Böcker av Zygmunt Bauman

An introduction to the hermeneutic tradition. It helps students of sociology and philosophy place the problems of 'understanding social science' in their historical and philosophical context, by presenting the major current in sociological thought as responses to the challenge of hermeneutics.

For the better part of its history, sociology shared with commonsense its assumption of the 'nature-like' character of society - and consequently developed as the science of unfreedom. This work describes how the various trends in sociology emerging from phenomenology and existentialism do not challenge this preoccupation.

Explores the impact of the 'living utopia' of socialism on the development of modern society. This title begins with an analysis of the role of utopia in general, and of the socialist utopia in particular. It examines the reasons for the failure of socialism in its application to the peasant revolution in Russia.

A discussion of the mechanism of class formation and institutionalisation of class conflict. It traces the formation of a class society back to the patterns of 'surveillance power' and control, and shows how these patterns preceded and made possible the industrial system.

It is one thing to be poor in a society of producers and universal employment; it is quite a different thing to be poor in a society of consumers. This book considers how effective different ways of fighting poverty and relieving its hardships are. It features discussion of work on redundancy, disposability and exclusion.

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 classifies the meanings of culture. 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.