This book offers an incisive and original perspective on the works of Zygmunt Bauman, perhaps the greatest sociologist of the late twentieth century. It examines the limitations of his approach while recognising the importance of his legacy as a theorist who insisted on the need for moral engagement.

• Cover
• Bauman and contemporary sociology
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: The dark side of modernity
  • Bauman on the Enlightenment and modernity
  • The Holocaust’s modernity
  • The ambivalences of modernity: a preliminary interrogation of Bauman’s Eurocentric, white, male gaze
• Part II: Living with postmodernity
  • Modernism and postmodernism
  • Legislators and Interpreters: extending the critique of Bauman’s first exposition of postmodernity and postmodernism
  • Sociology and postmodernity
  • Aspects of Bauman’s sociology of postmodernity: a critical commentary
  • Postmodern ethics: Bauman’s Levinasian turn
• Part III: Floating, slipping, sliding, drowning, boiling and freezing: the perils of liquid life
  • Why did Bauman become a postmodernist?
  • The whys and wherefores of the demise of postmodernism
  • ‘Liquid’ modernity vs ‘reflexive’ modernity: Bauman’s problem of agency, again
  • ‘Metaphoricity’ in Bauman’s sociology
  • On the ‘liquid’ metaphor: what is this liquid in ‘liquid modernity’?
  • ‘Solid’ modernity
  • ‘Liquid’ writing and liquid modernity: some ethical considerations
  • Liquid modernity: the bare essentials
  • Aspects of liquid modernity: critical reflections
  • Conclusion: a sociologist of hope or a prophet of gloom?
• References
• Index