the University of Leeds
Who did Zygmunt Bauman work for from 1972 to 1990?
Zygmunt Bauman Zygmunt Bauman ( ; 19 November 1925 – 9 January 2017 ) was a Polish sociologist and philosopher . He was driven out of the Polish Peoples Republic during the 1968 Polish political crisis and forced to give up his Polish citizenship . He emigrated to Israel ; three years later he moved to the United Kingdom . He resided in England from 1971 , where he studied at the London School of Economics and became Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds , later Emeritus . Bauman was a social theorist , writing on issues as diverse as modernity and the Holocaust , postmodern consumerism and liquid modernity . Early life and education . Bauman was born to non-observant Polish Jewish family in Poznań , Second Polish Republic , in 1925 . In 1939 , when Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union , his family escaped eastwards into the USSR . Career . In the 1940s Bauman enlisted in the Soviet-controlled First Polish Army , working as a political instructor . He took part in the Battle of Kolberg ( 1945 ) and the Battle of Berlin . In May 1945 , he was awarded the Military Cross of Valour . After World War II he became one of the Polish Armys youngest majors . According to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance , from 1945 to 1953 Bauman was a political officer in the Internal Security Corps ( KBW ) , a military intelligence formed to combat the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the remnants of the Polish Home Army . From 1945 to 1948 Bauman worked for military intelligence . However , the nature and extent of his collaboration remain unknown , as well as the exact circumstances under which it was terminated . In an interview with The Guardian , Bauman confirmed he had been a committed communist during and after World War II and had never made a secret of it . He admitted that joining the military intelligence service at age 19 was a mistake although he had a dull desk-job and did not remember informing on anyone . While serving in the Internal Security Corps , Bauman first studied sociology at the Warsaw Academy of Political and Social Science . In 1953 , Bauman , already in the rank of major , was suddenly dishonourably discharged , after his father had approached the Israeli embassy in Warsaw with a view to emigrating to Israel . As Bauman did not share his fathers Zionist tendencies and was indeed strongly anti-Zionist , his dismissal caused a severe , though temporary estrangement from his father . During the period of unemployment that followed , he completed his M.A . and in 1954 became a lecturer at the University of Warsaw , where he remained until 1968 . While at the London School of Economics , where his supervisor was Robert McKenzie , he prepared a comprehensive study on the British socialist movement , his first major book . Published originally in Polish in 1959 , a revised edition appeared in English in 1972 . Bauman went on to publish other books , including Socjologia na co dzień ( Everyday Sociology , 1964 ) , which reached a large popular audience in Poland and later formed the foundation for the English-language text-book Thinking Sociologically ( 1990 ) . Initially , Bauman remained close to orthodox Marxist doctrine , but , influenced by Georg Simmel and Antonio Gramsci , he became increasingly critical of Polands Communist government . Owing to this he was never awarded a professorship even after he completed his habilitation but , after his former teacher , Julian Hochfeld , was made vice-director of UNESCOs Department for Social Sciences in Paris in 1962 , Bauman did in fact inherit Hochfelds chair . Faced with increasing political pressure connected with a political purge led by Mieczysław Moczar , the Chief of the Polish Communist Security Police , Bauman renounced his membership of the governing Polish United Workers Party in January 1968 . The March 1968 events culminated in a purge that drove many remaining Communist Poles of Jewish descent out of the country , including those intellectuals who had fallen from grace with the communist government . Bauman , who had lost his chair at the University of Warsaw , was among them . He had to give up Polish citizenship to be allowed to leave the country . From 1968- 1970 he went to Israel to teach at Tel Aviv University . Thereafter he accepted the chair of sociology at the University of Leeds , where he intermittently also served as head of department . After his appointment , he published almost exclusively in English , his third language , and his reputation grew . From the late 1990s , Bauman exerted a considerable influence on the anti- or alter-globalization movement . In a 2011 interview in the Polish weekly , Polityka , Bauman criticised Zionism and Israel , saying Israel was not interested in peace and that it was taking advantage of the Holocaust to legitimize unconscionable acts . He compared the Israeli West Bank barrier to the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto where hundreds of thousands of Jews died in the Holocaust . The Israeli ambassador to Warsaw , Zvi Bar , called Baumans comments half truths and groundless generalizations . Bauman was a supporter of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly , an organisation which advocates for democratic reform in the United Nations , and the creation of a more accountable international political system . Family . Bauman was married to writer Janina Bauman , née Lewinson ; 18 August 1926 – 29 December 2009 . They had three daughters , painter Lydia Bauman , architect Irena Bauman , and professor Anna Sfard , a leading theorist of education at the University of Haifa . His grandson Michael Sfard is a prominent civil rights lawyer and author in Israel . Zygmunt Bauman died in Leeds on 9 January 2017 . Work . Baumans published work extends to 57 books and well over a hundred articles . Most of these address a number of common themes , among which are globalisation , modernity and postmodernity , consumerism , and morality . Early work . Baumans earliest publication in English is a study of the British labour movement and its relationship to class and social stratification , originally published in Poland in 1960 . He continued to publish on the subject of class and social conflict until the early 1980s . His last book was on the subject of Memories of Class . Whilst his later books do not address issues of class directly , he continued to describe himself as a socialist , and he never rejected Marxism entirely . The Neo-Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci in particular remained one of his most profound influences , along with Neo-Kantian sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel . Modernity and rationality . In the late 1980s and early 1990s Bauman published a number of books that dealt with the relationship between modernity , bureaucracy , rationality and social exclusion . Bauman , following Freud , came to view European modernity as a trade off : European society , he argued , had agreed to forego a level of freedom to receive the benefits of increased individual security . Bauman argued that modernity , in what he later came to term its solid form , involved removing unknowns and uncertainties . It involved control over nature , hierarchical bureaucracy , rules and regulations , control and categorisation — all of which attempted to remove gradually personal insecurities , making the chaotic aspects of human life appear well-ordered and familiar . Later in a number of books Bauman began to develop the position that such order-making never manages to achieve the desired results . When life becomes organised into familiar and manageable categories , he argued , there are always social groups who cannot be administered , who cannot be separated out and controlled . In his book Modernity and Ambivalence Bauman began to theorise about such indeterminate persons in terms of an allegorical figure he called , the stranger . Drawing upon Georg Simmels sociology and the philosophy of Jacques Derrida , Bauman came to write of the stranger as the person who is present yet unfamiliar , societys undecidable . In Modernity and Ambivalence Bauman attempted to give an account of the different approaches modern society adopts toward the stranger . He argued that , on the one hand , in a consumer-oriented economy the strange and the unfamiliar is always enticing ; in different styles of food , different fashions and in tourism it is possible to experience the allure of what is unfamiliar . Yet this strange-ness also has a more negative side . The stranger , because he cannot be controlled or ordered , is always the object of fear ; he is the potential mugger , the person outside of societys borders who is a constant threat . Baumans most famous book , Modernity and the Holocaust , is an attempt to give a full account of the dangers of those kinds of fears . Drawing upon Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adornos books on totalitarianism and the Enlightenment , Bauman developed the argument that the Holocaust should not simply be considered to be an event in Jewish history , nor a regression to pre-modern barbarism . Rather , he argued , the Holocaust should be seen as deeply connected to modernity and its order-making efforts . Procedural rationality , the division of labour into smaller and smaller tasks , the taxonomic categorisation of different species , and the tendency to view obedience to rules as morally good , all played their role in the Holocaust coming to pass . He argued that for this reason modern societies have not fully grasped the lessons of the Holocaust ; it tends to be viewed—to use Baumans metaphor—like a picture hanging on the wall , offering few lessons . In Baumans analysis the Jews became strangers par excellence in Europe . The Final Solution was pictured by him as an extreme example of the attempt made by society to excise the uncomfortable and indeterminate elements that exist within it . Bauman , like the philosopher Giorgio Agamben , contended that the same processes of exclusion that were at work in the Holocaust could , and to an extent do , still come into play today . Postmodernity and consumerism . In the mid-to-late 1990s , Bauman began to explore postmodernity and consumerism . He posited that a shift had taken place in modern society in the latter half of the 20th century . It had changed from a society of producers into a society of consumers . According to Bauman , this change reversed Freuds modern tradeoff—i.e. , security was given up in exchange for more freedom , freedom to purchase , consume , and enjoy life . In his books in the 1990s Bauman wrote of this as being a shift from modernity to post-modernity . Since the turn of the millennium , his books have tried to avoid the confusion surrounding the term postmodernity by using the metaphors of liquid and solid modernity . In his books on modern consumerism , Bauman still writes of the same uncertainties that he portrayed in his writings on solid modernity ; but in these books he writes of fears becoming more diffuse and harder to pin down . Indeed , they are , to use the title of one of his books , liquid fears – fears about paedophilia , for instance , which are amorphous and have no easily identifiable reference . Bauman is credited with coining the term allosemitism to encompass both philo-Semitic and anti-Semitic attitudes towards Jews as the other . Bauman reportedly predicted the negative political effect that social media have on voters choice by denouncing them as trap where people only see reflections of their own face . Art : a liquid element ? One of Bauman works focuses on the concept of art as influenced by the liquidity of appreciation . The author puts forward the idea that we desire and seek a realization that usually consists of a constant becoming , in a permanent disposition of becoming . In essence , our aim is not the object of our longing but the action of longing itself , and the worst peril is reaching complete satisfaction . In this framework , Bauman explores how art can position itself in a world where the fleeting is the dominant paradigm . Art is substantially something that contributes to give immortality to virtually anything : hence the philosopher wonders , can art transform the ephemeral into an eternal matter? . Bauman concludes that the current reality is characterized by individuals who do not have time nor space to relate with the everlasting , with absolute and established values . Art and the relation of people with them , both in creating it and in participating in it , is dramatically changing . Citing Hannah Arendt , he asserts that an object is cultural if it persists ; its temporary aspect , its permanence , is opposite to the functional [ ... ] culture sees itself threatened when all the objects in the world , those produced today and those of the past , are exclusively considered from the point of view of utility for the social process of survival . Withal , the concept of culture and art can only find a sense in the liquid society if it abandons its traditional understanding and adopts the deconstructive approach . Awards and honours . Bauman was awarded the European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences in 1992 and the Theodor W . Adorno Award of the city of Frankfurt in 1998 . He was awarded in 2010 , jointly with Alain Touraine , the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and the Humanities . The University of Leeds established The Bauman Institute within its School of Sociology and Social Policy in his honour in September 2010 . The University of Lower Silesia , a small private higher education institution in Lower Silesia , Poland , planned to award Bauman an honorary doctorate in October 2013 . However , as a reaction to a major anti-communist and what Bauman supporters allege anti-semitic uproar against him , he eventually rejected the award . In 2015 the University of Salento awarded Bauman an honorary degree in Modern Languages , Literature and Literary Translation . Criticisms . In 2014 , Peter Walsh , a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge , accused Bauman of plagiarism from several websites , including Wikipedia , in his book Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All ? ( 2013 ) . In this book Bauman is said to have copied verbatim paragraphs from Wikipedia articles on Slow Food and steady-state economy , along with their bibliography , without attributing sources , authors or the fact that they were copied from Wikipedia . He did use a paragraph from the article on the golden handshake , but this citation was properly attributed to Wikipedia . In a response Bauman suggested that obedience to technical rules was unnecessary , and that he never once failed to acknowledge the authorship of the ideas or concepts that I deployed , or that inspired the ones I coined . In a detailed critique of Walsh and co-author David Lehmann , cultural critics Brad Evans and Henry A . Giroux concluded : This charge against Bauman is truly despicable . Its a reactionary ideological critique dressed up as the celebration of method and a back-door defence of a sterile empiricism and culture of positivism . This is a discourse that enshrines data , correlations , and performance , while eschewing matters of substance , social problems , and power . Bibliography . Warsaw period . - 1957 : Zagadnienia centralizmu demokratycznego w pracach Lenina [ Questions of Democratic Centralism in Lenins Works ] . Warszawa : Książka i Wiedza . - 1959 : Socjalizm brytyjski : Źródła , filozofia , doktryna polityczna [ British Socialism : Sources , Philosophy , Political Doctrine ] . Warszawa : Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe . - 1960 : Klasa , ruch , elita : Studium socjologiczne dziejów angielskiego ruchu robotniczego [ Class , Movement , Elite : A Sociological Study on the History of the British Labour Movement ] . Warszawa : Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe . - 1960 : Z dziejów demokratycznego ideału [ From the History of the Democratic Ideal ] . Warszawa : Iskry . - 1960 : Kariera : cztery szkice socjologiczne [ Career : Four Sociological Sketches ] . Warszawa : Iskry . - 1961 : Z zagadnień współczesnej socjologii amerykańskiej [ Questions of Modern American Sociology ] . Warszawa : Książka i Wiedza . - 1962 ( with Szymon Chodak , Juliusz Strojnowski , Jakub Banaszkiewicz ) : Systemy partyjne współczesnego kapitalizmu [ The Party Systems of Modern Capitalism ] . Warsaw : Książka i Wiedza . - 1962 : Spoleczeństwo , w ktorym żyjemy [ The Society we inhabit ] . Warsaw : Książka i Wiedza . - 1962 : Zarys socjologii . Zagadnienia i pojęcia [ Outline of Sociology . Questions and Concepts ] . Warszawa : Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe . - 1963 : Idee , ideały , ideologie [ Ideas , Ideals , Ideologies ] . Warszawa : Iskry . - 1964 : Zarys marksistowskiej teorii spoleczeństwa [ An Outline of the Marxist Theory of Society ] . Warszawa : Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe . - 1964 : Socjologia na co dzień [ Everyday Sociology ] . Warszawa : Iskry . - 1965 : Wizje ludzkiego świata . Studia nad społeczną genezą i funkcją socjologii [ Visions of a Human World : Studies on the genesis of society and the function of sociology ] . Warszawa : Książka i Wiedza . - 1966 : Kultura i społeczeństwo . Preliminaria [ Culture and Society , Preliminaries ] . Warszawa : Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe . - 2017 : Szkice z teorii kultury [ Essays in cultural theory ] . Warszawa : Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar . [ First edition of a manuscript originally completed in 1967 ] Leeds period . - 1972 : Between Class and Elite . The Evolution of the British Labour Movement . A Sociological Study . Manchester : Manchester University Press ( Polish original 1960 ) - 1973 : Culture as Praxis . London : Routledge & Kegan Paul . - 1976 : Socialism : The Active Utopia . New York : Holmes and Meier Publishers . - 1976 : Towards a Critical Sociology : An Essay on Common-Sense and Emancipation . London : Routledge & Kegan Paul . - 1978 : Hermeneutics and Social Science : Approaches to Understanding . London : Hutchinson . - 1982 : Memories of Class : The Pre-history and After-life of Class . London/Boston : Routledge & Kegan Paul . - c . 1985 Stalin and the peasant revolution : A case study in the dialectics of master and slave . Leeds : University of Leeds Department of Sociology . - 1987 : Legislators and interpreters : On Modernity , Post-Modernity , Intellectuals . Ithaca , N.Y. : Cornell University Press . - 1988 : Freedom . Philadelphia : Open University Press . - 1989 : Modernity and the Holocaust . Ithaca , N.Y. : Cornell University Press 1989 . - 1990 : Paradoxes of Assimilation . New Brunswick : Transaction Publishers . - 1990 : Thinking Sociologically . An introduction for Everyone . Cambridge , Mass. : Basil Blackwell . - 1991 : Modernity and Ambivalence . Ithaca , N.Y. : Cornell University Press . - 1992 : Intimations of Postmodernity . London , New York : Routhledge . - 1992 : Mortality , Immortality and Other Life Strategies . Cambridge : Polity . - 1993 : Postmodern Ethics . Cambridge , MA : Basil Blackwell . - 1994 : Dwa szkice o moralności ponowoczesnej [ Two sketches on postmodern morality ] . Warszawa : IK . - 1995 : Life in Fragments . Essays in Postmodern Morality . Cambridge , MA : Basil Blackwell . - 1996 : Alone Again – Ethics After Certainty . London : Demos . - 1997 : Postmodernity and its Discontents . New York : New York University Press . - 1995 : Ciało i przemoc w obliczu ponowoczesności [ Body and Violence in the Face of Postmodernity ] . Toruń : Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika . - 1997 : ( with Roman Kubicki , Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska ) Humanista w ponowoczesnym świecie – rozmowy o sztuce życia , nauce , życiu sztuki i innych sprawach [ A Humanist in the Postmodern World – Conversations on the Art of Life , Science , the Life of Art and Other Matters ] . Warszawa : Zysk i S-ka . - 1998 : Work , consumerism and the new poor . Philadelphia : Open University Press . - 1998 : Globalization : The Human Consequences . New York : Columbia University Press . - 1999 : In Search of Politics . Cambridge : Polity . - 2000 : Liquid Modernity . Cambridge : Polity - ( 2000 [ ed . by Peter Beilharz ] : The Bauman Reader . Oxford : Blackwell Publishers . ) - 2001 : Community . Seeking Safety in an Insecure World . Cambridge : Polity . - 2001 : The Individualized Society . Cambridge : Polity . - 2001 ( with Keith Tester ) : Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman . Cambridge : Polity . - 2001 ( with Tim May ) : Thinking Sociologically , 2nd edition . Oxford : Blackwell Publishers . - 2002 : Society Under Siege . Cambridge : Polity . - 2003 : Liquid Love : On the Frailty of Human Bonds , Cambridge : Polity . - 2003 : City of Fears , City of Hopes . London : Goldsmiths College . - 2004 : Wasted Lives . Modernity and its Outcasts . Cambridge : Polity . - 2004 : Europe : An Unfinished Adventure . Cambridge : Polity . - 2004 : Identity : Conversations with Benedetto Vecchi . Cambridge : Polity . - 2005 : Liquid Life . Cambridge : Polity . - 2006 : Liquid Fear . Cambridge : Polity . - 2006 : Liquid Times : Living in an Age of Uncertainty . Cambridge : Polity . - 2006 : Moralność w niestabilnym świecie [ Morality in an instable World ] . Poznań : Księgarnia św . Wojciecha . - 2007 : Consuming Life . Cambridge : Polity . - 2008 : Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers ? Cambridge , MA : Harvard University Press . - 2008 : The Art of Life . Cambridge : Polity . - 2009 : Living on Borrowed Time : Conversations with Citlali Rovirosa-Madrazo . Cambridge : Polity . - 2009 : ( with Roman Kubicki , Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska ) Życie w kontekstach . Rozmowy o tym , co za nami i o tym , co przed nami . [ Life in contexts . Conversations about what lies behind us and what lies ahead of us. ] Warszawa : WAiP . - 2010 : 44 Letters from the Liquid Modern World . Cambridge : Polity . - 2011 : Collateral Damage : Social Inequalities in a Global Age . Cambridge : Polity . - 2011 : Culture in a Liquid Modern World . Cambridge : Polity . - 2012 : This is Not a Diary . Cambridge : Polity . - 2012 : ( with David Lyon ) Liquid Surveillance : A Conversation . Cambridge : Polity . - 2013 : ( with Leonidas Donskis ) Moral Blindness : The Loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity . Cambridge : Polity . - 2013 : ( with Stanisław Obirek ) O bogu i człowieku . Rozmowy . Kraków : Wydawnictwo Literackie . - translated as Of God and Man . Cambridge : Polity . - 2013 : ( with Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Keith Tester ) What use is sociology ? Conversations with Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Keith Tester . Cambridge : Polity . - 2013 : Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All ? Cambridge : Polity . - 2014 : ( with Carlo Bordoni ) State of Crisis . Cambridge : Polity . - 2015 : ( with Rein Raud ) Practices of Selfhood . Cambridge : Polity . - 2015 : ( with Irena Bauman , Jerzy Kociatkiewicz , and Monika Kostera ) Management in a Liquid Modern World . Cambridge : Polity . - 2015 : ( with Stanisław Obirek ) Of God and Man , Cambridge : Polity Press. . - 2015 : ( with Stanisław Obirek ) On the World and Ourselves , Cambridge : Polity . . - 2016 : ( with Leonidas Donskis ) Liquid Evil . Cambridge : Polity . - 2016 : ( with Ezio Mauro ) Babel . Cambridge : Polity . - 2016 : Strangers at Our Door . Cambridge : Polity . - 2017 : Retrotopia . Cambridge : Polity . - 2017 : ( with Thomas Leoncini ) Nati Liquidi . Sperling & Kupfler . - 2017 : Zygmunt Bauman . Das Vertraute unvertraut machen . Ein Gespräch mit Peter Haffner , Hoffmann und Campe , Hamburg 2017 , - 2017 : A Chronicle of Crisis : 2011–2016 . Social Europe Editions .