Zygmunt Bauman and the West
A Sociology of Intellectual Exile
The thought and career of a twentieth-century public intellectual in exile.
Description
Zygmunt Bauman was both an outsider of Western modernity and one of its foremost interpreters. He was an exemplary figure in twentieth-century intellectual work on exile who experienced both Nazi and Soviet forms of totalitarianism.
The first work to draw extensively on Bauman’s personal archive, Zygmunt Bauman and the West argues that the distinctive social thought that sprang from Bauman’s lived experiences of exile amounts to a sustained, sophisticated, and hitherto unappreciated problematization of Eurocentrism and the West. Through an overview of the intellectual’s thought and his contribution to sociology, Jack Palmer explores Bauman’s experience and interpretation of the West and seeks to understand his work in a broader context, outside of the Eurocentric environment from which it was born.
Intervening in a resurgent sociology of intellectuals, Zygmunt Bauman and the West re-evaluates the place of the West in social and political thought.
Reviews
“This is an immensely erudite and compellingly written book. Palmer convincingly shows how Bauman’s ambivalent positioning and intellectual engagement with respect to the West help account for the interpretation of non-Western historical experiences. Palmer’s reading against the grain is a highly original and inspiring account.” Manuela Boatcă, University of Freiburg and author of Global Inequalities beyond Occidentalism
“To my knowledge there is no other book on the market with a similar perspective on Bauman’s writings. I regard it as an absolute ‘must read’, for social theorists and students with an interest in the work of Bauman - not least because it provides a refreshing angle on Bauman’s work compared with the existing literature which tends to outline Bauman’s work in a rather chronological manner. Here we engage with a much more complex presentation of Bauman’s perspective.” Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Aalborg University
“This superb book, by a leading expert on Bauman, is a major contribution to our understanding of his life and thought. Palmer’s detailed knowledge of the tragedies of colonialism and postcolonialism leads to a fundamental reconsideration of what is often dismissed as Bauman’s Eurocentrism. We encounter a rounded picture of a Bauman who is fully aware of these and other issues and wryly self-critical.” William Outhwaite, Newcastle University and co-editor of Habermas Global: The Reception History of a Work
“This is a brilliant piece of work. It represents the first wave of a second generation engagement with Bauman, twenty years after the first monographs on his work were published. This gives it a fresh and lateral sensibility. You open the book and the conversation begins: brilliant. And it continues all the way through, without flagging.” Peter Beilharz, La Trobe University