Zygmunt Bauman is one of the leading figures in contemporary social thought. His work ranges across issues of ethics, culture and politics. It never forgets that social thought ought to help men and women make sense of their lives and aspire towards something different. His books and essays always focus on the here and now: violence and moral indifference, globalization, consumerism, politics and individualization. They cast a sharp eye on the panaceas of ‘there is no alternative'; the embrace of community (...) and the fads of the ‘counselling boom'; through which men and women are told that they can achieve biographical solutions to what are, in fact, systemic problems. In this new book, Zygmunt Bauman and Keith Tester engage in five accessible conversations that uncover and explore the assumptions and commitments underpinning Bauman's ground-breaking social thought. The conversations show how those commitments have influenced Bauman's analyses of modernity, postmodernity and ‘liquid modernity'. The book ranges widely, from autobiographical reflection through to pointers for the understanding and future of Bauman's social thought. The conversations illustrate the moral substance of Bauman's refusal to accept that the world cannot be made different. They show why social thought is a human necessity. Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman is a book which will offer fresh insight into Bauman's work for those who are familiar with it, and provide an engaging and helpful entry point for those who are new to it. (shrink)

If sociology is about society must it not also be about morality? In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the identification between sociology and morality was clear cut; Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Spencer, and Veblen all dealt with moral issues and one might argue that they saw themselves as engaged in a moral vocation. Now, one might argue that the connections between sociology and moral currents have become more tenuous. Moral Culture examines what it means to be moral in contemporary social (...) and cultural life. Author Keith Tester takes the highly original and revealing step of exploring how violence today, and throughout history, affects the relatively safe and secure people who live in the west and who tend to know horror only through television and cinema screens. The book raises questions about the meaning and significance of massacres in the Balkans, Rwanda and, rather more historically, the Holocaust, and the slaughter of Vietnamese peasants by American soldiers in My Lai. It also discusses how Adolf Eichmann and the men of Charlie Company might be different from or similar to us. It answers questions about whether this is a time of moral decay or more seriously, the collapse of moral Civilization. Sociologists often claim that they make a virtue of being relevant and objective, but few have attacked these issues with the urgency and originality that Keith Tester displays in this work. Each chapter provides a historically aware account of a moral problem making it especially relevant reading for students of cultural studies, sociology, political science, and moral philosophy. (shrink)

This special issue of Thesis Eleven has been published to mark the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The concern is to think about what the bombings mean today and how their challenge can be confronted across social and cultural thought and action. The question running through this special issue is: What do the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki mean for us today?

Some texts appear more than once across the corpus of Zygmunt Bauman’s work. This has led to accusations of self-plagiarism and a lack of scholarly rigour. This paper is an explanation of why texts reappear. It pays attention to a number of frequently overlooked texts from the 1970s which are of fundamental importance for any understanding of Bauman’s work. It is contended that if: (a) there is an understanding of the stakes and purpose of sociology as it is framed in (...) Bauman’s work; and (b) attention is paid to the argument of Hermeneutics and Social Science; then (c) the repetition of texts across the work becomes explicable and unproblematic. The paper argues that dealings with Bauman’s work need to be more aware of the less well-known texts. They also need to be alert to different – and incommensurable – ways of practising sociology. (shrink)

In early August 2011, disturbances broke out in a number of English cities. What happened was broadcast globally, and all of a sudden it seemed as if all of the country was about to burst into flames. This short paper is offered by way of a ‘letter’ from England. It was written in late August 2011 and is an initial attempt to develop an understanding of why the disturbances broke out, what motivated the people who were involved and, indeed, why (...) things were confined to England. Cities elsewhere in Britain experienced nothing. The paper identifies a crisis in the English social imaginary. The disturbances are understood as a conjunctural response to this crisis, a response highlighting the interregnum in the English social imaginary. (shrink)

Zygmunt Bauman has always approached sociology as an imagination, as an ongoing conversation with experience rather than a discipline within tight boundaries. This has enabled his work to move outside of the academy, and over the past decade or so he has become a leading public sociologist. But what does this status mean for the practice and possibilities of sociology? In this conversation Bauman reflects on the role, status and opportunities of sociology, who it is for, and what this means (...) for the sociologist. (shrink)

Zygmunt Bauman has always approached sociology as an imagination, as an ongoing conversation with experience rather than a discipline within tight boundaries. This has enabled his work to move outside of the academy, and over the past decade or so he has become a leading public sociologist. But what does this status mean for the practice and possibilities of sociology? In this conversation Bauman reflects on the role, status and opportunities of sociology, who it is for, and what this means (...) for the sociologist. (shrink)

This article seeks to explore some of the origins of Zygmunt Bauman's social thought. Using the metaphor of paths from a story by Borges, the article argues that Bauman's work follows paths which were opened up to him by Gramsci, Camus and Levinas. Bauman has acknowledged the importance of Gramsci and Levinas in his intellectual development and, therefore, the identification of a path leading from Camus is offered by way of circumstantial rather than direct evidence. The article discusses each of (...) these thinkers in the context of Bauman's own themes and concerns and, in so doing, it is hoped to show that Bauman's work has long been marked by a consistence of ambition and foundational assumptions. (shrink)

A relatively under-analysed theme in the sociology of the media is the moral consequentiality for television viewers of representations and reports of the suffering of others. The theme has been broached by Michael Ignatieff, and this article uses an essay by him as an opportunity to develop the thesis that any consideration of the relationship between television and morality must centrally concern itself with the complex exchanges between television and its viewers. The article seeks to offer some initial themes and (...) theses about the moral consequentiality of television. (shrink)

Bauman’s writing adopts different modes of address – it moves from the conventionally academic, through the essayistic, the diaristic and, most obviously, the conversational. This movement reflects the emergence of a late style in Bauman’s work. This late style is understood through Adorno. It highlights the bankruptcy and thoughtlessness of the hegemonic – world doubling – forms of sociology. Bauman’s late style is thinking with and for otherness. As such, the late style works are an active catastrophe. They refute the (...) ‘ideology of existing conditions’, repudiate world doubling and are, instead, a praxis of and for othering. In this way the mode of address can be understood to be ethical in and of itself. (shrink)

Is it possible to remember Hiroshima and, if it is, what exactly is being remembered? This paper uses Resnais’s film Hiroshima Mon Amour as a way of asking this question. The problem of remembering is identified as being due to how nuclear explosions are beyond the human capacity to understand. The paper draws on the work of Günther Anders to explore the implications of Hiroshima for the human understanding of human possibilities.

In The Inhuman Condition Keith Tester explores whether we are capable of coming to terms with the world we have made, then argues that we are not. We are so confused by the wonders and the sights and sounds around us that we all try to build safe little homes in which we can, for a while, be consoled by love which is doomed to fail as soon as it is thought about, and by commodities which leave us unsatisfied. This (...) book is a major interpretation of contemporary cultural and social relationships. It is also a major exercise in sociology which encompasses thinkers like Heidegger, Arendt, Benjamin and Simmel. The author opens with Heidegger worrying about photographs of the earth and argues that, contrary to sociological orthodoxy, the world is now more experienced in the finding than the making. Tester then explores aspects of that finding: from the beautiful promises of commodities to the noises and sights of cities, from the search for love to the throbbing gristle painted by Francis Bacon. We can only come to terms with our experiences and our existences if we embrace the inhuman idiot wisdom of kitsch; and perhaps there is no escape from the embrace of stupidity. (shrink)

This article identifies the emergence of the problematic of the body as a consequence of the forces of technology and bureaucracy which have run through the 20th century. It explores the hypothesis that the problem of the body has emerged out of the wreckage of the aura of the individual. It is proposed that aura was destroyed in the First World War, but it is also shown that for Benjamin anticipations of the destruction can be found in the technologies of (...) photography. Yet, out of the ruin of the auratic individual, there emerged a vision of the armoured body in the work of fascist writers such as Ernst Jünger. A variation on the theme of armour can also be found in Kracauer's discussion of the Tiller Girls. The article concludes that the Holocaust can be read, at least in part, as a logical product of the destruction of the aura of the individual and the subsequent identification of the individual with her or his body alone. (shrink)

This article discusses the militant political opposition to the agricultural use of animals. It relates specifically to developments in the United Kingdom. It surveys two of the main ideas that advocate a transformation of the treatment of animals and shows how they have (without their authors' intention) led to acts like arson, burglary, and the destruction of property. The analysis uses some evidence from literature produced by the militant groups that has never before been presented to an academic audience.