Читать книгу Bauman, Elias and Latour on Modernity and Its Alternatives - Sandro Segre - Страница 7

Chapter 1

BAUMAN (1925–2017)

Introductory Observations

Zygmunt Bauman was an influential philosopher and sociologist who lived in England since 1971, after having left his native Poland in 1968 and taught at the University of Tel Aviv for the subsequent three years. Bauman was Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds between 1992 and 2000. Few would probably dispute that “Bauman is one of the most influential contemporary sociologists” (Ray 2007: 63; see also Elliott 2007: 51). He was a prolific writer even before his retirement and remained prolific thereafter, as indicated by the great number of books he subsequently published. Bauman was the single author in most of them, but he authored a few works in the form of interviews and conversations, which he has held with fellow sociologists or journalists. Bauman dealt with a variety of sociological subjects related to the themes of modernity and postmodernity. Here, attention will be paid first to his vision of sociology, namely, to its subject matter and epistemology, to the ethical reasons for his concern with this discipline, and to what sociology can and ought to achieve in his judgment. Some substantive themes, on which Bauman also focused, will be then dealt with. They are democracy and freedom; globalization and its ethos; liquid sociology and liquid life; modernity and postmodernity, the related themes of ambivalence, identity, consumerist culture, the holocaust, the social and moral consequences of inequality, and the role of education in the contemporary age. In the final section, some secondary literature on Bauman’s oeuvre will be briefly presented.

Bauman’s Vision of Sociology

Bauman has endeavored to clarify his conception of the subject matter and task of sociology in a series of conversations he held between 2012 and 2013 with the sociologists Hviid Jacobsen and Tester. Some of these conversations were subsequently published as a book titled What Use Is Sociology (Bauman et al. 2014). According to Bauman, sociology’s central concern has to do with human experience, which “in our multi-vocal and multi-centered society” promotes a tendency “for a constantly widening spectrum of life pursuits to be spread all over the social body” (Bauman et al. 2014: 13); in other words, it has to do with “humans’ struggle with their own life problems” (Bauman et al. 2014: 105). This central concern involves blurring the boundaries that separate sociology from different genres, such as art, film and literature.

Bauman mentions in this regard several prominent writers who can help readers of sociological texts “find the truth of their own way of being-in-the world,” and he is not therefore overly concerned with conventional research methods when he practices sociology. Bauman recommends what he calls “a respectful attitude to the novelists’ work”; for this attitude only makes it possible to oppose a tendency, which he deplores, to a partial and impoverished understanding of human reality by focusing on the objective and impersonal character of events rather than on their subjective, spiritual and emotional character (Jacobsen 2013a: 23–24; Bauman et al. 2014: 8–14). Though their techniques and modes of proceeding differ, sociology shares with all these different genres the calling to lift “the curtain of prejudgments,” and thus be able to investigate “the human-made and human-making world.” Conventional or (as Bauman calls it) “orthodox” sociology in all its current tendencies, whether represented by Parsons or Lazarsfeld or Anselm and Strauss, belongs to a past phase of modernity. This phase is dubbed by Bauman as solid modernity, in contrast to current liquid modernity, on which we shall dwell presently. Conventional sociology is rejected because of (in Bauman’s judgment) its “trained incapacity” to grasp humans in “their mind-boggling complex entirety” (Bauman et al. 2014: 17–19).

It concerned itself “with the conditions of human obedience and conformity.” As a consequence, the subject matter of conventional sociology concerns humans stripped of their subjectivity of people having an identity, and who can therefore make choices. By doing so, conventional sociology presupposes that a neat separation can and should be made between the subject and the sociological research object. Bauman’s own conception of sociology’s task is quite different. Sociology is, in his view, “a critical activity.” It pursues a “perpetually unfinished” critique of taken-for-granted knowledge and common sense. This activity is conducted in conjunction with self-criticism and the task of de-objectifying the social world and the mind or perceptions of its inhabitants. Bauman’s ultimate goal is a kind of sociology that endeavors to “re-establish itself as cultural politics in the service of human freedom.” This kind of sociology requires unconventional research methods, of which the systematic use of literary sources is an example (Bauman 2012: 213. See also Jacobsen 2013a: 15–16).

Another example is the great relevance Bauman imputes to metaphors as sociological tools. As he has stated in an interview, metaphors “are the indispensable scaffoldings for imagination and perhaps the most effective tools of comprehension.” They suggest similarity, not identity, and “have the crucial advantage of opening new sights while simultaneously exposing their limitations, their incurable non-comprehensiveness and non-finality” (Jacobsen 2013a: 17–18). Bauman has authored several metaphors, of which he makes frequent use in his own works (cf. Bauman et al. 2014: 83–84; Jacobsen and Marshman 2008; see also Bauman 2012: 213), and to which we shall return later.

These metaphors designate and counterpose types of societies (liquid vs. solid modern), of actors (vagabonds vs. tourists), and of social utopias (gamekeeping vs. gardening). Sociological hermeneutics means that Bauman’s sociology endeavors to provide ongoing interpretations of other peoples’ interpretations, through which a common and shared lived world is constructed and preserved. This world, as Bauman sees it, is fragmented and ambivalent. Academic sociology, whose members have been trained in conventional research methods, is doomed to irrelevance. It is no coincidence, as Bauman observes, that Marx and Simmel never held an established academic position, while Weber “spent most of his academic life on leaves of absence” (Bauman et al. 2014: 38). This conception of sociology does not possess a preestablished model of an ideal society or truth of its own, which would turn sociologists into moral preachers seeking to impose their value choices on others. It does not renounce, however, either the search for truth, or the hope for a better world. In this respect, it is close to Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s critical social theory (Bauman et al. 2014: 25–26, 47–48, 74–75).

Sociology involves understanding social phenomena, that is, “to grasp the meaning with which the actor’s intention invested it” (Bauman 1978: 12), their intentions and purposes, which set them apart from natural phenomena. It therefore involves what Bauman calls sociological hermeneutics. This calls for using sociological tools, such as metaphors, in order to accomplish a number of different tasks, such as understanding human realities; “providing orientations in an admittedly changing world,” thus making individuals able “to assert themselves; to choose the kind of life they wish to lead” in the predicament in which they find themselves; and finally, engaging “in a continuous dialogue with the daily experience” of the men and women of our times (Bauman et al. 2014: 54, 98, 110). The subjective aspect of sociology and the social sciences in general involves their effort, therefore, “to penetrate and to capture the meaning of human deeds” (Bauman 1978: 17).

This effort raises the twofold question of how to obtain a consensus on their conclusions, and what are the standards of truth for the interpretation of meaning (Bauman 1978: 14). Briefly stated, this is the problem of how to reach true understanding of other people’s experiences and private mental states. This is possible, as Bauman maintains with reference to Wittgenstein, Lévi-Strauss, Giddens and Habermas, “by enlarging both the alien and one’s own experience so as to construct a larger system in which each ‘makes sense’ of the other” (Bauman 1978: 214). To this end, it is necessary to generalize the social scientists’ own experiences in such a way that “the smallest common denominator is found between the experience of the era whose meaning they want to capture and their own” (Bauman 1978: 221). “An intense interest” is also necessary “in the conditions which underlie the attainment of consensus in society at large.” Therefore, Bauman’s epistemological recommendation is for a sociology that actively engages itself “with the task of promotion of equal opportunity and democracy” (Baumann 1978: 246).

It may be convenient at this point to dwell on Bauman’s reception of sociologists, such as Giddens and Habermas, who have dealt with the themes of understanding and meaning within their own theoretical frameworks; for this reception may shed light on Bauman’s own vision of sociology. As we shall see, in both cases his reception has been ambivalent. As for Giddens, Bauman’s appreciation is clearly and emphatically stated. He states that “Giddens’ power of synthesis has few equals” (Bauman 1989a: 34) and points to “the richness and complexity of Giddens’ manifold concerns.” His project—Bauman adds—“lies at the very heart of contemporary sociological discourse” (Bauman 1989a: 35). Bauman, nonetheless, has a few objections to Giddens’s theoretical construction.

Like Parsons, as Bauman contends, Giddens “needs some sort of an outer force” in order to “account for the non-randomness of action”; to account, in other words, for “how the structure comes into being and how it operates” (Bauman 1989a: 43). What is more, Giddens fails to confront the question of “who is to judge the ‘accuracy’ of understanding” (Bauman 1989a: 47). If the social scientists are such persons, whence do they draw their authority to adjudicate? Moreover, how is the social scientist able to attain understanding, if this is “interpreted as the reconstruction (or construction) of actors’ motives and orientations”? (Bauman 1989a: 49). Weber gives pride of place to understanding goal-oriented action, according to Bauman: “the structure of instrumental-rational action emerges as the only framework in which sociological study as an activity aimed at the objective understanding of human behaviour can take place” (Bauman 1978: 82).

Sociological understanding does not differ from common sense, as Giddens has maintained with his notion of double hermeneutics. However, a changing world has resulted in “a crisis of the authority of sociology” as a legitimate interpreter and theorist of social reality” (Bauman 1989a: 53). This fact impacts negatively on Giddens’ sociology. Like other sociologists, Giddens endeavors to interpret and account for social reality in accordance with the ways “those in power” have already defined it (Bauman 1989a: 51). His own statements, therefore, “like most sociological statements,” are barely distinguishable from “informed public opinion” In order to speak with authority, Bauman concludes, sociology would have to update its theory of society” (Bauman 1989a: 55). Bauman’s appraisal of Habermas is also ambivalent.

On the one hand, Bauman apparently seeks to defend Habermas against the charge that undistorted communication does not accord with “twentieth-century experience of public debate.” Habermas’s vision, he remarks, is “an ideal type, a baseline from which the practically attained consensus can be criticized and proved invalid” (Bauman 1987b: 96–97). On the other hand, however, Bauman rejects consensus, if thus attained, as an ideal worth pursuing. “Consensus and unanimity,” he writes, “augur the tranquility of the graveyard (Habermas’s ‘perfect communication’, which measures its own perfection by consensus and exclusion of dissent, is another dream of death which radically cures the ills of freedom’s life)” (Bauman 1997: 202). Though ambivalent in both cases, Bauman’s appraisal of Giddens and Habermas differs fundamentally in several respects.

First of all, Giddens is praised for his ability to draw a synthesis between diverse sociological perspectives; the praise concerns, in other words, his contribution to sociological theory. Habermas’s vision of undistorted communication is considered an ideal type. As such, it is useful insofar as providing a criterion to assess existing consensus on any particular issue. While praise on Giddens’s theoretical contribution is then given without reservations, Bauman’s appreciation of Habermas is qualified, depending on the empirical usefulness of this ideal type. Furthermore, Bauman’s objections to these two authors are quite distinct in their nature. To Giddens, Bauman raises an epistemological objection. It concerns the very possibility for his epistemology to provide accounts of social reality that are significantly different from public opinion and common sense. To Habermas, Bauman objects that, from an axiological viewpoint, undistorted communication is not a value worth pursuing.

These praises and criticisms may shed further light on Bauman’s vision of sociology. Sociology’s central concern is for Bauman the understanding of human experience, in all its complexity and variety, as previously stated. Sociology should not therefore avoid pursuing the empirical accuracy of such understanding; nor should it neglect the ethical consequences that occur, when this consensus constrains human experience. More in general, Bauman is wary of the perverse ethical and empirical consequences that social-science investigations may have, whether they are intended or not. Such consequences Bauman designates as “the social production of inhumanity” (Bauman 1984: 154). Their investigation is a major theme of his “Modernity and the Holocaust,” in keeping with Bauman’s central concern with human experience, and the task he assigns to sociology, to inquire into it thoroughly. Conventional research methods, which make use of random samples, are potentially useful. This is so, however, only if the characteristics of the individuals composing the collectivity, on which the investigation focuses, are irrelevant for the research purposes (Bauman 1966).

Democracy, Freedom and Globalization

Pursuing this political and ethical task has been a lifelong concern for Bauman. This concern has acquired particular urgency in his eyes because of what he considers a state of crisis connoting democracy and freedom, of which contemporary capitalism and the current globalization process bear responsibility. As for democracy, its predicament, which Bauman deplores, originates in his judgment from several interconnected causes, such as deregulation and the decline of the Welfare State. This predicament has occurred in conjunction with, and as a consequence of, the rise of neoliberalism and of the inability of parliamentary democracy to fulfill its promise. Liberalism rests on “informed opinions and political deliberation” (Bauman and Donskis 2013: 39). The absence of these conditions points to the “profound crisis,” which liberalism undergoes in our age of technocracy. This state of crisis is indicated by liberalism’s commitment to a free-market economy and by its little concern for liberty, human rights and human dignity (Bauman and Donskis 2013: 73–75). The institutions of formal democracy notwithstanding, citizens have been reduced to “the condition of a flock of sheep” (Bauman and Donskis 2013: 27).

The liberal tradition of informed citizens debating public affairs has given way to a quest for security on the part of privatized city dwellers. The promise of parliamentary democracy has been accomplished only to the extent that formal democratic procedures are concerned; but these procedures do not uphold substantive democracy, and therefore the citizens’ actual participation in the democratic process. Their participation has been constrained by the transformation of the democratic process into the current post-democracy, which is characterized by mass democracy and mass education (Bauman and Donskis 2013: 5). Post-democracy bears little resemblance to the ideal of the citizens’ active and responsible participation to political decision-making. The Agora has been since Aristotle an ideal form of life, the purpose of which has been to coordinate and mediate between private and public interests. Contemporary democracies have tried—not successfully, according to Bauman—to overcome the contradiction between “the formal universality of democratic rights and the less than universal ability of their holders to exercise such rights effectively” (Bauman 2011a: 13).

As Bauman has pithily put it, “amidst the daily effort just to stay afloat, there is neither room nor time for a vision of the ‘good society’” (Bauman 2004: 35). Democratic rights, along with their accompanying freedoms, have been “granted in theory but unattainable in practice” (Bauman 2011a: 14), as civil and political rights have not been complemented by social rights. The Welfare State, or Social State, was an attempt to make social rights effective, and therefore to turn the ideal of the agora into a social and political reality. Contemporary post-democracy, however, while guaranteeing formal political liberties, is a degeneration of this ideal. “The free public discussion of issues—and particularly of the issue of social justice and the ethical quality of public affairs” (Bauman 1997: 63) has given way to what has been called “the show business of politics” (Bauman and Bordoni 2014: 141). The currently prevailing model of “opinion poll rule” involves the politicians’ exclusive consideration of “electoral gains and losses” (Bauman 1997: 62). The free public discussion of issues is constitutive of democracy, as Bauman views it; for it is “a necessary,” though not sufficient, “condition of the freedom of expression and open controversy.” Its degeneration causes greater social inequality, which in turn prevents achieving “a good society.”

Politics, Society, the Economy and Identity in the Age of Globalization

Politics has been narrowly reinterpreted as a succession of contingent events that catch the attention of the mass media, and of an audience of passive receivers. In Bauman’s pithy words, “the many watch the few.” These few, he adds, “are the celebrities” (Bauman 1998a: 53). Celebrities, no matter where they came from, are such for no other reason that they are watched, and therefore their way of life is displayed by the media as a model. This public, accustomed to watching TV talks and other fleeting events, has a short span of attention, according to Bauman (2004: 66). The dangers and menaces, to which the media call attention, and which are allegedly and spectacularly resisted and fought back on TV screens, are not those that pose a threat to democracies. Though a major cause of “popular anxiety and fears,” which are inflated and exploited by right-wing politicians, the putative sources of insecurity such as immigrants, the homeless, beggars and gypsies are not “the most awesome threats to decent human life and dignity, and thus to democratic life (Bauman 2011a: 19). Immigrants and other alleged causes of threat are the consequences, Bauman maintains, of “the changing pragmatics of interpersonal relations”; as they are now permeated by “the ruling spirit of consumerism” and universal deregulation. “The overwhelming spirit of uncertainty” of contemporary postmodern life has replaced the “solidity and continuity” (whether “genuine or assumed”), which characterized the bygone modern age (Bauman 1995: 50–52).

By depicting these people as a threat, rather than an economic and cultural resource (Bauman and Mazzeo 2012: 12–15), as both the Right and the Left are inclined to do in the present age, they are deprived of the “emancipatory chance entailed in the modern project” (Bauman 1995: 56). The media do not encourage discussions and debates concerning their plight. The traditional mass media programs, such as TV shows, and also the new media such as internet and World Wide Web, are not interactive at all. They are in fact asymmetrical and enlarge the chasm between the global elite and the common people. They do not promote communities among their audiences, whose members are and remain solitary individuals. They do not therefore encourage the agora; for they do not contribute to form or preserve a public opinion or a political community of citizens. The media, on the contrary, turn people’s attention away from what would matter for their life, limited social and economic inequality and a comprehensive Welfare State, and are accordingly inimical to democracy (Bauman 1998a: 51–54; 2002: 168–93). “The bulk of the electorate,” Bauman maintains, follow the politicians’ message. The electorate supports them according to “the severity they manifest in the course of the ‘security race’” (Bauman 2011a: 19).

By doing so, politicians and their electorate lose sight of what a good society ought to be. A good society, as Bauman conceives of it, would be based on citizen’s active participation in political life (Bauman 1997: 63). These conditions, however, no longer obtain in the current age of globalization. The globalization processes have been one of Bauman’s central concerns because of their undesirable consequences, according to Bauman. “An integral part—he writes—of the globalizing processes is progressive spatial segregation, separation and exclusion” (Bauman 1998a: 3). In the political sphere, globalization has caused “a parceled-out world of sovereign states” and their demise, as they are no longer self-sufficient from a military, economic and cultural point of view. At the same time, however, globalization has brought about the coming into existence of “two power blocks,” and “supra-state integration” as a consequence (Bauman 1998a: 63).

As his fellow debater Carlo Bordoni has commented, the State can longer “act as a strong and decisive interlocutor of social mediation, as regulator of the economy, as guarantor of security” (Bauman and Bordoni 2014: 142). In Bauman’s own words, “a divorce” has occurred “between power and politics” (Bauman and Bordoni 2014: 12). The current functions of the State are limited to preserve law and order, and to attract foreign capital; more in general, to create the most favorable condition for capital investments. (Bauman 2002a: 75–76). The State, however, now refrains from providing “the safety net that the process of globalization requires” (Bauman and Bordoni 2014: 14). The social and individual consequences of globalization, which have been deemed pernicious, have been Bauman’s central concern for a long time; as according to him globalization has also exerted a negative impact because of their undesirable consequences not only for politics, but also for society and individuals.

The current state of crisis epitomizes such conditions. Crisis, as Bauman views it, means uncertainty and ignorance as to what direction, or course of life, should be taken to face the current predicament, but at the same time the urgency of taking some action nonetheless (Bauman and Bordoni 2014: 7–8, 11). The only certainty is that globalization calls for a global, rather than local, answer (Bauman 2002a: 79); for the space has now become “the battlefield of continuous space wars” conducted in urban areas between well-to-do minorities who can choose to live in secluded and fortified spaces, and majorities who cannot afford to do so (Bauman 1998a: 21–22). Globalization increases social inequality not only objectively, as indicated by its tendency to parcel out the social space between the haves and the have-nots, but also from a subjective viewpoint. In a society “where disengagement is practiced as a common strategy of the power struggle and self-assertion […] long-term commitments and obligations […] seem counterproductive, downright dangerous” (Bauman 2004: 68).

A “genuine, and so risky, dialogue” is thus avoided (Bauman 2004: 70) at the cost, however, of having a bizarre pseudo-community, as made by those individuals watching talk shows on TV, every one of whom “suffers in solitude” (Bauman 2002a: 169). The status of these individuals’ identity is “provisional,” “precarious and forever incomplete.” This status tends to be “suppressed and laboriously covered up.” It is therefore “something one needs to build from scratch,” and can never consolidate (Bauman 2004: 16; see also 2005: 15–38). The have-nots are, in Bauman’s language, the globalization’s “collateral damage” (Bauman 2011a), for globalization has been to the exclusive and increasing benefit of the haves. The predicament of the have-nots has been Bauman’s long-time concern, at least since his Legislators and Interpreters (1987b). Contemporary consumer society, Bauman contends, “cannot reproduce itself without reproducing inequalities on an ever rising level” (Bauman 1987b: 187).

Bauman’s recent works reiterate this thesis. They also emphasize, however, the causal connection between globalization and rising social inequality. Inequality has greatly increased in the last decades in the United States, United Kingdom and several other countries, and is currently very high, as Bauman argues by citing several sources, including United Nations statistics (Bauman 2013: 6–19). Inequality, as advocated by politicians, has found support in a number of beliefs, such as those held and advocated by Margaret Thatcher and other conservative political leaders, to the effect that inequality promotes economic efficiency, and that social exclusion and its attending social psychological consequences cannot be avoided (Bauman 2013: 21–26). These beliefs, however, are demonstrably false. Deregulation, in particular, has brought about the demolition of the Welfare State and the lifting of controls on the financial markets. A serious economic and social crisis has followed as a consequence, in addition to a world that is “inhospitable to trust and to human solidarity and friendly cooperation” (Bauman 2013: 88).

Globalization and Postmodernity

Bauman considers today’s global elite and its counterpart, the socially deprived, as the epitome of the social inequality and polarization. Globalization has caused or increased both of them. In contrast to solid modernity, modernity is now “liquid,” to the effect that “flexibility has replaced solidity as the ideal condition to be pursued of things and affairs” (Bauman 2013: ix). This is the condition characteristic of postmodernity. It does not reject modernity, but rather looks at it “at a distance,” making an inventory of “its gains and losses” (Bauman 1991: 272). Solid modernity—namely, a vision of the world “as an essentially ordered totality” (Bauman 1987: 3) —has given way to a “world devoid of visible structure and any—however sinister—logic.” “Overwhelming and self-perpetuating uncertainty” prevails nowadays as a consequence (Bauman 1997: 25). This change, Bauman argues, has been so significant that the term of modernity should be replaced by that of postmodernity. Uncertainty, which is its defining feature, can be gauged and assessed according to the following aspects:

(1) First of all, a new world disorder; for this new world is connoted by the contrast between a few “wealthy, but worried and unself-assured” countries and the rest of the world, which depends on them for its survival but no longer abides by “their definition of progress and happiness”; (2) second, the “universal deregulation,” as pointed by “the unbounded freedom granted to capital and finance” at the expense of the Welfare State and labor legislation; (3) moreover, the falling apart or considerable weakening of the neighborhood and family relations. In their stead, a “ruling spirit of consumerism” now prevails that casts the other merely as “the potential source of pleasurable experience,” rather than as a steady and reliable interaction partner; (4) finally, and as a consequence, a world in which there are no more stable bonds and identities (Bauman 1997: 22–25; see also 1987a: 3–4); in which, therefore, what is defined as public intrudes into the private realm, and privacy, secrecy, intimacy and human bonds are “collateral casualties” of liquid modernity (Bauman 2011b: 83–93).

Postmodernity differs from modernity also in their worldview, as formulated and carried into practice by intellectuals. Bauman, accordingly, distinguishes between two historical periods. Modernity is connoted by “the power/knowledge syndrome.” Intellectuals—a previously nonexisting category of people—draw on the Enlightenment legacy in their attempt to obtain mastery over nature and society. Both are considered predictable and amenable to domination. The resources and skills of the State are enlisted to this end. Postmodernity has a quite different worldview, one that is connoted by the intellectuals’ abandonment of their ambitions to control society and nature. The intellectuals’ new self-ascribed role is no longer to legislate on the world, but rather to interpret it by virtue of their superior knowledge (Bauman 1987b: 2–6). Interpreting, in this case, means “translating statements, made within one communally based tradition, so that they can be understood within the system of knowledge based on another tradition” (Bauman 1987b: 5).

This role, which intellectuals have conferred to themselves, has been especially noteworthy in their “intellectual romance with the ‘proletariat’ of the modern factories” (Bauman 1987b: 175). Bauman refers here to its passage from “class in itself” to “class for itself.” The passage occurs as the proletariat acquires a revolutionary class consciousness building on “a theory of society and history.” In a work of the early eighties (Bauman 1982), Bauman has argued that the revolutionary class consciousness was not so much caused by vindications of the right to the whole product of labor, but rather by the attempt to resist to “the new power’s bid for the total control over body and soul of the producer” (Bauman 1982; 17–18). It was, in other words, a power struggle concerning production, rather than distribution, relations in capitalist societies. This struggle, Bauman has maintained, cannot therefore be interpreted in economic terms as a rational attempt to control and manage the surplus by bargaining, but as one to assert the workers’ autonomy in the factory.

In the present stage of late industrial society, however, there is no longer a class that represents and promotes social interests in general; rather, an “intricate network of systemic interdependencies” (Bauman 1982: 29) now prevails, while the State provides the necessary link between the particular interests represented by specific groups and movements. Accordingly, the tensions that beset the social and political systems do not originate from antagonistic class interests. Instead, they originate from the inability of the State to satisfy incongruent interests; to deal with the malfunctions of neo-corporatist arrangements; and to overcome the inequalities and deprivations that are inherent to present-day capitalism, and that stem, at least in part, from massive unemployment (Bauman 1987a: 8–9). Remedies to the current crisis of late industrial society must be sought in the social and political emancipation of the groups that are affected by these inequalities and deprivations. Their causes, however, must be correctly interpreted and accounted for.

Only “professional intellectual” can formulate a theory of society and history, as Bauman has argued in a subsequent work (Bauman 1987b: 175). Hence, the intellectuals’ privileged role as interpreters of the proletariat’s historic interest. This role, as intellectuals conceived of it, belongs to the bygone age of modernity, however, as interpretations can no longer in this age impact on social or political reality. As a Bauman’s commentator has stated, however, “what we cannot do, for Bauman, is to translate this interpretation directly into legislation” (Beilharz 2000: 81). Modernity being a failed project (Bauman 1987b: 191), global projects have been abandoned in this postmodern age. Therefore, “no social group or category of the postindustrial world seems to be fit for the role set aside by the history-as-rationalization theory for the ‘agent of Reason’” (Bauman 1987b: 194). Bauman, however, has not relinquished Marxism as a tool for sociological analysis; for a Marxist analysis involves looking for “a class whose sufferings are radical,” whose members are most affected by the “rapidly spreading areas of deprivation” (Bauman 1987a: 9).

As a global society no longer offers stability and security, freedom in today’s world is granted to and enjoyed only by those who possess “skills and resources” (Bauman 1997: 27). These people commit themselves to a lifestyle that is connoted by “looseness of attachment and revocability of engagement” (Bauman 2005:4). They can afford to be the pleasure-seeking and the well-to-do customers of fashionable restaurants and other city amenities. They are the modern-city residents, secure in their fortified and well-policed homes and neighborhoods. Their residential areas are sharply separated from those where the inhabitants of other city areas live, and especially from the poor. Today’s poor are a collateral casualty of our “liquid” times. Bauman finds the “rapidly growing inequality on a global scale replicated “inside virtually every single ‘national society’” (Bauman 1997: 58). “Emerging post-modern circumstances”—signally, “the newly legalized post-modern self-centeredness and indifference”—may be conducive to “new outbursts of savage misanthropy” (Bauman 1991: 260).

This condition of social deprivation is permanent in polarized postmodern and global societies. Bauman describes them as societies of consumers, and he devotes a work to deal specifically with this subject. A society in keeping with this description “promotes, encourages or enforces the choice of a consumerist lifestyle and life strategy,” while other life options are discouraged and negatively sanctioned (Bauman 2007: 53). Consumers’ desires are continuously stimulated, while consumption becomes a moral duty (Bauman and Mazzeo 2012: 116–17); their satisfaction, however, is always postponed. Consumer or “liquid” society, therefore, “manages to render non-satisfaction permanent,” as those hopes of fulfillment are bound to be forever frustrated (Bauman 2005: 81–82). The past times of “solid modernity” was based on production. In contrast, “the way present-day society shapes its members is dictated first and foremost by the duty to play the role of the consumer” (Bauman 1998a: 80). Heavy social penalties are inflicted on the individuals who cannot play this role because they are poor.

The polarization process of postmodern society has enlarged the gulf between the rich and the poor; that is, in keeping with Bauman’s well-known metaphor, between the tourists and the vagabonds (Bauman 1998a: 77–102). Today’s poor are no longer the reserve army of labor, as they were in the bygone modern times. In the current postmodern age, they are socially stigmatized as “flawed consumers” (Bauman 1997: 59). They are seen as “redundant people,” “not needed as producers, useless as consumers”; their “right to survival is a nuisance for the rest of us” (Bauman 1997: 157). Tourists, in contrast, belong to the rich set. They relate to the world primarily as “sensation-seekers and collectors of experiences,” while their “obtrusive and all-too-visible,” extravagant lifestyle makes them “objects of universal adoration” (Bauman 1998a: 94–95).

Collateral damage affects not only individuals or specific collectivities in postmodern societies. It also affects whole impoverished nations, as their denizens are especially subject to “the explosive compound of growing social inequality and the rising volume of human suffering relegated to the status of ‘collaterality’ (marginality, externality, disposability, not a legitimate part of the political agenda)” (Bauman 2011a: 9). Bauman argues that capitalism itself, and especially the cause of this state of affairs, which he deplores, is because of its social consequences of poverty and deprivation. A further unpropitious consequence of contemporary capitalism is its prevailing culture; for it has concurred to the formation of liquid modernity and consumers’ society, and therefore to the current divide between those who benefit from it, and those who do not, and suffer social and economic disadvantage as a consequence (Bauman 2011b: 12–17). This is the culture of an alienated society, in Bauman’s view; it is neither capable nor willing to endow it with any deeper meaning.

Culture, as Bauman conceives of it, should be entirely different; namely, as a set of norms and ideals culture should be able to challenge the present human and social reality, and “ask for […] justice, freedom, and good” (Bauman 1973a: 177). This task implies transcending both private experience and “the project of positive science” (Bauman 1973a: 176), for positivism assumes “a mind molded by the alienated society and trained in the positivist commonsensical ‘self-obviousness’” (Bauman 1973a: 165). Culture should be instead defined as “a perpetual effort” to overcome “the persistent philosophical opposition between the […] body and mind” (Bauman 1973a: 56). To this end, culture should be based on human praxis, which turns “chaos into order, or substituting one order for another,” order being “synonymous with the intelligible and meaningful” (Bauman 1973a: 119). Bauman reaches this conclusion after a detailed and careful examination of the diverse meanings, which the term of culture has taken in the sociological and anthropological literature.

For this term, he remarks, as it has been used by “the currently popular theory of culture,” has an “ideological ambiguity” (Bauman 1968: 25). This ambiguity may be overcome—Bauman contends—primarily through a structural analysis of the symbolic culture system, such as “the Marxian interpretation of the cultural phenomena” (Bauman 1968: 29). Building on the examination of the various meanings of culture, Bauman concludes that culture is “a perpetual effort to overcome” the dichotomy between “spirit and matter, mind and body” (Bauman 1968: 57). Marxist analysis of cultural phenomena can overcome this dichotomy by means of its category of praxis, which if considered as a whole, comprises “both social structure and culture” (Bauman 1968: 29). They are inherently maladjusted in modern capitalist society, since culturally valued goods in this class society are actually available “only to the members of the privileged class” (Bauman 1968: 33). In today’s “liquid modern world” (Bauman 2011b), culture is part and parcel of the society of consumers, presided by the capitalist State. Its function is to make sure that the public be locked in intimate interaction with its cultural choices. It is precisely this encounter between contemporary art and its public that provides with meaning both contemporary art and contemporary life (Bauman 2011b: 114–17).

The notion of structural analysis, which has been here mentioned in connection with Marxism, has called Bauman’s attention as a subject worth investigating per se (cf. Bauman 1973b). Bauman has lingered on this notion with reference to “the non-linguistical subsystems of culture.” They are those subsystems that not only perform an informative function, to the effect that they signal and/or create “the relevant portion of the web of the human interdependencies called ‘social structure’”; but they also shape and order the world of all human beings, as they “must satisfy their irreducible individual needs.” These two aspects of culture are discernible in their way of life and in the objects they use (Bauman 1973b: 74). The distinction between social structure and culture corresponds to what are for Bauman the “two requirements of the specifically human condition,” namely, “ordering and orientation” (Bauman 1973b: 78). The structuralist promise would then be to overcome this dualism by uniting “in one conceptual framework” this “notorious duality of sociological analysis” (Bauman 1973b: 80).¹

Gardeners and the Holocaust as Metaphors of Solid Modernity

Solid modernity—as distinguished from the current liquid modernity—was characterized by the utopia of a gardened society, namely, “of a custom-made and purposefully designed world” (Bauman 1991: 33). This was not only a Nazi utopia, Bauman argues, as “the prospect of scientifically managing the presently defective human stock was seriously debated in the most enlightened and distinguished circles” (Bauman 1991: 33). Bauman has famously contrasted the metaphor of the gardened society with those of the gamekeeper and the hunter. The utopia of the gardened society characterizes modernity; while the gamekeeper is a metaphor of premodern times. In contrast, the hunter is a metaphor of contemporary postmodern or liquid society. “The power presiding over modernity (the pastoral power of the state) is modeled on the role of the gardener. The pre-modern ruling class was, in a sense, a collective game-keeper” (Bauman 1987b: 52). As for the hunter metaphor, “hunting is a full-time occupation on the stage of liquid modernity”; one, according to Bauman, which never finds its fulfillment, and never realizes “the impossibility of its completion” (Bauman 2011b: 27).

Bauman has paid less attention to the metaphors of the gamekeeper and hunting societies, and he has dwelt at considerable length on that of the gardening society. Gardeners, in keeping with this metaphor, have “grand social-engineering ambitions” (Bauman 1991: 32). Bauman’s gamekeepers “have confidence in their trustees’ resourcefulness,” and just seek to “secure a share in the wealth of goods these timeless habits reproduce”; whereas his gardeners interfere with their trustees’ life following their own “gardening-breeding-surgical ambitions” (Bauman 1991: 32). The metaphor of gardeners as the symbol of modernity was not, as previously noted, proper for the Nazi’s ideas and policy only. However, Bauman has pointed to Nazism—both its ideology and practices—as the very embodiment of this metaphor. In his own words, “for the Nazi designers of the perfect society, the project they pursued and were determined to implement through social engineering split human life into worthy and unworthy; the first to be lovingly cultivated and given Lebensraum, the other to be distanced and—if the distancing proved unfeasible - exterminated” (Bauman 1989b: 67–68). As Bauman argues, the extermination of Jews at the hands of the Nazi—indeed, its very possibility—has not been a unique historical episode, but one of modernity’s defining features.

The massacres of whole populations, as they have occurred several times in Third World countries, should foster no complacency on modern civilization. In other words, they should not encourage the false beliefs that they cannot take place in civilized countries, or that they cannot be perpetrated by civilized people. Modernity has, on the contrary, made it possible to perpetrate the Holocaust and other modern massacres of whole populations. In Bauman’s words, the Holocaust should be considered “as a rare, yet significant and reliable, test for the hidden possibilities of modern society.” His central thesis (a much-debated one, as we shall see) is that “modern civilization was not the Holocaust’s sufficient condition; it was, however, most certainly its necessary condition” (Bauman 1989b: 12–13). Bauman lays emphasis on two crucial aspects of modern civilization: “the technological achievement of an industrial society” and “the organizational achievement of a bureaucratic society” (Bauman 1989b: 13), which had been “generated by bureaucracy true to its form and purpose” (Bauman 1989b: 17).

Bauman’s depiction of the Holocaust relies heavily on Max Weber’s ideal type of modern bureaucratic organizations; he recalls in this connection Weber’s emphasis on the “formal and ethically blind […] bureaucratic pursuit of efficiency.” The Holocaust was in Bauman’s view “so crucial to our understanding” of this organizational form. Its “very idea” was “an outcome of the bureaucratic culture” (Bauman 1989b: 14–15). The Holocaust, he argues, embodied to the highest degree the ruthless and impersonal pursuit of efficiency. For it “was not only the technological achievement of an industrial society.” It was also “the organizational achievements of a bureaucratic society” (Bauman 1989b: 14–15; see also p. 17). In order to implement rational gardening, the Nazi embarked on large-scale project of weeding out (as they said), and therefore exterminating, the Jews. They were selected as “the prime target of anti-modernist resistance” (Bauman 1989b: 46); since they were considered as the representatives of the supranational and destructive forces of “enlightenment and individualism” and therefore of modernity itself, which the Nazis abhorred and endeavored to destroy (Bauman 1989b: 51–52).

This negative attitude toward modernity took hold after the transition from the premodern “game-keeper” society to the modern “gardening” society. The “gardeners,” as Bauman argues, were normal people, not psychotic sadists. In order to make them perpetrators of mass crime, the following preconditions were necessary: the violence was legally authorized; the violent actions were routinized; and their victims were “dehumanized (by ideological definitions and indoctrination)” (Bauman 1989b: 21). The victims themselves were “an integral part of the chain of command.” Their cooperation, which was obtained without difficulty, was “a crucial condition” of the successful extermination project. This was made possible by the distance—both physical and psychic—which the long chain of command created between the victims and their murderers (Bauman 1989b: 46), and therefore the detachment from and indifference to the former’s suffering. It also made murder and violence devoid of any moral significance in the eyes not only of their perpetrators, but also of those “administrators of genocide” who were not directly involved (Bauman 1989b: 18–30).

The Jews were their selected target not merely because of widespread anti-Semitism and their caste-like status in the populace, as it had been the case in premodern times, Bauman argues; but rather because they were seen as the very embodiment of modernity. With reference to German-Jewish writer Jacob Wasserman, Bauman maintains that the more the Jews tried to assimilate and to demonstrate that they were German as much as any other German citizen, the more successful they were in this attempt, the greater became the ambivalence toward them. Assimilated Jews had social intercourse with other assimilated Jews, rather than with non-Jewish Germans, as the assimilated German Jews were still considered Jews after all by non-Jewish Germans. The enthusiasm of the many German Jews for German literary and philosophical culture, and their efforts to distantiate themselves—socially and psychologically—from the lower-class and Yiddish-speaking Jews proved to be of no avail (Bauman 1991: 110–17).

This ambivalence, in which they were trapped, was only one step removed from their rejection from society at large, and from downright Anti-Semitism. Their alleged rootlessness (like Simmel’s stranger) and involvement with money and capitalism made them an appropriate target of anti-modernist sentiments. What is more, the Jewish bourgeoisie was looked askance by conservative Polish public opinion as a social danger and a source of unwanted economic innovation (Bauman 1989b: 46–56; 1991: 102–59). The tragic irony was that the destruction of the Jewry, considered as the very symbol of modernity and the “enemy of the nation-based order” (Bauman 1989b: 68), was carried out “through channels and forms only modernity could develop” (Bauman 1989b: 46).Their “total dehumanization” (Bauman 1989b: 27) was instrumental to this effect, but it had to be supplemented by racism. The racist doctrine, and the strategy of estrangement that is germane to it, paved the way to the Jews’ physical extermination, Bauman argues.

The Jews’ extermination was considered effective in making them harmless. It was conducted “as a service rendered to racially organized human kind” (Bauman 1989b: 68), for the sake and in the name of the Nazi “science” of eugenics. The Nazis conducted the mass murder pursuing the ideal of a “well-gardened” society, and relying on the ideology of race purity and its pseudo-scientific tenets. They considered the systematic murder of the Jews and other groups as “an exercise in the rational management of society” (Bauman 1989b: 72). Accordingly, “the business of mass murder” (Bauman 1989b: 20) was “an exercise in social engineering on a grandiose scale” (Bauman 1989b: 66). This exercise in organized mass murder was “a thoroughly modern phenomenon” (Bauman 1989b: 75), and “a typically modern ambition of social design and engineering” (Bauman 1989b: 77). It superseded the premodern repellence of the Jews from society.

Their confinement into ghettos had been justified with anti-Semitic stereotypes, which persisted in the modern era and portrayed the Jews as an “invisible power behind all visible powers” (Bauman 1989b: 79). There was widespread aversion, Bauman remarks, to open violence against the Jews; however, the traditional restrictions imposed on them, concerning their rights and residence, were welcomed on the part of many Germans who believed in those negative stereotypes. The very political and military power of the modern State, and its contribution to freedom, security and civilization in modern times, made the Holocaust possible. For its “awesome power” (Bauman 1989b: 111), which was based on an efficient bureaucratic chain of command, provided no safeguard against barbarism. Also, the “gardening” ideology was conducive to “treating people as plants to be trimmed (if necessary, uprooted” (Bauman 1989b: 113), as Jews were considered bearers of contagious diseases.

The Jews were deprived of their humanity, stripped of all their economic and social resources, and treated as the objects of bureaucratic intervention in the name of this ideology. Paradoxically, however, the collaboration of the Jewish population was pursued and, to some extent, obtained. This became possible—as Bauman argues—because the Nazis made the Jewish elites, such as the rabbis and other ghetto spokesmen, in charge of the other Jews, turning them into involuntary accomplices of the massacre. Also, they separated physically, socially and legally the Jews from the remaining population. Thereby, their loneliness was complete, and their destruction was made easier to accomplish. Only those who were defined as “full Jews” were discriminated.

This “prompted frantic efforts to obtain ‘reclassification’ (Bauman 1989b: 130), thus pitting the Jews against each other, and implicitly accepting discrimination against the Jews who could not be “reclassified.” Such practices amounted to “rejection of solidarity in the name of personal or group privileges” (Bauman 1989b: 133); the privilege, in particular, of not being deported. Jewish cooperation was instrumental to accomplish the Nazi aim of deporting and murdering the largest possible number of Jews. The Jews, in other words, were cooperating against their own vital interests. The Nazi intent to kill all the Jews, without exception, was not apparent to them. This undeclared intent was preeminent over any other, such as the economic damage Germany would face by “killing off of such a devoted and disciplined labor force” (Bauman 1989b: 138). The Germans had “sharply asymmetrical power conditions” (Bauman 1989b: 149) on their side. Therefore, using rationality on the individual level would bring irrational outcomes to the Jewish collectivity.

Bauman is at pains to make clear that the Nazi perpetrators of murder and other odious crimes were “ordinary people,” “whenever they took their uniforms off” (Bauman 1989b: 151). He mentions in this connection the well-known Milgram Experiment. The Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram asked some of his students to administer what they were told were severe electric shocks to a purported subject if that person gave the wrong answer to questions formulated by the experimenter. The students were told that the experiment had a scientific purpose, and that it had to be conducted to the end, irrespective of the amount of pain inflicted. Most students fully cooperated with the experimenter to the end. They did not know that it was not a real one, as no electric shocks were administered to anyone. Milgram actually wanted to test the extent to which normal people are willing to submit to an authority, even if this authority asks them to act unethically (On Milgram’s study, see Robertson 1977: 131–33).

Bauman draws several inferences from that study: (1) inhumanity originates from social relations; (2) it increases its capacity and efficiency to the extent that relations are rational and technically advanced; (3) it varies inversely according to the distance between the victims and the perpetrators of violence; according, therefore, to the presence of intermediaries; (4) it results from exposure to one source only of authority. Therefore, morally normal people are less likely to commit unethical actions if they live under conditions of political and social pluralism; and (5) it is made possible by the absolute power some people are able to exert over some other people (Bauman 1989b: 165–66). Bauman’s main thesis—that morality originates from society—originates from Durkheim, as he points out. Bauman objects that society’s effect is ambivalent in that countervailing forces may offset the moralizing ones. The Holocaust proved especially ambivalent in this sense; as morality could manifest itself only in “insubordination toward socially upheld principles. and in action openly defying social solidarity and consensus.” Insubordination and defiant action became “a moral responsibility for resisting socialization” (Bauman 1989b: 177).

Morality, as Bauman maintains with reference to the French philosopher Levinas, requires proximity to the other, in the sense of being responsible toward the other. Bauman draws a distinction between morality and ethics. Moral action is “whatever follows that responsibility” (Bauman 1989b: 214). Ethics, instead, is “a code of law that prescribes the correct behavior ‘universally’—that is, for all people at all times; one that sets apart good from evil once for all and everybody” (Bauman 1994: 2). Morality has no ethical foundations, Bauman contends, for “we can no longer offer ethical guidance for the moral selves” (Bauman 1994: 7). Morality without ethics, as it is the case of our contemporary autonomous and purposeless society, is “uncontrollable and unpredictable” (Bauman 1994: 8), in keeping with the “chaos and contingency” of this postmodern age (Bauman 1994: 16). There is not, therefore, “an unambiguous ethical principle suitable for the occasion” (Bauman 1994: 32). In our times of uncertainty, Bauman wonders what the prospects of morality are, and answers this question by stating—again with reference to Levinas—that “one is obliged towards the strong. One is responsible for the weak” (Bauman 1998c: 19). Ambivalence, which marks our age, “is the only soil in which morality can grow” (Bauman 1998c: 22).

Bauman has concerned himself with the subject of morality especially with reference to Nazi’s attitude toward, and treatment of, the Jews. The Nazis endeavored to neutralize this “communally sustained” sense of responsibility, which would elicit sympathetic attitudes toward the victims on the part of many Germans and thus stand in the way of their “willingness to co-operate in mass murder” (Bauman 1989b: 185). The Jews epitomized in the Nazi’s minds “the other”; namely, “a category beyond redemption,” “a diseased organism, both ill and infectious, both damaged and damaging” (Bauman 1991: 47). The Jews’ forced exclusion from society, and their depersonalization and dehumanization, were instrumental to carry out the massacre. “Evidently,” Bauman comments, “moral inhibitions do not act at a distance” (Bauman 1989b: 192). Moral values have then no impact on social action. They make it, Bauman’s own words, “adiaphoric,” meaning neither good nor bad, “measurable against technical (purpose-oriented or procedural) but not moral values” (Bauman 1989b: 215).

No one is therefore morally responsible as an individual, nor is anyone a source of moral demands, or even exists as a moral subject. Technology, with its “destructive potential,” has been made subservient to “the thoroughly adiaphorized action” (Bauman 1989b: 217). This has in turn been put at the service of some ultimate grand purpose, such as the proletariat’s or the Arian race’s mission. The “social suppression of moral responsibility” (Bauman 1989b: 188) toward “the other,” that is, toward negatively stereotyped people, is the first of a sequence of steps. Confiscating their properties; concentrating them into camps; and finally, their annihilation, follow in this sequence. Performing the steps of this sequence require moral indifference toward the victims on the part on the bulk of the population, and therefore their socially produced distantiation from it. The Nazi State apparatus proved a rational and effective instrument to accomplish this end in all its steps, as Bauman illustrates with reference to the construction of the gas chambers. The Nazi accomplishment was then to make evil formally rational. Both the massacre perpetrators and their victims had been rationally deprived of their humanity.

For the sake of self-preservation, potential victims cared only for themselves and their families, while passively watching the victimization of others, and thus became the accomplices of evil. Bauman auspicates the rise of a new ethic, one “that would reach over the socially erected obstacles of mediated action and the functional education of human self” (Bauman 1989b: 221). As he has added in a subsequent edition, the main issue of the Holocaust is “the facts that the Holocaust is able to tell us about the hidden capacities of present-day life” (Bauman 1989b: 223). He recalls in this connection more recent genocides, such as those that occurred in Africa and elsewhere in the 1990s. In all such cases, past and present, two conditions were necessary for the massacre to be accomplished, according to Bauman. First, a tendency to attribute negative strongly attributes to those groups, which are hated by those wishing to perpetrate the genocide against them. They are not connoted otherwise; Bauman calls “essentialism” this tendency. A second necessary condition for the massacre was “scientific management as embodied in bureaucratic organizations” (Bauman 1989b: 228).

Both conditions, which have made genocides possible, are present in modernity only, for they reflect modernity’s dissatisfaction with and transcendence of the present times. Modernity’s anxiety, deep-seated feelings of insecurity and obsession with safety indicate this state of affairs, as Bauman argues. These feelings can be, and indeed have been, exploited for political purposes. “The ghost of the Holocaust,” as Bauman calls them, perpetuates itself, when homes and whole neighborhoods become like “a heavily armed ghetto” (Bauman 1989b: 240). The Holocaust—Bauman argues against the German historian Goldhagen—cannot be explained as the effect of some personal attributes of its perpetrators. Rather, it was a consequence of a modern invention such as rational bureaucracy. Mass murder was mostly committed with “thorough emotional detachment” (Bauman 1989b: 245). No human passions were necessary, and personal feelings were suspended. The killing procedure was routinized and conducted by teams, moral considerations were pushed aside and the victims were depersonalized completely. For the sake of the future, Bauman concludes, it is imperative that the past be not manipulated in such a way, that the future could become “inhospitable to humanity and uninhabitable” (Bauman 1989b: 250).

The Reception of Bauman’s Work

On Bauman’s work there is a sizable secondary literature. Some of it aims to provide a general introduction to this work (see Beilharz 2000; 2001; Blackshaw 2005; Davis 2013; Elliott 2007). Other secondary literature concerns specific themes, with which Bauman has dealt. One of such themes is Bauman’s use of metaphors—in particular, the metaphors of solid modernity vs. liquid postmodernity, tourists vs. vagabonds, gardeners vs. gamekeepers, interpreters vs. legislators. According to a prominent commentator and Bauman expert, the Danish scholar Hviid Jacobsen, Bauman’s methodology makes him “a methodological maverick” that “consciously and consistently blurs the […] dividing line between theory and research methods, between sociology and poetry, between science and art, by way of a multitude of literary, rhetorical and poetic devices” (Jacobsen 2013: 193).

Metaphors are one of such devices, as metaphorical imagery promotes the sociological imagination. Their achievements are remarkable, according to Hviid Jacobsen. For, they make it possible for Bauman to communicate about what is unfamiliar or seemingly trivial, and to cast light on “some of the often most intangible traits and hidden dimensions of the human world (such as inequality, globalization, morality, suffering, love, solidarity and cruelty).” More in general, they have been instrumental “to produce and promote analytical creativity and clarity” (Jacobsen 2013: 205). Hviid Jacobsen has produced not only a typology but also a balanced evaluation of Bauman’s metaphors (Jacobsen 2013: 207–208). As a matter of fact, not all the pertinent secondary literature is eulogistic. Some of it is critical. Hviid Jacobsen himself has remarked that the nature of the ‘liquid’ metaphor is unclear: is it just a metaphor of contemporary society, or does Bauman rather propose an identity between this simile and the reality to which it refers? (Jacobsen 2013: 211).

Appraisals of Bauman may concern his oeuvre in general (see Elliott 2007; Joas and Knoebl 2005: 478–84), his intellectual biography (Best 2013) and the presence of utopianism in all his works (Jacobsen 2007); or they may concern specific aspects of it, such as his interpretation of Weber (Du Gay 1999; 2000); or his consideration of class as no longer a useful sociological tool (Atkinson 2008). This secondary literature will be here touched upon selectively and briefly. Though this literature is often critical, it should be recalled that even critics of Bauman recognize the significance of Bauman’s writings (cf. for instance Joas and Knoebl 2005: 475). As for the general introductions, those by Peter Beilharz are noteworthy not only for their thoroughness, but also because of the author’s remarkable expertise on Bauman. Beilharz is Visiting Professor at the Bauman Institute at Leeds, where Bauman taught in the 1970s and 1980s, and has edited a four-volume collection of Bauman’s writings in addition to authoring the two introductions, which have been previously cited (Bauman 2002a).

In his introductions, Beilharz has endeavored to give a complete presentation of Bauman’s oeuvre; however, he has emphasized Bauman’s persistent ambivalence about modernity, and the “modern forms of enforcement and implementation” (Beilharz 2000: 170). This interpreter lingers, like other interpreters (cf. for instance Best 2013: 65–100), especially on Bauman’s celebrated work on modernity and the Holocaust (Bauman 1989b). Beilharz considers this work “almost certainly Bauman’s most influential book” (Beilharz 2000: 88). Bauman views it, according to Beilharz, “as an accident waiting to happen within the field of possibilities we call modernity” (Beilharz 2000: 91). Bauman himself “is a kind of ambivalent modernist.” “Moderns may shift historically from policies of stigmatization to those of assimilation” (Beilharz 2000: 100–11), “but the task of sociology is to interpret the social and the cultural in order to uncover the specific forms of being in the world” (Tester 2004: 17).

Modernity is for him “the last utopia.” Its obsession with order has paved the way to the Communist and Fascist versions of totalitarianisms (Beilharz 2000: 165). Bauman’s disillusion with modernity results—Beilharz contends—from “his fundamental disappointment in Marxism” (Beilharz 2000: 121). Bauman’s ambivalence regards both modernity and sociology. Postmodernity provides no overcoming of it, for itself “needs to be explained,” rather than being the explanation (Beilharz 2001: 12).

Blackshaw’s introduction to Bauman (Blackshaw 2005) differs from Beilharz’s in some important respects. Unlike Beilharz, first of all, who makes but passing reference to the American philosopher Richard Rorty, Blackshaw deals at some length with him, and suggests that there is a twofold analogy between these two thinkers. Like Rorty, Bauman conceives of the modern world as something which should be experienced and accounted for as a totality rather than as the result of single factors, as it would be in keeping with the “dismembering ideals” prevailing in postmodernism and poststructuralism. Like Rorty, moreover, Bauman rethinks and recombines already existing “theories, ideas and concepts,” in such a way that his originality lies in “his ability to make connections which have not previously been articulated.” A further distinctive contribution of Blackshaw consists in his interpretive thesis that two distinctive periods may be distinguished in Bauman’s oeuvre: in a first period, Bauman was “a cultural Marxist sociologist who died a slow death”; while in the second period, on which Blackshaw focuses, and which follows the publication of his Legislators and Interpreters (1987b), Bauman has shifted to a postmodern and “liquid” vision of modernity (Blackshaw 2005: ix, 11–12, 46–49).

Hviid Jacobsen and Poder have sought to spell out the central features of Bauman’s sociology, which in their judgment may be described as follows: His dialogue and criticism of conventional sociological theory, which prods him to formulate metaphors and neologisms in order to “illustrate the lived experience of a variety of people such as ‘flawed consumers’, ‘players’ and ‘legislators”; further, his lifelong concern and sympathy with the suffering of those who are “marginalized, hurt or excluded” (Hviid Jacobsen and Poder 2008