Beyond Bauman: Critical Engagements and Creative Excursions

Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of contributors
Preface and acknowledgements
Introduction: Critical engagements and creative excursions with a contemporary sociological icon(oclast)
	The difficult art of ‘killing one’s darlings’
	Bauman’s sociology: critical and humanistic cornerstones
	Inroads for critique
	Structure and content
	References
1 Aesthetic and relational ethics: Beyond Bauman’s postmodern ethics
	Introduction
	From postmodern audacity to liquid scepticism
	Defence: moving beyond decline sociology
	Particularising Otherness
	The emotional and embodied Other
	Iconic consciousness
	The traumatising Other
	The precarious self
	Conclusion
	References
2 Voice and the generalised other in the ethical writings of Zygmunt Bauman
	Introduction
	Bauman, Buber and the Other
	Culture
	Bauman, ethics and the Other
	New public sphere: the way out of the contemporary interregnum
	Conclusion
	References
3 Race, imperialism and gender in Zygmunt Bauman’s sociology: Partial absences, serious consequences
	Introduction
	The Enlightenment, modernity and ambivalence
	Imperialism, racism, gender and the Holocaust
	Gender, imperialism and consumerism
	Conclusion
	References
4 The inevitable clerisy: A postsecular critique of Zygmunt Bauman
	Introduction: knowledge and justice
	Priests and counter-priests
	For or against the counter-priesthood?
	Liberalism is always already debased
	Culturalist delusions
	Platonic resolution and alternative modernity
	The indispensable priesthood
	The experimental capture of ritual
	From ritual to experiment
	Returning experiment to ritual
	Against the liberal grounds for inequality
	Conclusion: the ritual control of experiment
	Notes
	References
5 Critical theory old and new: Theodor W. Adorno meets Zygmunt Bauman in the shopping mall
	Introduction
	Enlightenment, modernity and the Holocaust
	The culture industry and liquid-modern consumerism
	The damaged life, postmodern moralities and a fragmented existence
	Negative dialectic and active utopia
	From classical to contemporary critical theory
	Conclusion
	Note
	References
6 Not yet: Probing the potentials and problems in the utopian understandings of Ernst Bloch and Zygmunt Bauman
	Introduction
	Anticipatory consciousness and hope
	Bauman and socialism
	Music as utopia
	Morality as utopia
	Utopia in liquid modernity
	Conclusion
	Notes
	References
7 Exploring modernity’s hidden agenda in Europe: The complementary contributions of Zygmunt Bauman and Ernest Gellner
	Introduction
	Two agendas of modernity
	Two Central European intellectuals
	Liquid crowds and solid selves
	Loss of a world
	Three Baumans
	Gellner and solid modernity
	Conclusion
	References
8 ‘Getting to Norway’: Do we need to go beyond Zygmunt Bauman and Pierre Bourdieu in order to understand contemporary Norwegian society?
	Introduction
	Zygmunt Bauman: from solid to liquid modernity
	Pierre Bourdieu: a solid modernity?
	Norwegian society: some basic facts
	Is Norway a consumer society?
	Bauman versus Bourdieu on the consumer society
	Consumption and identity: gender, class and age
	Functional differentiation: the architecture of a solid society
	Agency and power in Bourdieu
	Power, democracy and reflexive modernisation
	Conclusion
	Notes
	References
9 Overcritique and ambiguity in Zygmunt Bauman’s sociology: A long-term perspective
	Introduction
	Sociology’s two tracks and sociological psychology
	Marxism and partisanship
	From Marx to modernity
	Bauman and dialectics
	Conclusion: the quicksands of ambivalence
	Notes
	References
10 Keeping other options alive: Zygmunt Bauman, hermeneutics and sociological alternatives
	Introduction
	Sociological hermeneutics
	Sociological hermeneutics and the legislator/interpreter distinction
	Bauman’s sociological alternatives
	Bauman, Levitas and utopianism
	Sociological hermeneutics alternatives
	Conclusion: on H. G. Wells, Bauman and Levitas
	Notes
	References
11 Paradoxes and ambivalences of liquid modernity: Zygmunt Bauman and the peculiar solidity of liquidity
	Introduction
	Modernity: liquefied and diluted?
	Politics: powerless and privatised?
	The agora: abandoned and dilapidated?
	Individualisation: insidious and inhumane?
	Critique: consumerised and disarmed?
	Utopia: undermined and distorted?
	‘There Is No Alternative’ – or is there?
	Conclusion: hoping against hope?
	Note
	References
Index