Freedom and Consumerism

A Critique of Zygmunt Bauman's Sociology

Mark Davis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317132936
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Soziologie

How does Bauman understand the concept of freedom, and how does this understanding relate to the political traditions of conservatism, liberalism and socialism? Mark Davis offers a critical enquiry into the sociology of Zygmunt Bauman, focusing on his English-language writings from the 1960s onwards. The book contributes to sociological debates about modern society by offering an interpretation of Bauman's work based on the concept of freedom, especially in terms of his extensive consideration of consumerism. Existing studies of Bauman have tended to focus uncritically upon other salient themes in his work, notably culture, power and socialism; Davis repairs the lack of critical engagement in the literature by identifying freedom as a focus for critical reflection. He also opens up new areas of discourse by analyzing Bauman's understanding of freedom in relation to the three great political traditions of conservatism, liberalism and socialism. This is an original contribution to discussions around Bauman's work which will be of interest to both sociologists and political theorists.

Part I

Chapter 1
Biographical Solutions and Sociological Contradictions: Who is Zygmunt Bauman?

‘Alas,’ said the mouse, ’the world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when at last I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into.’ ‘You only need to change your direction’, said the cat, and ate it up. (Kafka 1999, 445)

In his response to Peter Beilharz’s request to offer some personal insight into the influences that have shaped his sociological imagination over the years, Zygmunt Bauman first offered an insightful qualification before being tempted into self-analysis (Bauman and Beilharz 2001, 334). He warned against conflating the ‘authorial’ with the ‘authoritative’, noting that authors themselves are often the least reliable judges of their own projects. Bauman insists that the authorial ‘story’ be treated simply as one more available interpretation amongst many others, itself waiting to be further discussed, criticized and challenged.

This insistence on the need to ‘keep the interpretation going’ — a lesson Bauman acknowledges to having learned from the philosophical work of Jacques Derrida (Bauman and Beilharz 2001, 340) — lends some support to the identification of hermeneutics as central to Bauman’s way of thinking (Beilharz 1998, 26; Blackshaw 2005, 68ff; Smith 1999, 4–5; Tester 2004, 16ff). The adoption of this ‘conversational’ image of interpretation and understanding will be adopted as the principal method throughout the present study. To follow Dennis Smith in quoting Bauman on the matter, my own narrative also

… goes in circles rather than developing in a straight line. Some topics return later, to be looked upon once again in the light of what we have discussed in the meantime. This is how all effort of understanding works. Each step in understanding makes a return to previous stages necessary. What we thought we understood in full reveals new question marks we previously failed to notice. The process may never end; but much may be gained in its course. (Bauman 1990, 19)

Of course, this conversation has already begun. It is, however, only in more recent years that Bauman’s sociology has come to be recognized as worthy of systematic interpretation, as widespread admiration slowly seeks to be accompanied by more extended discussions of his work. It will be the task of the next chapter to assess these discussions. For now, I note that the conversation to date has primarily involved attempting to put a semblance of order into what is often perceived as an ‘eclectic’ and ‘chaotic’ body of work. Much of the existing dialogue with Bauman’s sociology has been presented in terms of providing relatively broad-brush expositions of those themes identified as salient within his writings. Uppermost amongst the concerns in these existing studies, then, are various attempts to ascertain the importance of Bauman’s complicated biography in shaping his sociological imagination, as well as the practice of delving deep into the core of his texts in the hope of illuminating thematic continuities (Beilharz 2000; Kilminster and Varcoe 1998; Marotta 2002; Nijhoff 1998; Smith 1999; Tester 2002).

It is thus within these existing interpretations that the present work seeks to be heard. The core aim of this book, as identified in the Introduction, is to offer up another voice in this discussion by proposing an alternative interpretation of Bauman’s English-language writings through a reading of his project based upon the concept of ‘freedom’. It will be argued throughout the present work that, by focusing explicitly upon freedom, it is possible to gain a more critical understanding of his sociology.

Towards this end, then, the present chapter provides a useful synopsis of existing interpretations of Bauman’s sociology by focusing upon several salient themes which have emerged from current understanding. This begins with the debate surrounding the relevance of Bauman’s biography, which it has been suggested holds several clues to his sociology (Beilharz 2002b; Smith 1999). Such is the attention given to the link between Bauman’s life and his sociological work, that a considerable review of this aspect of the current debate will be provided. The chapter continues by turning its attention to identified thematic continuities, opening with a discussion of the prominence of the role of ‘culture’, which Bauman himself has acknowledged to be a significant coordinate in his work (Bauman and Beilharz 2001, 343).

The discussion here will draw upon the important work of Richard Kilminster and Ian Varcoe (1996), who were the first to dedicate an entire volume to an active engagement with Bauman’s key ideas when they presented him with their Festschrift. As an edited collection of critical encounters with many of Bauman’s central themes, the Festschrift is unique in that its principal aim is not simply to provide an ‘overview’ of Bauman, but rather to open his work up to a number of scholars invited to develop important themes of his work in different and often illuminating directions. The Festschrift, as a result of being organized in this way, has received criticism for respectfully telling us ‘more about the interpreters than the interpreted’ (Beilharz 1998, 25). However, that the Festschrift was conceived to do just this, and that as such it manages to offer some critical comments on Bauman’s work, suggests that it is of much more value to current debates that has so far been recognized. For example, where Bauman himself is addressed directly by the editors (Varcoe and Kilminster 1996, 215ff), the intertwined threads of ‘culture’ and ‘power’ are identified as thematic continuities in his work, each of which will be discussed here.

‘Power’, therefore, has been identified as another axial topic in Bauman’s work. It is seen as a useful conceptual tool for approaching many of Bauman’s more explicit concerns with inequality, in particular those mechanisms by which the behaviour of powerless groups is rendered predictable and thus controllable. It is through this discussion of power and inequality that the chapter then turns its attention to the interrelated themes of ‘socialism’ and ‘critical sociology’. Both are regarded by Bauman, as indeed they are for the more significant members of his Wahlverwandtschaft, as serving to provide a ‘horizon of hope’ against the injustices and inequalities of the present social order. By always being counterfactual (and counter-cultural), Bauman regards both a critical sociology and socialism as refusing to accept the Panglossian conceit that we live in the ‘best of all possible worlds’, both continuing to stand firm against all those who would champion the idea that ‘there is no alternative’. An analysis of this aspect of his work will be a core part of my analysis in later chapters.

For now, I suggest that given Bauman’s distaste for the soothsayers of the status quo, it is perhaps useful to reflect upon the affinity between Bauman’s approach and the message behind Kafka’s fable with which I opened the present discussion. If only the mice, driven on by their own acute feelings of fear and anxiety, would pause momentarily to consider the possibility of alternative directions, then they might just be able to avoid the trap in the last chamber. Bauman charges a genuinely critical sociology, then, with providing an on-going commentary on the human condition, its responsibility being to highlight the social production of fears and anxieties in order to suggest alternative ways of living together, motivated by the unceasing hope that we human mice may yet decide to change our direction.

How Bauman came to hold such a view of both socialism and sociology has been a core part of the existing conversation surrounding his work. It has been suggested that Bauman’s own biography can offer a useful insight into his sociological imagination, and I will demonstrate these links at various intervals throughout what follows.

To the Poet’s Homeland: Biography, Mark I’¹

Wer den Dichter will verstehen, muss in Dichters Lande gehen.² (Goethe cited in Morawski 1998, 29)

In stark contrast to the frequent claim that Zygmunt Bauman is an intensely private man, who nevertheless seeks to actively participate in public life through his commentary on the human condition, (Bauman and Tester 2001), it must be noted that Bauman’s public profile is one of the most prominent in sociology. By way of example, we may refer to the following anecdote from Adrian Franklin.

It is perhaps a measure of a person’s impact on the world when a taxi driver, randomly hailed from a provincial railway station, knows who you are intending to visit simply from the address you give. But when on the return journey, another, equally randomly booked taxi driver asks straight out: ‘How was Zygmunt today?’ one begins to catch a whiff of celebrity in the air (Franklin 2003, 205).

With such public and scholarly interest secured, it is reasonable to argue that a fascination with the biography of this intensely private sociologist has resulted in it fast becoming one of the best known ‘stories’ within the discipline. One struggles to think of another contemporary sociologist for whom the link between biography and sociology has stimulated such intense interest.

In his inaugural lecture at the University of Leeds, Bauman (1972a) began by noting that the most intimate and private biographical details of the professional sociologist cannot help but be entwined with the biography of the discipline itself. Further, in Hermeneutics and Social Science (1978), Bauman pondered the importance of the setting within which a text is conceived on both the intentions of the author at the time of writing and the subsequent meaning that the text comes to acquire once it is encountered by its reader.

In more recent times, Peter Beilharz has argued that in order to understand fully Bauman’s sociological project, the Polish context in which it first developed is crucial (Beilharz 2002b, 97). Perhaps most openly of all, Dennis Smith’s ‘intellectual biography’ of Bauman opens with the claim that ‘Bauman is part of the story he tells. He can be found on the map he draws’ (Smith 1999, 3), and goes on to state explicitly: ‘I believe the distinctiveness of Bauman’s wisdom comes out of the distinctiveness of his personal experience. So, in order to understand and appreciate Bauman properly, we need to know something about his background’ (Smith 1999, 35).

However, there are familiar objections to the significance that can be placed upon biographical evidence for the understanding of any author’s work, and perhaps for social thought specifically. As Barry Smart (2001, 328) comments, it is worth remembering the Foucauldian dilemma of the ‘author function’, in which the author’s own biography is often speciously seen as providing a crucial insight into those ‘unifying principles’ that knit together the different threads of their work.

With Bauman specifically in mind, Keith Tester makes the case against placing too much significance on an author’s biography (Bauman and Tester 2001, 2–5). First, Tester states that if an individual’s work does reflect their personal experiences, and that this is to be applied to every author, then it is necessary to conclude that all social thought is simply a personally selective autobiography. Secondly, given the critical approach that Bauman has adopted towards the colonization of the public sphere by the banalities of private lives, it would seem to run counter to the thrust of his own sociological argument to over-emphasize biographical influences on the shaping of his social thought. Finally, Tester sensitively suggests that if there is to be a biography of genuine significance to Bauman’s sociology, then it is not his own but rather that of his wife Janina which is deserving of so much scholarly interest. Her own texts (J. Bauman 1986; 1988) on the experiences of life in Poland during and after the Second World War are widely acknowledged as having had a profound impact upon Bauman’s sociological thinking, never more poignantly than in his own consideration of the Holocaust (1989).

In spite of these qualifying remarks, however, it becomes clear on consulting existing interpretations that the significance of Bauman’s biography remains an essential part of the conversation surrounding his work. Therefore, to omit from this opening chapter a sketch of Bauman’s life and sociological development feels increasingly like a neglect of scholarly duty. And so, whilst keeping in mind the above reservations, the subsequent biographical synopsis is offered. The principal contribution in what follows, then, is to bring together the various secondary accounts of his biography into a single narrative.

Little is known of Bauman’s early life. What is known of this time owes a good deal to both Dennis Smith (1999) and Madeleine Bunting (2003). Bauman grew up in Posnan, in the west of Poland, and was raised by Jewish parents in a family that suffered considerably from both poverty and anti-Semitism. Though his grandfather desperately tried to interest the young Bauman in the doctrines of Judaism, this met relatively little success, and Bauman was brought up speaking only Polish, and embracing only Polish culture. Bauman recalls that he struggled to get an education as a relatively poor Jewish child and it was not until much later that he was able to devote some time and energy to scholarly pursuits and study for a degree (Beilharz 2000).

Given Bauman’s well-known criticisms of the positivistic forms of social science, it is interesting to learn that the first academic passion of the adolescent Bauman was for physics. By joining the Red Army in 1939 when his family fled Poland at the outbreak of World War II, he had managed to escape the worst experiences of the Nazi occupation of his native Poland to the far north of the Soviet Union, and it was a two year course in physics that initially sparked Bauman’s curiosity. ‘I did not think much of sociology then — nor was there much of a sociology to think of — in Stalin’s Russia’ (Bauman and Tester 2001, 17). However, having being instructed in the intricacies of Soviet Marxism, synonymous with the doctrines of the ‘will of the Party’ and the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, on his return from the front line after being wounded, Bauman became a proud member of the Polish Workers’ Party. Bauman’s imagination had been charged by communist ideals, as were many of the young critical minds across Europe at this time (Morawski 1998), and there was an universal inclusiveness about socialism that appealed particularly to young Jews who often felt ‘outside’ of the dominant culture. Suddenly there were other more important matters than physics as the recreation of a Poland devastated by war seemed like a much more exhilarating and rewarding task. In his own words, and somewhat anachronistically in terms of metaphor, Bauman recalls

It promised an equality of dignified life to all, more than enough to make a nineteen-yearold, just returned from the woods and the front line, breathless. Should time be wasted fathoming mysteries of big bangs and black holes? Let other black holes keep their mysteries for a while — first came my country in ruins and the big bang of its resurrection. (Bauman and Tester 2001, 17)

The Polish reconstruction was to take place with the help of sociology specifically, which Bauman saw as capable of changing the world — a point which I shall reflect upon again later in the chapter. Drawn to the dream of creating a new communist society, the sociological project was to create anew those conditions in which it was possible for human beings to be able to live together in a more humane way. As such, sociology at this time became a prominent part of public culture in Poland, sustained by the belief that any new society could only come from society itself, and that sociology was in the best possible position to both narrate and instigate this change.

Having returned to Warsaw as a Red Army officer and achieved rapid promotions, Bauman established himself as a promising young major and attempted to further his career by enrolling to study philosophy and social science at night school (Smith 1999, 39). The events that followed around 1954 are a matter of some inconsistency in existing interpretations, with Smith (1999, 39–40) describing a dramatic and shocking expulsion from the army during an aggressive anti-Semitic purge, and Morawski (1998, 31) suggesting that Bauman resigned from his military position in order to pursue an academic career. Whichever account is true, it is clear that Bauman joined Warsaw University as a junior lecturer in 1954 where he retains the status of Emeritus Professor, as he does at the University of Leeds.

Whilst at Warsaw he was to encounter the formative influences on his sociological imagination in his teachers Julian Hochfeld and Stanislaw Ossowski. The particular form of sociology in Warsaw embraced philosophy, economics, history, and politics as one and discussed theoretical alternatives as...