Zygmunt Bauman Book order

The breadth and depth of Zygmunt Bauman’s engagement with social theory and the history of social thought has perhaps been underestimated, in part because many of his early writings were in Polish and never translated into English, and in part because many important pieces appeared in edited volumes and journals that are not readily available. This volume brings together hitherto unknown or rare pieces by Bauman on the theme of theory and society and also makes available previously unpublished material from the Bauman Archive at the University of Leeds. A consistent theme of Bauman’s work was his sustained engagement with humanism, and this provides a unifying thread in the pieces brought together in this volume. Here Bauman reflects on some of the core concepts of sociology, examines the work of a wide range of social theorists, from Durkheim and Gramsci to Agnes Heller and C. Wright Mills, and addresses an array of key ideas and issues including inequality, identity and social change. A substantial introduction by the editors provides readers with a lucid guide through this material and develops connections to Bauman’s other works. This is the third and final volume in a series of books that make available the lesser-known writings of one of the most influential social thinkers of our time. It will be of interest to students and scholars across the arts, humanities and social sciences, and to a wider readership.

Zygmunt Bauman was one of the great social thinkers of our inventor of the idea of liquid modernity, he transformed our way of thinking about the social conditions shaping our lives today.  His own life was shaped by the great social forces that scarred the second half of the twentieth century – war, communism, antisemitism, forced migration.  His work bears the traces of an outsider who knew all too well the enormous impact that social and political forces can have on personal lives. Bauman never wrote a full biography, but he wrote extended letters to his daughters in which he recounted the details of his life – his childhood and schooling; his experiences during the war and its aftermath; his forced emigration from Poland in 1968 and his subsequent life in exile, first in Israel and then in the UK, where he eventually settled at the University of Leeds.  This book makes available for the first time these fragments of a life recounted, woven into a compelling autobiographical narrative that is laced with the broader reflections of a master thinker on some of the great issues of our identity, antisemitism and totalitarianism.

A victim of the Nazis, then the communists. Twice a refugee, yet always remaining a committed socialist. In countless ways, Zygmunt Bauman lived the political upheavals of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He was an actor within them. Bauman’s own lived history informed his politics, which found expression in varying degrees in his sociology, as he wrote extensively on socialism, democracy, bureaucracy, morality, Europe and the Jewish experience. This volume brings together hitherto unknown or rare pieces by Bauman on the themes of history and politics by drawing upon previously unpublished material from the Bauman Archive at the University of Leeds. A substantial introduction by the editors provides readers with a lucid guide through this material and develops connections to Bauman’s other works. The second volume in a series of books that will make available the lesser-known writings of one of the most influential social thinkers of our time, History and Politics will be of interest to students and scholars across the arts, humanities and social sciences, and to a wider readership.

A fatally ill woman is suffocated in her hospital bed. Her last visitor, Madeleine Reed, is accused of the crime. There are no witnesses. Madeleine cannot recall committing the murder and has no motive.

Pianist and author Keith Jacobsen tells the story of his lifelong passion for the piano as performer and teacher from early childhood in post-war Liverpool to the present day.

Education and Intercultural Identity offers a dialogue between influential authors Zygmunt Bauman and Agostino Portera that reflects on and discusses contemporary events and issues relating to the crisis of global normativity, education and intercultural identity.

"Previously unpublished writings on culture and art by one of the most influential social thinkers of our time"--

Alan Harris, an old school Oxford Don, very comfortable in his academic world leads an outwardly contented life, until the body of one of his students, Simon, is discovered in the river - his empty punt moored nearby.

The last interview of one of the greatest social thinkers of our time--

This title was first published in 2001: For over 30 years it has been argued that contemporary society is undergoing a fundamental transformation. The portrait of the modern society or modernity offered by philosophers and social scientists from Hobbes to Parsons is no longer understood as a description of the final and highest stage in the social evolution of mankind. Modern society is not the end of history but simply another more or less contingent social and cultural formation on planet earth. This new perspective on modernity and its transformation, which has emerged from the modernist-postmodernist debate, is the subject matter of this book. It is addressed in a multidisciplinary and international way, both theoretically and empirically, and is explored not only in general and historical terms, but also through specific topics such as sexuality, identity, democracy, globalization, knowledge and leadership. Offering an important collaborative contribution to contemporary discourse in sociology, social psychology, politics and philosophy, this book represents a unique effort to come to grips with our obscure and elusive social position at the start of the 21st century.