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20 November 2009

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Polish Culture in the World Polish Cultural Institutes
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Zygmunt Bauman
languages: Polish  / English  / German 
 

Born in 1925, Bauman is one of the best known sociologists and philosophers in the world. His name is often mentioned as a principal creator of the concept of "post-modernism". He writes above all about the characteristics and trends of contemporary culture.

Bauman belongs to the generation that faced the task of rebuilding the splendid traditions of Polish learning after the war. In 1959, he published "British Socialism", which he had written several years earlier. Bauman's intellectual integrity has been accompanied since the outset by great essayistic and popularizing talents, which have born such fruit as "Everyday Sociology and Ideas", "Ideals and Ideology". The seeds of his original philosophical concepts can already be seen in these early works.

In March, 1968, Zygmunt Bauman was professor of sociology at the University of Warsaw and Chairman of the General Sociology Department. He was suddenly stripped of his post and expelled from the university for political reasons by the communist authorities. Although he left Poland, he was remembered as the author of many books and sociology textbooks. Bauman had been an outstanding teacher of younger sociologists and the first editor-in-chief of "Studia Sociologiczne". In emigration, he continued to develop his ideas and his original scholarly concepts. Bauman lectured at the universities in Tel Aviv and Haifa in 1969-1971. He went to England in that year and accepted a permanent post at the University of Leeds. He was also visiting professor at Berkeley, Yale, Canberra, St. John's and Copenhagen.

He writes and publishes in English. His books have appeared in many countries. Zygmunt Bauman was awarded the European Amalfi Prize in sociology and the social sciences for "Modernity and The Holocaust".

Bauman seems intellectually closest to the neopragmatism exemplified by Richard Rorty. Bauman finds Rorty's interpretative pluralism especially congenial. This is particularly important in relation to the aesthetic and moral questions that are most important to Bauman, particularly in his highly original treatment of the Holocaust. As he states in "Modernity and The Holocaust", the Shoah "emerged as the result of an extraordinary accumulation of factors, each of which was completely ordinary and normal by itself, and the responsibility for that accumulation must be attributed to the modern state".

Selected Bibliography:
  • "Hermeneutics and Social Science", New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.
  • "Memories of Class: The Pre-history and After-life of Class", London-Boston: Routhledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.
  • "Legislators and Interpreters - on Modernity, Post-modernity, Intelectuals", Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987.
  • "Freedom", Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1988.
  • "Modernity and the Holocaust", Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989.
  • "Thinking Sociologically. An Introduction for Everyone", Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1990.
  • "Modernity and Ambivalence", Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991.
  • "Intimations of Postmodernity", London, New York: Routhledge, 1992.
  • "Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies", Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992.
  • "Postmodern Ethics, Life in Fragments. Essays in Postmodern Morality", Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell,1995.
  • "Postmodernity and its Discontents", New York: New York University Press, 1997.
  • "Work, Consumerism and the new Poor", Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1998.
  • "Globalization: The Human Consequences", New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
  • "Culture as Praxis, Thousand Oaks", California: Sage Publications, 1999.
  • "Ponowoczesność jako źródło cierpień (Man's discomfort in postmodernity)", Warsaw: Sic!, 2000 "(more...)".
  • "Globalizacja (Globalization)", Warsaw: PIW, 2000.

Source: www.polska2000.pl; copyright: Stowarzyszenie Willa Decjusza.

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