative’?
Keith Hayward and Jock Young
9 Against Globalization: Postmodern Bauman and Kristeva
Janet Sayers
10 The Vanishing of Interpersonal Relationships
Poul Poder
11 A Reply to my Critics
Zygmunt Bauman
Biography
Anthony Elliott is Professor of Sociology at Flinders University, Australia. His book, The New Individualism (2005), written with Charles Lemert, is also published by Routledge.
'Undergraduates might ask if this reader should be seen as a possible entry point for newcomers who are not aware of Bauman’s writings. I do believe so, simply because some of the texts found here are quite clear, especially the first two chapters.'
'Even scholars who are already familiar with Bauman’s books will find some interesting prolongations of his ideas...'
-Yves Laberge, Université Laval, in Sociology, vol 44 iss 3
