Histories of Violence

Biography

Zygmunt Bauman was born on 19 November 1925 in Ponzan, Poland, to Jewish parents. When the Nazis invaded Poland 14 years later his family escaped into the Soviet Union. Joining the Polish First Army, which at the time was under the control of the Soviets, Bauman took part in the battles of Kolberg and Berlin. In May 1945 Bauman was awarded the Military Cross of Valour. A committed communist since the outbreak of the Second World War, in 1945 he joined a military internal security organisation, the KBW. During this time he studied sociology at the Warsaw Academy of Social Sciences, going on to study philosophy at the University of Warsaw. After being dismissed from the KBW he completed his MA and from 1954 to 1968 became a lecturer at the University of Warsaw. With the pressure mounted on Polish-Jews by the anti-Semitic campaign led by the then chief of the Polish Communist Secret Police, Mieczylaw Moczar, Bauman left the governing Polish United Workers’ Party in January 1968. The anti-Semetic campaign resulted in a purge which drove most Polish-Jews out of Poland. Forced to renounce his Polish citizenship, Bauman initially moved to teach at Tel Aviv University before accepting a chair in sociology at the University of Leeds in 1972, where he remained until retirement in 1990. An emeritus professor still based in Leeds, Bauman has been a prolific writer since his retirement.

Bauman’s work, while explicitly located in the field of sociology, is applied to political theory, philosophy, theology, cultural studies and communication studies. His primary idea that has permeated all these fields is the concept of ‘liquid modernity’. This is contrasted to ‘solid’ modernity that preceded it. Somewhat related to the postmodern condition, liquid modernity identifies the fragmented nature of contemporary life, and societies inability to provide stability for the individual. In his most famous work, Modernity and the Holocaust, Bauman analyses the way societies’ attitudes towards strangers may lead to fears about the stranger, and these fears could manifest in such projects as modernity. Bauman sees the Holocaust not as an event limited to Jewish history, but an event related to the project of modernity. As such, the processes at work in the Holocaust may still be evident today.