Bauman’s Challenge: Sociological Issues for the 21st Century

226 Pages·2010·0.848 MB·English

by  Mark Davis, Keith Tester (eds.)

Bauman’s Challenge
Sociological Issues for the 21st Century
Edited by
Mark Davis and Keith Tester
Bauman’s Challenge
Also by Mark Davis
FREEDOM AND CONSUMERISM: A Critique of Zygmunt Bauman’s Sociology
Also by Keith Tester
ANIMALS AND SOCIETY: The Humanity of Animal Rights
BAUMAN BEFORE POSTMODERNITY: Invitation, Conversations and Annotated
Bibliography 1953–1989 (co-authored)
BAUMAN BEYOND POSTMODERNITY: Conversations, Critiques and Annotated
Bibliography 1989–2005 (co-authored)
CIVIL SOCIETY
COMPASSION, MORALITY AND THE MEDIA
CONVERSATIONS WITH ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
ERIC ROHMER: Film as Theology
HUMANITARIANISM AND MODERN CULTURE
MEDIA, CULTURE AND MORALITY
MORAL CULTURE
THE FLANEUR (edited)
THE SOCIAL THOUGHT OF ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
THE INHUMAN CONDITION
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF POST-MODERNITY
THE TWO SOVEREIGNS: Social Contradictions of European Modernity
Bauman’s Challenge
Sociological Issues for the 21st Century
Edited by
Mark Davis
University of Leeds, UK
and
Keith Tester
University of Hull, UK
Selection and editorial matter © Mark Davis and Keith Tester 2010
Individual chapters © their individual chapters 2010
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-22134-5
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First published 2010 by
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Notes on Contributors vii
Editors’ Introduction xi
Mark Davis and Keith Tester
1 Bauman’s Europe; Europe’s Bauman 1
William Outhwaite
2 The Use-Value of Human Waste and the Currency 14
of Waste-Disposal Sites in Liquid Modernity
Abby Peterson
3 Bauman and the Drama of Abu Ghraib 37
Stjepan G. Mestrovic
4 Another Bauman: The Anthropological Imagination 62
Peter Beilharz
5 Bauman’s Challenge to Sociology 70
Tony Blackshaw
6 Bauman’s Implicit Theology 92
Kieran Flanagan
7 Event Horizon: Utopia–Dystopia in Bauman’s Thought 127
Mark Featherstone
8 Totalitarian Bureaucracy and Bauman’s Sociological 148
Imagination: In Defence of the Ivory Tower
Paul Taylor
9 Resistance Towards Ethics 172
Tom Campbell and Chris Till
10 What’s in the Post? 189
John O’Neill
Conclusion: The Triple Challenge 200
Zygmunt Bauman
Index 206
v
Acknowledgements
The editors are grateful to all the contributors for the enthusiasm,
goodwill and commitment with which they participated in this project.
Collectively and individually they have all responded beyond our
hopes to Bauman’s challenge.
Mark Davis and Keith Tester dedicate this book with love, admiration
and respect to the memory of Janina Bauman, 18 August 1926–29
December 2009.
vi
Notes on Contributors
Zygmunt Bauman is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University
of Leeds, UK. He is a globally prominent sociologist who has published
numerous landmark works in an acclaimed career spanning over 40 years.
Among his numerous publications, the most significant are Legislators
and Interpreters (1987); Modernity & the Holocaust (1989), for which he was
awarded the Amalfi Prize and the Adorno Prize; Postmodern Ethics (1993);
In Search of Politics (1999); Liquid Modernity (2000); and Society Under
Siege (2002). His most recent work includes Liquid Life (2005), Liquid Fear
(2006), Consuming Life (2007) and The Art of Life (2008).
Peter Beilharz is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Thesis Eleven
Centre for Cultural Sociology at La Trobe University, Australia. He has
written and edited 23 books, six of them on Zygmunt Bauman. His most
recent is Socialism and Modernity (University of Minnesota Press, 2009).
He is presently writing studies of Australian modernity and working on
collaborative books on Jean Martin, the founding mother of Australian
sociology and on the history of rock music in Australia.
Tony Blackshaw teaches social and cultural studies in sport and lei-
sure at Sheffield Hallam University. He is author of Key Concepts in
Community Studies (Sage, 2009), Zygmunt Bauman (Routledge, 2005) and
Leisure Life: Myth, Masculinity and Modernity (Routledge, 2003). He is also
the co-author of The Sage Dictionary of Leisure Studies (Sage, 2009) and
New Perspectives on Sport and ‘Deviance’: Consumption, Performativity and
Social Control (Routledge, 2004). His current projects involve a forth-
coming book on Leisure (Routledge) and a study on the life and oral
history at Leeds, which is making an attempt to follow in the footsteps
of Richard Hoggart.
Tom Campbell is a final year doctoral candidate at the school of Sociology
and Social Policy, University of Leeds, UK. His thesis is concerned with
writing a genealogy of dyslexia, where dyslexia is considered as an
event in the history of reading. He is joint-editor of the book Disability
Studies: Emerging Insights and Perspectives (The Disability Press, 2008) and
has contributed the chapter ‘Towards a Sociology of Impairment?’ to
that collection. His wider work also considers the relationships between
ontologies of resistance and ethics.
vii
viii Notes on Contributors
Mark Davis is Lecturer in Sociology and Director of the Bauman
Institute at the University of Leeds, UK. He is author of Freedom and
Consumerism: A Critique of Zygmunt Bauman’s Sociology (Ashgate, 2008)
and has written on various aspects of Bauman’s sociology. His ongo-
ing research interests are focused upon the social and political conse-
quences of consumerism, in particular how freedom and choice can be
reconciled with the challenge of creating fairer, more sustainable and
more stable societies around the world. He is currently working as an
advisor to the Council of Europe on creating a ‘Europe of Shared and
Social Responsibilities’ (DGIII/DCS 2009: 13).
Mark Featherstone is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Keele University,
UK. He works in the area of utopias and dystopias and has recently
published a research monograph, Tocqueville’s Virus: Utopia and Dystopia
in Western Social and Political Thought (Routledge, 2007), on this
subject. He is currently writing the second volume of this study, Planet
Utopia: Utopia, Dystopia, and Globalisation, which is also scheduled to be
published by Routledge.
Kieran Flanagan is Reader in Sociology at the University of Bristol, UK.
His first book was Sociology in Liturgy: Re-Presentations of the Holy (1991).
With Peter C. Jupp he has edited Postmodernity, Sociology and Religion
(1996), Virtue Ethics and Sociology: Issues of Modernity and Religion (2001)
and A Sociology of Spirituality (2007). Recently, he has written essays on
conversion and on naming and the place of religious belief in the rela-
tionships between sociology and theology. His latest book is Sociology in
Theology: Reflexivity and Belief (2007). His current projects are on Charles
Taylor, and his forthcoming book is titled Sociology at Prayer: Utterances
in the Wilderness.
Stjepan G. Mestrovic is Professor of Sociology at Texas A&M University,
USA. He is the author of over 15 books in the area of social theory,
including The Coming Fin de Siecle: An Application of Durkheim’s Sociology
to Modernity and Postmodernity (1991), Durkheim and Postmodern Culture
(1992), The Barbarian Temperament: Towards a Postmodern Critical Theory
(1993) and Postemotional Society (1997). He is also a distinguished expert
in matters of war crimes and genocide and has recently published The
Trials of Abu Ghraib: An Expert Witness Account of Shame and Honor (2007)
and Rules of Engagement? A Social Anatomy of an American War Crime –
Operation Iron Triangle, Iraq (2008).
John O’Neill is Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology at
York University, Toronto, Canada. He is a Member of the Centre for
Notes on Contributors ix
Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto and a Fellow of
the Royal Society of Canada. He was Senior Scholar at the Laidlaw
Foundation 1993–4, working on the Children at Risk Programme. He
is co-editor of the International Quarterly, Philosophy of the Social Sciences
and The Journal of Classical Sociology. He is author of Incorporating Cultural
Theory: Maternity at the Millennium (2002), The Poverty of Postmodernism
(1995) and Critical Conventions: Interpretation in the Literary Arts and
Sciences (1992). Currently, he is working on the political economy of
child suffering, welfare state theory and civic practice.
William Outhwaite studied at the Universities of Oxford and Sussex,
where he taught for many years. He is now Professor of Sociology at
Newcastle University. He is author of Habermas: A Critical Introduction (Polity
Press, 1994) and editor of The Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth-Century
Social Thought (Blackwell, 1993). His recent publications include Social
Theory and Postcommunism (Blackwell, 2005, with Larry Ray), The Future of
Society (Blackwell, 2006) and European Society (Polity, 2008). He is currently
working on social and political change in Europe since 1989, supported
by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship.
Abby Peterson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Gothenburg,
Sweden. She has published extensively within the field of political and
cultural sociology and is the author of Contemporary Political Protest:
Essays on Political Militancy (Ashgate, 2001), joint-editor of The Policing
of Transnational Protest (Ashgate, 2006, with Donatella della Porta and
Herbert Reiter) and co-editor of the journal Acta Sociologica. She is presently
directing research on protest mobilization in Europe and on policing
organized crime in Sweden.
Paul A. Taylor is Senior Lecturer in Communications Theory at the
University of Leeds, UK. His ongoing research interests are focused upon
critical theories of mass culture. Founding editor of the International Journal
of Žižek Studies and Editorial Board member of the International Journal of
Baudrillard Studies, his recent and forthcoming monographs include Digital
Matters: The Culture and Theory of the Matrix (Routledge, 2005), Critical
Theories of Mass Culture: Then and Now (Open University Press, 2008) and
Žižek and the Media (forthcoming).
Keith Tester is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hull. He is an
Honorary Member of the Thesis Eleven Centre for Cultural Sociology at
La Trobe University, Australia, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
He is on the editorial boards of The Journal of Classical Sociology, Journal
of Human Rights and Thesis Eleven. His main research interests are the