We have long since lost our faith in the idea that human beings could achieve human happiness in some future ideal state—a state that Thomas More, writing five centuries ago, tied to a topos, a fixed place, a land, an island, a sovereign state under …

We are spurred into action by our troubles and fears; but all too often our action fails to address the true causes of our worries. When trying to make sense of our lives, we tend to blame our own failings and weaknesses for our discomforts and defea…

This liquid modern world of ours, like all liquids, cannot stand still and keep its shape for long. Everything keeps changing – the fashions we follow, the events that intermittently catch our attention, the things we dream of and things we fear. And…

This liquid modern world of ours, like all liquids, cannot stand still and keep its shape for long. Everything keeps changing – the fashions we follow, the events that intermittently catch our attention, the things we dream of and things we fear. And…

The term ‘collateral damage' has recently been added to the vocabulary of military forces to refer to the unintended consequences of armed interventions, consequences that are unplanned but nevertheless damaging and often very costly in human and per…

This is not a diary: while these observations were recorded in autumn 2010 and spring 2011 in the form of dated entries, they are not a personal reflection but an attempt to capture signs of our times in their movement – possibly at birth, at a stage…

It is commonly assumed that the best way to help the poor out of their misery is to allow the rich to get richer, that if the rich pay less taxes then all the rest of us will be better off, and that in the final analysis the richness of the few benef…

‘Today the smallest details of our daily lives are tracked and traced more closely than ever before, and those who are monitored often cooperate willingly with the monitors. From London and New York to New Delhi, Shanghai and Rio de Janeiro, video ca…

Evil is not confined to war or to circumstances in which people are acting under extreme duress. Today it more frequently reveals itself in the everyday insensitivity to the suffering of others, in the inability or refusal to understand them and in t…

In its original formulation, ‘culture' was intended to be an agent for change, a mission undertaken with the aim of educating ‘the people' by bringing the best of human thought and creativity to them. But in our contemporary liquid-modern world, cult…

The term ‘collateral damage' has recently been added to the vocabulary of military forces to refer to the unintended consequences of armed interventions, consequences that are unplanned but nevertheless damaging and often very costly in human and per…

Zygmunt Bauman's new book is a brilliant exploration, from a sociological point of view, of the 'taboo' subject in modern societies: death and dying. The book develops a new theory of the ways in which human mortality is reacted to, and dealt with, i…

Shortly before his death, Zygmunt Bauman spent several days in conversation with the Swiss journalist Peter Haffner. Out of these conversations emerged this book in which Bauman shows himself to be the pre-eminent social thinker for which he became w…

Widely acclaimed insight on the human condition, updated to view modern issues through a sociological lens Now in its third edition, Thinking Sociologically continues to offer a stimulating exploration of the underlying assumptions and tacit expectat…

In this new book Zygmunt Bauman and Riccardo Mazzeo examine the contentious issue of the relation between literature (and the arts in general) and sociology (or, more generally, a branch of the humanities claiming scientific status). While many comme…

The book discusses the role of intellectuals in the modern world. Bauman connects this with current analyses of modernity and post-modernity. The theme of the book is that the tasks of intellectuals change from being 'legislators' to 'interpreters' w…