Global thinker, public intellectual and world-famous theorist of \u2018liquid modernity\u2019, Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) was a scholar who, despite forced migration, built a very successful academic career and, after retirement, became a prolific and popular writer and an intellectual talisman for young people everywhere. He was one of those rare scholars who, grey-haired and in his eighties, had his finger on the pulse of the youth.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the first comprehensive biography of Bauman\u2019s life and work. Izabela Wagner returns to Bauman\u2019s native Poland and recounts his childhood in an assimilated Polish Jewish family and the school experiences shaped by anti-Semitism. Bauman\u2019s life trajectory is typical of his generation and social group: the escape from Nazi occupation and Soviet secondary education, communist engagement, enrolment in the Polish Army as a political officer, participation in the WW II and the support for the new political regime in the post-war Poland. Wagner sheds new light on the post-war period and Bauman\u2019s activity as a KBW political officer. His eviction in 1953 from the military ranks and his academic career reflect the dynamic context of Poland in 1950s and 1960s. His professional career in Poland was abruptly halted in 1968 by the anti-Semitic purges. Bauman became a refugee again – leaving Poland for Israel, and then settling down in Leeds in the UK in 1971. His work would flourish in Leeds, and after his retirement in 1991 he entered a period of enormous productivity which propelled him onto the international stage as one of the most widely read and influential social thinkers of our time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wagner\u2019s biography brings out the complex connections between Bauman\u2019s life experiences and his work, showing how his trajectory as an \u2018outsider\u2019 forced into exile by the anti-Semitic purges in Poland has shaped his thinking over time.\u00a0 Her careful and thorough account will be the standard biography of Bauman\u2019s life and work for years to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Acknowledgments About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Izabela Wagner<\/strong> is Associate Professor of Sociology at Collegium Civitas in Warsaw, Associate Researcher at DynamE (Dynamiques Europ\u00e9ennes) at Strasbourg University\/CNRS, and a fellow of the Institut Convergence Migrations in Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reviews<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n “Who was Zygmunt Bauman? The late sociologist, known throughout the world for his path-breaking work on liquid modernity, had a biography. He was a Polish Jew, a soldier, a refugee.\u00a0 He had a\u00a0whole life before Leeds. Izabela Wagner’s great achievement is to recover this other Bauman. This book will change the way we see Bauman, forever.” Polity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n September 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n 500 pages<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Introduction
Chapter 1\u00a0 A happy childhood \u201cunder such circumstances\u201d -Pozna\u00a0 (1925-1932)
Chapter 2\u00a0 A pupil like no other –\u00a0 Pozna\u00a0\u00a0 (1932-1939)
Chapter 3\u00a0 The fate of a war refugee\u00a0 (1939 -1944): Poznan – Molodeczna
Chapter 4\u00a0 Russian Exodus\u2014 1941-1943\u00a0 : Gorki and the forest
Chapter 5\u00a0 \u201cHoly War\u201d- 1943-1945
Chapter 6\u00a0 Officer of the Internal Security Corps, 1945-1953
Chapter 7\u00a0 \u201cA man in a socialist society.\u201d \u00a0Warsaw 1947-1953
Chapter 8\u00a0 Young Scholar\u2019s Life – 1953-1957
Chapter 9\u00a0 Years of hope – (1957-1967)
Chapter 10 Bad romance with the Security Police
Chapter 11 The \u201cYear 1968\u201d
Chapter 12 Holy Land
Chapter 13 British Professor
Chapter 14 An Intellectual at Work
Chapter 15 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Global Thinker\u00a0
Conclusion Legacy
Appendix \u00a0 Working on Bauman
Notes
Bibliography<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
Peter Beilharz, La Trobe University<\/strong>
“This is a brilliant biography of an extraordinary intellectual. Izabela Wagner, a distinguished sociologist and intellectual historian, has found her subject.\u00a0\u00a0Zygmunt Baumans life embodies a paradigmatic 20th century East-European trajectory. Framed by Hitlers and Stalins totalitarianisms, it is a story of an attempted assimilation by a bourgeois Jewish family, engagement with Communism by the children’s generation, disillusionment and exile. In Baumans case, of course, this has been accompanied by a lifetime of influential reflection on the conditions and characteristics of modern society.\u00a0\u00a0A fascinating read.”
Jan T. Gross, Princeton University<\/strong>
“Izabela Wagners biography of Bauman is impressively erudite, exquisitely researched, and brings its subject vividly to life an indispensable book.”
Australian Book Review<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n