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)

The growth and sustainability of the nursing profession depends on the ability to recruit and retain the upcoming generation of professionals. Understanding the career choice experiences and professional expectations of Millennial nurses (born 1980 or after) is a critical component of recruitment and retention strategies. This study utilized Polkinghorne's interpretive, narrative approach to understand how Millennial nurses explain, account for and make sense of their choice of nursing as a career. The positioning of nursing as a virtuous choice was both (...) temporally and contextually influenced. The decision to enter the profession was initially emplotted around a traditional understanding of nursing as a virtuous profession: altruistic, noble, caring and compassionate. The centricity of virtues depicts one‐dimensional understanding of the nursing profession that alone could prove dissatisfying to a generation of professionals who have many career choices available to them. The narratives reveal how participants' perceptions and expectations remain influenced by a stereotypical understanding of nursing, an image that remains prevalent in society and which holds implications for the future recruitment, socialization and retention strategies for upcoming and future generations of nurses. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 1-5.

Kathryn Paxton George's recent publication, Animal, Vegetable, or Woman?, is the culmination of more than a decade's work and encompasses standard and original arguments against the feminist-vegetarian connection. This paper demonstrates that George's key arguments are deeply flawed, antithetical to basic feminist commitments, and beg the question against fundamental aspects of the debate. Those who do not accept the feminist-vegetarian connection should rethink their position or offer a non-question-begging defense of it.

This historical study aims to explain how the transition from student nurse service to fully qualified “graduate nurse” service in the United States in the 20th century affected assumptions about fundamental patient care in hospital wards and provide historical context for current apprenticeship programs. Through analysis of documents from 1920 when student nurse service, a nurse apprentice model, was the norm to 1960 when the nurse apprentice model was waning in favor of registered nurse service, this study found that the (...) replacement of student nurses with registered nurses led to weakened standardization of fundamental bedside care and the introduction of large numbers of unlicensed nursing assistants. While student nurses could perform all the functions of fully qualified graduate nurses, nursing assistants could not, resulting in a separation of fundamental nursing care from the professional nurse role and changes in assumptions and attitudes toward fundamental care. These changes had a negative effect on fundamental nursing care. New apprenticeship programs provide opportunities for improvement. (shrink)

This historical study aims to refine understanding of the nature of nursing work. The study focuses on the 1880 crisis at Guy's Hospital in London to examine the nature and meaning of nursing work, particularly the concept of nursing work as many ‘little things.’ In this paper, an examination of Margaret Lonsdale's writing offers an original contribution to our understanding of the ways in which nursing work differs from medical practice. In this way, we use the late-nineteenth-century controversy at Guy's (...) Hospital as a prism through which to examine the contested nature of nursing work. Lonsdale's ideas are corroborated by examination of writings by nurse leaders Florence Nightingale and Eva Luckes. Luckes, in particular, elaborated what was meant by nursing as the performance of a thousand little things, which are specific to nursing work. While physicians had been performing much of what was considered to be nursing work, nurses developed some of these and other interventions into a unique body of work characterized by meticulous attention to significant details. Some implications regarding current nursing practice are discussed. (shrink)

: Kathryn Paxton George's recent publication, Animal, Vegetable, or Woman? (2000), is the culmination of more than a decade's work and encompasses standard and original arguments against the feminist-vegetarian connection. This paper demonstrates that George's key arguments are deeply flawed, antithetical to basic feminist commitments, and beg the question against fundamental aspects of the debate. Those who do not accept the feminist-vegetarian connection should rethink their position or offer a non-question-begging defense of it.

Two related themes have dominated discussions about the Left in advanced industrial democracies in recent years. The first is that an increasingly integrated world economy is creating a fundamentally new situation for leaders and publics, imposing burdens and constraining choices. You can either opt out of the system and languish, or put on what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has called neoliberalism's “Golden Straightjacket”—at which point “two things tend to happen: your economy grows and your politics shrinks.” The second (...) is that traditional social democracy has played itself out as a political ideology, creating a vacuum that can and should be filled by some new progressive movement with greater contemporary relevance. For example, Ralf Dahrendorf has argued that “socialism is dead, and … none of its variants can be revived,” while Anthony Giddens has written that reformist socialism has become “defensive” and perhaps even “moribund.”. (shrink)

One-ing is as close a description of "What It May Be All About" that you may ever read.The awesome task that is your destiny is connecting Heaven and Earth and ...

WISDOM OF THE WILD offers a deeper appreciation of life, relationships, and experiences through the exploration of nature's spiritual offerings. This collection of life lessons focuses on aspects of the natural world and their philosophical connection to our own lives, providing insights to daily living and a deeper connection to our spiritual selves. Each entry features a phenomenon found in nature, demonstrating how readers may connect the world to their human experiences. With activities, rituals, and affirmations, this book of natural (...) wonders aligns readers' inner and outer worlds to cultivate peace, balance, and harmony. (shrink)

In Culture, Modernity and Revolution a group of distinguished sociologists and social philosophers reflect upon the major concerns of Zygmunt Bauman. Their essays not only honour the man, but provide important contributions to the three interlinked themes that could be said to form the guiding threads of Bauman's life work: power, culture and modernity. Culture, Modernity and Revolution is both a remarkable sociological commentary on the problems facing East-Central Europe and an exposition of some of the key, hitherto (...) neglected, features of the modern cultural universe. (shrink)

For centuries, the British royal family has been the subject of books, articles, broadcast media, and digital communication. The addition of social media platforms has further increased the attention of the royals. Each of the family’s official social media sites have large numbers of followers around the world. The present study uses Goffman’s Presentation of Self to qualitatively examine how the current British royal family portrays itself visually via its official Instagram account. An analysis of two years of posts on (...) the social platform provides a glimpse of how the family works to maintain its image through a highly popular social media platform. Results indicated the presence of three main themes: Queen as the Head of the Monarchy, Honoring the Past, and The Working Royalty. This study offers a means of understanding the importance of visuals in conveying the royal family. (shrink)

This paper examines economic arguments employers sometimes use to justify restricting or excluding from employment those workers who are Iikely to incur high costs in health care insurance. We argue that, although profit-making is a legitimate goal for businesses, hiring practices based on non-job-related criteria violate principles of self determination, autonomy, discrimination, justice, and privacy. We conclude that hiring practices based on Iiability-driven ethics are not morally justified, but that as long as health care insurance and employment are Iinked, businesses (...) will continue to have an incentive to use liability-driven arguments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Community and the “Absolutely Feminine”Sheri I. Hoem (bio)I’ve emphasized the importance of the moment of dissent in the process of constructing knowledge, lying at the heart of the community of thought.—Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern ExplainedMaurice Blanchot’s The Unavowable Community places side by side a “community” of writers who confront the very possibility of community as it comes to be inscribed in politico-philosophical and literary modes. His “little book” (...) [56], as he calls it, takes up these modes of discourse separately, in two parts. The first section of his text, “The Negative Community,” constitutes an analytical defense of Bataille’s theoretical concepts of community as they have been interpreted by Jean-Luc Nancy in The Inoperative Community. Blanchot engages the question of community, communion, and communism not simply to contest or continue Nancy’s text, but to restore Bataille to a brotherhood, or “fraternity” [26] of friends and scholars who have come to think in terms of an “unworking” [23] or “negative” community. The second section of Blanchot’s text, “The Community of Lovers,” performs a critical reading of Marguerite Duras’s fictional work The Malady of Death.In The Inoperative Community—the pretext, at least in part, for part one of Blanchot’s little book—Nancy credits Bataille as having “gone farthest into the crucial experience of the modern destiny of community” [16] in that Bataille’s thinking reveals the experience of discerning communism’s failure, followed by a fascination with fascism, and finally a “withdrawal from communitarian enterprises” [16–17] altogether. According to Nancy, at the juncture of the historical and theoretical failings of community, Bataille abandons all forms of community other than “an accursed isolation of lovers and of the artist” [24]. Admitting that he is dealing only with ‘“themes’” rather than with Bataille’s “writing” itself, Nancy nevertheless asserts that Bataille’s thinking on community has always been limited by “the theme of the sovereignty of the subject” [23], even in his community of lovers:Bataille’s lovers are also, at the limit, a subject and an object—where the subject, moreover, is always the man, and the object always the woman, due no doubt to a very classical manipulation of sexual difference in an appropriation of self by self. (However, on another register and in another reading of Bataille’s text, it is not certain that love and jouissance do not pertain essentially to the woman—and to the woman in man. To discuss this it would be necessary to consider Bataille’s writing... something I cannot do here, inasmuch as I am for the moment considering only its “themes.”).[24]Nancy’s reading of Bataille thus clears a space for Nancy’s own investigation into the possibility of community after or beyond the subject, so to speak. Instead of a subject described as an (undivided) individual, Nancy speaks of a “singular being” who is always already othered. Singular beings as such are “constituted by... sharing that makes them [End Page 49] others: other for one another... ‘“communicating’ by not ‘communing’” [25]. For Nancy, it is the very experience of the limits of communication that allows each being to discover a certain singularity in common.Blanchot too reflects on the “theme” of community in Bataille’s works without examining Bataille’s “writing” as such, but he reads Bataille differently. Blanchot demonstrates how Bataille’s thinking gives the effect of “mutation” [4], that Bataille comes to an understanding of self-difference beyond the subject, beyond the limits imposed by Nancy’s reading, beyond the classical construct of subject/object discourse. Blanchot’s “Negative Community” establishes Bataille as one who experienced stages of thought: his thought exhibited its own infidelity.Blanchot turns to certain of Bataille’s terms, particularly “sacrifice,” “ecstasy,” and “inner experience,” to present an alternative to Nancy’s reading. According to Blanchot, the “inner experience” (l’expérience intérieure) is a concept in Bataille that does the opposite of what one might expect. The “inner experience,” Blanchot explains, is amovement of contestation that, coming from the subject, devastates it, but has as a deeper origin the relationship with the other which is community itself... (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Swedish case bears out Lewin's contention, in Self-Interest and Public Interest in Western Politics, that public spiritedness is much more important than is suggested by public-choice theories positing the universal dominance of self-interestedness. However, in Sweden we find that public spiritedness on the part of the public—as evidenced, for example, in sociotropic voting—was cultivated by political institutions, policies, and rhetoric that transformed a divided, conflictual society into one in which the “public interest” was both coherent and desirable. In (...) turn, this cultivation was the result of decisions by politicians that were, in the most simplistic sense, self-interested, because they secured the politicians’ election and re-election. But the goal of election and re-election was to create a just society. In short, the politicians, too, were public spirited. (shrink)

The Swedish case bears out Lewin's contention, in Self-Interest and Public Interest in Western Politics, that public spiritedness is much more important than is suggested by public-choice theories positing the universal dominance of self-interestedness. However, in Sweden we find that public spiritedness on the part of the public—as evidenced, for example, in sociotropic voting—was cultivated by political institutions, policies, and rhetoric that transformed a divided, conflictual society into one in which the “public interest” was both coherent and desirable. In turn, (...) this cultivation was the result of decisions by politicians that were, in the most simplistic sense, self-interested, because they secured the politicians’ election and re-election. But the goal of election and re-election was to create a just society. In short, the politicians, too, were public spirited. (shrink)

A liquid modernity, where the traditional certainties have become fluid and blurred, presents a major challenge for education. The world is changing so quickly that homo sapiens, learning animal par excellence, can no longer rely on strategies acquired through learning experiences, let alone those derived from traditional values or wisdom. The excess of useless information creates a glut. When saturation level is reached, accumulation ceases to be a sign of wealth and becomes undesirable. Knowledge is confined - discarded like refuse (...) - in the infinite capacity of cyber-computers. What should we humans keep and what should we reject in this process? In times of liquid modernity, how and what should our children be taught in order to be able to develop survival strategies throughout their lives? (shrink)

We are spurred into action by our troubles and fears; but all too often our action fails to address the true causes of our worries. When trying to make sense of our lives, we tend to blame our own failings and weaknesses for our discomforts and defeats. And in doing so, we make things worse rather than better. Reasonable beings that we are, how does this happen and why does it go on happening? These are the questions addressed in this (...) new book by Zygmunt Bauman - one of the most original and perceptive social thinkers writing today. For Bauman, the task of sociology is not to censor or correct the stories we tell of our lives, but to show that there are more ways in which our life stories can be told. By bringing into view the many complex dependencies invisible from the vantage point of private experience, sociology can help us to link our individual decisions and actions to the deeper causes of our troubles and fears - to the ways we live, to the conditions under which we act, to the socially drawn limits of our imagination and ambition. Sociology can help us to understand the processes that have shaped the society in which we live today, a society in which individualization has become our fate. And sociology can also help us to see that if our individual but shared anxieties are to be effectively tackled, they need to be addressed collectively, true to their social, not individual, nature. The Individualized Society will be of great interest to students of sociology, politics and the social sciences and humanities generally. It will also appeal to a broader range of readers who are interested in the changing nature of our social and political life today. (shrink)

Current law does not adequately protect patients' privacy or their medical records. Proposals to computerize these records could further erode confidentiality unless new federal laws are enacted.

Locked-in syndrome (LIS) is a severe neurological condition that typically leaves a patient unable to move, talk and, in many cases, initiate communication. Brain Computer Interfaces (or BCIs) promise to enable individuals with conditions like LIS to re-engage with their physical and social worlds. In this paper we will use extended mind theory to offer a way of seeing the potential of BCIs when attached to, or implanted in, individuals with LIS. In particular, we will contend that functionally integrated BCIs (...) extend the minds of individuals with LIS beyond their bodies, allowing them greater autonomy than they can typically hope for in living with their condition. This raises important philosophical questions about the implications of BCI technology, particularly the potential to change selves, and ethical questions about whether society has a responsibility to aid these individuals in re-engaging with their physical and social worlds. It also raises some important questions about when these interventions should be offered to individuals with LIS and respecting the rights of these individuals to refuse intervention. By aiding willing individuals in re-engaging with their physical and social worlds, BCIs open up avenues of opportunity taken for granted by able individuals and introduce new ways in which these individuals can be harmed. These latter considerations serve to highlight our emergent social responsibilities to those individuals who will be suitable for, and receive, BCIs. (shrink)

Introduction: Morality in Modern and Postmodern Perspective Shattered beings are best represented by bits and pieces. Rainer Maria Rilke As signalled in its ...

The word "globalization" is used to convey the hope and determination of order-making on a worldwide scale. It is trumpeted as providing more mobility--of people, capital, and information--and as being equally beneficial for everyone. With recent technological developments--most notably the Internet--globalization seems to be the fate of the world. But no one seems to be in control. As noted sociologist Zygmunt Bauman shows in this detailed history of globalization, while human affairs now take place on a global scale, we (...) are not able to direct events; we can only watch as boundaries, institutions, and loyalties shift in rapid and unpredictable ways. Who benefits from the new globalization? Are people in need assisted more quickly and efficiently? Or are the poor worse off than ever before? Will a globalized economy shift jobs away from traditional areas, destroying time-honored national industries? Who will enjoy access to jobs in the new hierarchy of mobility? From the way the global economy creates a class of absentee landlords to current prison designs for the criminalized underclass, Bauman dissects globalization in all its manifestations: its effects on the economy, politics, social structures, and even our perceptions of time and space. In a chilling analysis, Bauman argues that globalization divides as much as it unites, creating an ever-widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots. Rather than the hybrid culture we had hoped for, globalization is creating a more homogenous world. Drawing on the works of philosophers, social historians, architects, and theoreticians such as Michel Foucault, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Alfred J. Dunlap, and Le Corbusier, Globalization presents a historical overview of the methods employed to create and define human spaces and institutions, from rural villages to sprawling urban centers. Bauman shows how the advent of the computer translates into the decline of truly public space. And he explores the dimensions of a world in which--through new technologies--time is accelerated and space is compressed, revealing how we have arrived at our current state of global thinking. Bauman's incisive methods of inquiry make Globalization an excellent antidote to the exuberance expressed by those who stand to benefit from the new pace and mobility of the modern life. (shrink)

'Community' is one of those words that feels good: it is good 'to have a community', 'to be in a community'. And 'community' feels good because of the meanings which the word conveys, all of them promising pleasures, and more often than not the kind of pleasures which we would like to experience but seem to miss. 'Community' conveys the image of a warm and comfortable place, like a fireplace at which we warm our hands on a frosty day. Out (...) there, in the street, all sorts of dangers lie in ambush; in here, in the community, we can relax and feel safe. 'Community' stands for the kind of world which we long to inhabit but which is not, regrettably, available to us. Today 'community' is another name for paradise lost - but for a paradise which we still hope to find, as we feverishly search for the roads that may lead us there. But there is a price to be paid for the privilege of being in a community. Community promises security but seems to deprive us of freedom, of the right to be ourselves. Security and freedom are two equally precious and coveted values which could be balanced to some degree, but hardly ever fully reconciled. The tension between security and freedom, and between community and individuality, is unlikely ever to be resolved. We cannot escape the dilemma but we can take stock of the opportunities and the dangers, and at least try to avoid repeating past errors. In this important new book, Zygmunt Bauman takes stock of these opportunities and dangers and, in his distinctive and brilliant fashion, offers a much-needed reappraisal of a concept that has become central to current debates about the nature and future of our societies. (shrink)

Life in Fragments is a continuation of the themes and motifs explored in Zygmunt Bauman's acclaimed study, Postmodern Ethics (Blackwell, 1993).

The book discusses the role of intellectuals in the modern world. Bauman connects this with current analyses of modernity and post-modernity. The theme of the book is that the tasks of intellectuals change from being 'legislators' to 'interpreters' with the transition from modernity to post-modernity. The book discusses the role of intellectuals in the modern world. Bauman connects this with current analyses of modernity and post-modernity. The theme of the book is that the tasks of intellectuals change from (...) being 'legislators' to 'interpreters' with the transition from modernity to post-modernity. (shrink)

When Freud wrote his classic Civilization and its Discontents, he was concerned with repression. Modern civilization depends upon the constraint of impulse, the limiting of self expression. Today, in the time of modernity, Bauman argues, Freud's analysis no longer holds good, if it ever did. The regulation of desire turns from an irritating necessity into an assault against individual freedom. In the postmodern era, the liberty of the individual is the overriding value, the criterion in terms of which all (...) social rules and regulations are assessed. Postmodernity is governed by the 'will to happiness': the result, however, is a sacrificing of security. The most prominent anxieties in our society today, Bauman shows, derive from the removal of security. The world is experienced as overwhelmingly uncertain, uncontrollable and frightening. Totalitarian politics frightened by its awesome power; the new social disorder frightens by its lack of consistency and direction. The very pursuit of individual happiness corrupts and undermines those systems of authority needed for a stable life. This book builds imaginatively upon Bauman's earlier contributions to social theory. It consolidates his reputation as the interpreter of postmodernity. The book will appeal to second-year undergraduates and above in sociology, cultural studies, philosophy and anthropology. (shrink)

Computer technologies are having a profoundly transforming effect on how the United States federal government operates. As technologies become more sophisticated, Federal agencies are becoming more innovative, devising creative ways to use these technologies for program delivery. One hopes that the near-term effect of these technology applications will be more efficient operation of government, the goal that generally leads to their implementation.

Objective: There are benefits and risks of giving patients more granular control of their personal health information in electronic health record (EHR) systems. When designing EHR systems and policies, informaticists and system developers must balance these benefits and risks. Ethical considerations should be an explicit part of this balancing. Our objective was to develop a structured ethics framework to accomplish this. -/- Methods: We reviewed existing literature on the ethical and policy issues, developed an ethics framework called a “Points to (...) Consider” (P2C) document, and convened a national expert panel to review and critique the P2C. -/- Results: We developed the P2C to aid informaticists designing an advanced query tool for an electronic health record (EHR) system in Indianapolis. The P2C consists of six questions (“Points”) that frame important ethical issues, apply accepted principles of bioethics and Fair Information Practices, comment on how questions might be answered, and address implications for patient care. -/- Discussion: The P2C is intended to clarify whatis at stake when designers try to accommodate potentially competing ethical commitments and logistical realities. The P2C was developed to guide informaticists who were designing a query tool in an existing EHR that would permit patient granular control. While consideration of ethical issues is coming to the forefront of medical informatics design and development practices, more reflection is needed to facilitate optimal collaboration between designers and ethicists. This report contributes to that discussion. (shrink)

Bauman analyzes freedom as a social relation rather than as an idea or postulate. Throughout history, he shows, freedom was a privilege enjoyed in relation to either superior or weaker power. Today, "seduction" tends to replace repression as a means of social control, and individual freedom is, above all, freedom of the consumer. A paper edition is available. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Bauman urges us to think in new ways about a newly flexible, newly challenging modern world. In an era of routine travel, where most people circulate widely, the inherited beliefs that aid our thinking about the world have become an obstacle. He challenges members of the “knowledge class” to overcome their estrangement from the rest of society.

Why do most of us consider ourselves free but also believe there is little we can change in the way the world is run - individually, severally, or even collectively? Why has the growth of individual freedom coincided with the growth of collective impotence? Bauman argues that this condition hangs on the agora - the space where private and public meet to seek the creation of 'public good', a 'just society', or 'shared values'. The problem is that little remains (...) of such old style spaces. We cannot, he argues, overcome our collective impotence without resorting to politics and using the vehicle of political agency. Three orientation points for a reconstruction of politics are suggested: the republican model of the state and of citizenship, basic income as a universal entitlement, and re-enabling the institutions of autonomous society by catching up with the controlling extraterritorial powers in an age of globalization. (shrink)

Each one of T.H. Marshall's trinity of human rights rested on the state as, simultaneously, its birth place, executive manager and guardian. And no wonder. At the time Marshall tied personal, political and social freedoms into a historically determined succession of won/bestowed rights, the boundaries of the sovereign state marked the limits of what humans could contemplate, and what they thought they should jointly do, in order to make their world more user-friendly. The state enclosed territory was the site of (...) private initiatives and public actions, as well as the arena on which private interests and public issues met, clashed and sought reconciliation. In all those respects, the realm of state sovereignty was presumed to be self-contained, selfassertive and self-sufficient. (shrink)

Each one of T.H. Marshall's trinity of human rights rested on the state as, simultaneously, its birth place, executive manager and guardian. And no wonder. At the time Marshall tied personal, political and social freedoms into a historically determined succession of won/bestowed rights, the boundaries of the sovereign state marked the limits of what humans could contemplate, and what they thought they should jointly do, in order to make their world more user-friendly. The state enclosed territory was the site of (...) private initiatives and public actions, as well as the arena on which private interests and public issues met, clashed and sought reconciliation. In all those respects, the realm of state sovereignty was presumed to be self-contained, selfassertive and self-sufficient. (shrink)

One subject which captured the imagination of sociologists, philosophers, political scientists and writers on culture in the 1980s was postmodernism. This text considers the meaning and importance of postmodernity.

In this major work, Zygmunt Bauman seeks to classify the meanings of culture. He distinguishes between culture as a concept, culture as a structure and culture as praxis and analyzes the different ways in which culture has been used in each of these settings. For Bauman, culture is a living, changing aspect of human interaction which must be understood and studied as a universal of human life. At the heart of his approach is the proposition that culture is (...) inherently ambivalent. With a major new introduction to this new edition, this classic work emerges as a crucial link in the development of Bauman's thought. By his own admission, it was the first of his books to grope towards a new kind of social theory, in contrast to the fals. (shrink)