Modernity and the Holocaust

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Zygmunt Bauman ( / ˈ b aʊ m ə n/; 19 November 1925 – 9 January 2017) was a Polish-born sociologist and philosopher. [2] He was driven out of the Polish People's Republic during the 1968 Polish political crisis and forced to give up his Polish citizenship. He emigrated to Israel; three years later he moved to the United Kingdom. He resided in England from 1971, where he studied at the London School of Economics and became Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds, later Emeritus. Bauman was a social theorist, writing on issues as diverse as modernity and the Holocaust, postmodern consumerism and liquid modernity. [3] Life and career [ edit ]

Revisiting Modernity and the Holocaust is an essential contribution both to contemporary debates on the Holocaust and to the understanding of Bauman’s thinking.' – Anca Bălan, Holocaust. Studii şi cercetăriZygmunt Bauman’s Sociological Compassion: Beyond Modernity and the Holocaust’ – Dr Jerzy Kociatkiewicz (University of Sheffield) and Prof. Monika Kostera (Jagiellonian University, Kraków) with Szymon Chodak, Juliusz Strojnowski, Jakub Banaszkiewicz): Systemy partyjne współczesnego kapitalizmu [The Party Systems of Modern Capitalism]. Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza. In a 2011 interview in the Polish weekly Polityka, Bauman criticised Zionism and Israel, saying Israel was not interested in peace and that it was "taking advantage of the Holocaust to legitimize unconscionable acts". He compared the Israeli West Bank barrier to the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto, where thousands of Jews died in the Holocaust. The Israeli ambassador to Poland, Zvi Bar, called Bauman's comments "half truths" and "groundless generalizations." [13] Shaun Best, Zygmunt Bauman on Education in Liquid Modernity, London, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-138-54514-4 Tiene un arranque muy fuerte, y es su propia posición como sociólogo y judío que no vivió la parte de campo de exterminio en Europa. Bauman explica desde donde nos está escribiendo, dejando claro que, si bien es académico, también tiene (bastante) de personal y no por esto último, el ensayo va a ser sesgado o carece de valor.

This lesson of the Holocaust is about the danger of modernity itself: how our bureaucratic, technological, rational society can lead perfectly normal people to collectively commit monstrosities. Rather than representing a breakdown of modern civilization, Bauman argues that the organized and largely emotionless mass killing of the Holocaust represented its chilling pinnacle. Upon reading this book it became disturbingly clear that the bloodless, bureaucratic manner of thinking which made the Holocaust possible is still very much active today.

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Bureaucracy: Impersonal, social hierarchies that are based on the general division of labor coupled with regularity of systems, methods and procedures. The Social Thought of Zygmunt Bauman before 1968: from the "Mechanistic" to the "Activistic" Version of Marxism". JSTOR 24919798. Sin embargo, todo lo que pueda decir se queda corto, porque a mi parecer todo el ensayo responde a la pregunta fundamental de este ¿cómo y porqué ocurrió el Holocausto? También responde a la pregunta ¿Cómo fue posible que se permitiera, que no hubiera resistencia alguna?

Janina and Zygmunt Bauman as a Case Study of Inspiring Collaboration: From Ethnography to Theory’ - Prof. Izabela Wagner-Saffray (University of Warsaw & Institut Convergences Migrations, Paris) The result is the irrelevance of moral standards for the technical success of the bureaucratic operation.” The pretense of moral thinking is retained, but morality is redefined in terms of the rational-technical instead of good and evil. One is a "good" worker when one carries out his duty with excellence and according to plan, in submission to the expert prescriptions of the workplace authority. The tasks of individual workers are narrowly defined, as in an assembly line, reducing the possibility of moral assessment of the task, and making it interchangable with others. One can manage personnel in a weapons plant, or manufacture a necessary widget, with roughly the same skillset as in a car dealership.Zarys marksistowskiej teorii spoleczeństwa [ An Outline of the Marxist Theory of Society]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. In one of my favorite passages Bauman unveils the assessment modern civilization seems to have of itself; its "etiological myth" (and this recalls that superior tone I mentioned): Sin embargo, hay esperanza y el autor nos da esa pequeña luz. A pesar de lo desolador del panorama, nos recuerda que, aunque fueron muy pocos, hubo personas que no se dejaron arrastrar por la corriente, personas que ayudaron a otras personas, a costa de su propia seguridad y la seguridad de sus familias. Personas que mantuvieron su sentido de individualidad, porque es muy difícil saber que es lo correcto en un mundo donde lo correcto ya no lo es, y todos los valores se han invertido, para mantener las convicciones personales, aunque el resto de tu mundo conocido te dice que estas mal. That "something more" is - scarily enough - our modern society, with its obsession with rationality. Couple rationality with bureaucracy and you get the Nazi machine working at full speed. The more removed and distant from the object of their job, the easiest became for those involved in the Holocaust to work at organizing "transport" and improving "techniques" to eradicate the Jew issue. Considered a problem to be solved to improve society, the Jews were removed from sight and treated just as clogs in an otherwise perfect machine. I think I'm going to break off here and finish up, because... well, you could just go on forever. The only final thing I will mention is the one point at which Bauman recommends something: he believes that pluralism is the social character best suited to prevent the kind of social distance, depersonalization, and moral deconstruction that the totalitarian state wields to accomplish its ends. I tend to agree. Rather than trying eliminate the political or racial Other, we ought to assume some form of that Other needs to be a present, countervailing pressure so that various parties and pressure groups are held in tension. We should assume our own group can get out of hand and oppressive just as soon as any other could, and those whose party gets its way rarely find themselves in the driver's seat getting exactly what they want, and are often subjected to violent power dynamics within their own party, ones they find odious, and perhaps even regret working with in the end.

Living on Borrowed Time: Conversations with Citlali Rovirosa-Madrazo. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-4738-8Academic Staff " Sociology and Social Policy " University of Leeds". University of Leeds. 19 December 2016 . Retrieved 9 March 2017.