Search results

1

‘The Activating Presence’ -What Prospects of Utopia in Times of Uncertainty?

100%

Jacobsen M. H.

Polish Sociological Review

|

2006

|

vol. 155

|

issue 3

337-356

EN

The work of Zygmunt Bauman is often classified by commentators and critics as either representing the thoughts of a proponent of postmodernism or as those of a valiant defender of a humanistic variant of Marxism. This article, however, focuses on a specific and often neglected leitmotif-sometimes hidden, sometimes explicit-running through Bauman’s work from the early years until the most recent publications, the utopian mentality. Bauman’s work is dissected along the lines of its contribution to utopian thought, however without it ever proposing a sketch of an ‘ideal society’ or ‘the common good’ as so many other utopian writers. Bauman is classified among the band of critical social thinkers-including the likes of Ernst Bloch and Leszek Kołakowski-for whom utopianism is an undying motif in human life, but who also, in varying degrees, fear the detrimental consequences of an actual implementation of Utopia. Moreover, they all, and especially Bauman, insist that the currently lived-through version of (in)human reality is not the only one possible and that we may still muster and imagine alternatives to the stubborn present.

2

Editors’ Introduction: Being a Sociologist

63%

Jacobsen M. H., Tester K.

Polish Sociological Review

|

2006

|

vol. 155

|

issue 3

263-266

3

Metaphorically Speaking -Metaphors as Methodological and Moral Signifiers of the Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman

63%

Jacobsen M. H., Marshman S.

Polish Sociological Review

|

2006

|

vol. 155

|

issue 3

307-324

EN

Zygmunt Bauman is known to be one of the leading social theorists and commentators in contemporary sociology whose theoretical or diagnostical analysis of phenomena such as globalisation, community, identity, genocide, individualisation or modernity warrants his status as one of the most widely read sociologists of our time. However, Bauman throughout his work also develops an often overlooked methodological stance based to a certain extent on metaphorical reasoning. Throughout this piece, the authors focus attention on Bauman’s metaphorical cornucopia and how it is informed by a deep-seated moral commitment. Apart from performing the function of methodological devices unveiling a selective and subjective, yet deeper, understanding of the social world, the metaphors also reveal the inherently moral core of Bauman’s sociological endeavour.

Refine search results

3 Polish Sociological Review

3 Jacobsen M. H.

1 Marshman S.

1 Tester K.

3 2006

‘The Activating Presence’ -What Prospects of Utopia in Times of Uncertainty?

Editors’ Introduction: Being a Sociologist

Metaphorically Speaking -Metaphors as Methodological and Moral Signifiers of the Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman