# Zygmunt Bauman


Source: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zygmunt-Bauman#ref1272416

- **Polish**-born sociologist
- Professor at the **University of Leeds** until he retired in 1990

## _Liquid Modernity_

Sources: https://routledgesoc.com/category/profile-tags/liquid-modernity

- Examined the effects of:
  - Consumption-based economies
  - Disappearance of social institutions
  - Rise of globalization
- Felt that the term “postmodern” was problematic
  - Started using the term **liquid modernity** to better describe the condition of constant mobility and change he sees in relationships, identities, and global economics within contemporary society
- Writes of a transition from **solid modernity** to a more **liquid** form of social life

### Cloakroom Community

Source: https://viewfromthebasement.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/05/cloakroom_commu.html and http://deuze.blogspot.com/2007/06/interview-with-zygmunt-bauman-part-iii.html

- Chapter introduces the term **cloakroom communities**
  - People gather before a two hours-long performance to hang their anoraks or cloaks
  - Then they all enjoy the same performance, watching the same actors in the same plot
  - When it’s finished, they jointly applaud the actors and the director, return to the cloakroom, take their jackets off the pegs; then each one goes in their own direction
- This allegory grasps well the predicament of most communities of today
  - They are put together, temporarily, around a shared focus
  - There are little lateral bonds between the gathered, either extant or emergent apart of that focus of fleeting interest

## _Modernity and the Holocaust_

- Argued that modern industrial and bureaucratic paradigms made the **Holocaust** imaginable
- The machinery of industrialism made it possible to carry out
- Within modernity, there developed the **gardening state** that separates wanted from unwanted elements within the society
  - It equates to the gardener who, while planning the perfect garden, needs to kill weeds

## _From Pilgrim to Tourist_

Source: https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/123891/mod_resource/content/1/Baumann-%20From%20Pilgrim%20to%20Tourist.pdf

- Part of the essay collection **Questions of Cultural Identity**
  - Edited by Stuart Hall & Paul du Gay
- Moved from period where we understood ourselves as “**pilgrims**” in search of deeper meaning to one where we act as “**tourists**” in search of multiple but fleeting social experiences

## Other Works

- _Culture as Praxis_ (1973)
- _Modernity and Ambivalence_ (1991)
- _Postmodernity and Its Discontents_ (1997)
- _Globalization: The Human Consequences_ (1998)
- _The Individualized Society_ (2001)
- _Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts_ (2003)
- _Strangers at Our Door_ (2016)