Zygmunt Bauman is one of the most renowned and read sociologists in contemporary continental European sociology. Throughout his lifelong work, he has provided the discipline with numerous outstanding and substantial theoretical analyses and critical interpretations of modernity and postmodernity, globalization and individualization, the Holocaust and human suffering, etc. A relatively overlooked aspect of Bauman's sociology is his alternative methodological stance lingering somewhere between social science and literature. The most prominent feature of this methodological arsenal is the metaphor. In this article, the authors delineate and discuss Bauman's metaphors and the important contribution to sociology of these literary devices. Concomitantly, the present `case study' of Bauman's metaphors also raises more general discussions of the relationship between social science and literature, fact and faction, poetic representation and scientific description.
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Bauman, Zygmunt (1976) Socialism: The Active Utopia. London: Allen and Unwin.
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Bauman, Zygmunt (1987) Legislators and Interpreters. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Bauman, Zygmunt (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Bauman, Zygmunt (1990) Thinking Sociologically. Oxford : Blackwell.
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Bauman, Zygmunt (1991) Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Bauman, Zygmunt (1993) Postmodern Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell.
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Bauman, Zygmunt (1995) Life in Fragments. Oxford: Blackwell.
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Bauman, Zygmunt (1997) Postmodernity and its Discontents. Oxford: Polity Press.
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Bauman, Zygmunt (1998a) Globalization: The Human Consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Bauman, Zygmunt (1998b) Work, Consumerism and the New Poor. Buckingham: Open University Press.
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Bauman, Zygmunt (2000) Liquid Modernity. Cambridge : Polity Press.
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Bauman, Zygmunt (2003) Liquid Love. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Bauman, Zygmunt (2004) Wasted Lives: Modernity and its Outcasts. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Bauman, Zygmunt (2005a) Liquid Life. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Bauman, Zygmunt (2005b) `Living in Utopia', Ralph Miliband lecture 27 October, London School of Economics , Respekt; at www.respekt.cz and www.lse.ac.uk/collections
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Bauman, Zygmunt (2006) Liquid Fears. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Bauman, Zygmunt and Tester, Keith (2001) Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Beilharz, Peter (1998) `Reading Zygmunt Bauman: Looking for Clues', Thesis Eleven54: 25-36.
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Beilharz, Peter (2000) Zygmunt Bauman: Dialectic of Modernity. London: Sage.
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Berger, Morroe (ed.) (1964) Madame de Staël on Politics, Literature and National Character. New York: Doubleday.
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Berger, Morroe (1977) Real and Imagined Worlds: The Novel and Social Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Blackshaw, Tony (2002) `Interview with Professor Zygmunt Bauman', BSA Network: Newsletter of the British Sociological Association83: 1-3.
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Blackshaw, Tony (2005) Zygmunt Bauman. London: Routledge.
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Blackshaw, Tony (2006) `Too Good for Sociology', Polish Sociological Review155(3): 293-306.
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Brown, Richard H. (1977) A Poetics for Sociology: Toward a Logic of Discovery for the Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Bunting, Madeline (2003) `Zygmunt Bauman: Passion and Pessimism', The Guardian Review 4 April: 20-3.
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Calvino, Italo (1986) The Uses of Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace.
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Gane, Nicholas (2004) `Zygmunt Bauman: Liquid Sociality', The Future of Social Theory, pp. 17-46. London: Continuum .
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Geertz, Clifford (1983) `Blurred Genres: The Refiguration of Social Thought' , American Scholar49(2): 165-79.
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Goffman, Erving (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
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Jacobsen, Michael Hviid (2004) `From Solid Modern Utopia to Liquid Modern Anti-Utopia? Tracing the Utopian Strand in the Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman', Utopian Studies15(1): 63-87.
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Jacobsen, Michael Hviid (2005) `"Alt fast og solidt fordufter . . ." - Zygmunt Baumans metafor om modernitetens metamorfose', Social Kritik100: 32-49.
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Jacobsen, Michael Hviid and Poder, Poul (eds) (2006) Om Bauman - kritiske essays. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag.
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Junge, Matthias and Kron, Thomas (eds) (2002) Zygmunt Bauman - Soziologie zwischen Postmoderne und Ethik. Opladen: Leske und Budrich.
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Kilminster, Richard and Varcoe, Ian (1992) `Sociology, Postmodernity and Exile: An Interview with Zygmunt Bauman', in Zygmunt Bauman Intimations of Postmodernity , pp. 205-28. London: Routledge.
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Lepenies, Wolf (1988) Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Margolis, Joseph (1965) The Language of Art and Art Criticism. Detroit, IL: Wayne State University Press.
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Mills, Charles Wright (1959) The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Nijhoff, Pieter (1998) `The Right to Inconsistency', Theory, Culture & Society15(1): 87-112.
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Nisbet, Robert (2002) Sociology as an Art Form. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. (Orig. pub. 1976.)
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Redfield, Robert (1948) `The Art of Social Science', American Journal of Sociology54(3): 181-90.
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Rigney, Daniel (2001) The Metaphorical Society: An Invitation to Social Theory. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield .
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Smith, Dennis (1999) Zygmunt Bauman: Prophet of Postmodernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Sztompka, Piotr (ed.) (1984) Masters of Polish Sociology. Wroclaw: Zaklad Narodowy Imienia Ossolinskich.
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Tester, Keith (2002) `Zygmunt Bauman's Sociological Style', unpublished manuscript.
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Tester, Keith (2004) The Social Thought of Zygmunt Bauman. London: Palgrave/ Macmillan .
