This edited volume will illustrate the continuing interest in Bauman’s work through a number of chapters each dealing with the important aspects of his work and shedding light on some new angles and perspectives on his life and work. It seeks to position Bauman within the field of sociology and to provide some examples of his lasting contribution to and relevance for the discipline. Bauman’s ideas remain an important source of inspiration for many scholars and researchers working within a variety of different fields and sub-fields, appealing equally to empirical work and theoretical elaboration. This book contains ten chapters, and all chapters are devoted to the presentation and discussion of themes and ideas that were characteristic of Bauman’s way of doing and writing. The purpose of this volume – as with the other volumes published in the Anthem Press ‘Companion to Sociology’ series – is to provide a comprehensive overview of Zygmunt Bauman’s continued importance within the field of sociology and related social science disciplines.

Zygmunt Bauman is known internationally as the sociologist of postmodernity and ‘liquid’ society. But he was also a serious photographer. This book presents a selection of his black-and-white photographs, together with a range of essays by colleagues, friends and family about his work with images. The book features a mixture of short pieces on individual photographs and longer essays addressing aspects of Bauman’s photography and the life and work of his wife, Janina. These include an essay of Bauman’s from 1989, in which he considers Monika Krajewska’s photographs of abandoned Jewish graveyards in Poland. Also reprinted is an essay by Bauman’s daughter Lydia, taken from the catalogue of an exhibition of the photographs in 2010, and an essay by Keith Tester about Bauman’s interest in film. Jack Palmer discusses the relationship between Bauman’s sociology and his photography, while Peter Beilharz, Janet Wolff, and Antony Bryant and Griselda Pollock offer personal reflections on some of Bauman’s photographs. The book concludes with an essay by Karl Dudman, one of the Baumans’ grandchildren, based on a series of photographs he took in the family home shortly after his grandfather’s death. Janina Bauman appears in a number of ways in the book. Some of the photographs are of her, and several of the short essays discuss her place in Zygmunt’s life and work. Izabela Wagner, biographer of Zygmunt Bauman, presents new material on Janina’s work in the Polish film industry in the post-war period.

The breadth and depth of Zygmunt Bauman’s engagement with social theory and the history of social thought has perhaps been underestimated, in part because many of his early writings were in Polish and never translated into English, and in part because many important pieces appeared in edited volumes and journals that are not readily available. This volume brings together hitherto unknown or rare pieces by Bauman on the theme of theory and society and also makes available previously unpublished material from the Bauman Archive at the University of Leeds. A consistent theme of Bauman’s work was his sustained engagement with humanism, and this provides a unifying thread in the pieces brought together in this volume. Here Bauman reflects on some of the core concepts of sociology, examines the work of a wide range of social theorists, from Durkheim and Gramsci to Agnes Heller and C. Wright Mills, and addresses an array of key ideas and issues including inequality, identity and social change. A substantial introduction by the editors provides readers with a lucid guide through this material and develops connections to Bauman’s other works. This is the third and final volume in a series of books that make available the lesser-known writings of one of the most influential social thinkers of our time. It will be of interest to students and scholars across the arts, humanities and social sciences, and to a wider readership.

This book is the first introductory guide to the work of Zygmunt Bauman, designed specifically for students and those new to his work. It provides a firm foundation for the independent reading of Bauman and for exploring the many interpretations of his influential ideas.

The Anthem Companion to Hannah Arendt offers a unique collection of essays on one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers. The companion encompasses Arendt’s most salient arguments and major works – The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, Eichmann in Jerusalem, On Revolution and The Life of the Mind. The volume also examines Arendt’s intellectual relationships with Max Weber, Karl Mannheim and other key social scientists. Although written principally for students new to Arendt’s work, The Anthem Companion to Hannah Arendt also engages the most avid Arendt scholar.

The book presents an authoritative assessment of Norbert Elias (1897–1990). It recognizes Elias as one of the major contributors to the development of sociological tradition in the past century and charts the continuing relevance of his conception of sociology for contemporary society. Only toward the end of his career as an academic did Elias’s work begin to attract the attention of English-speaking sociologists, historians, and scholars of cultural studies. The book provides an authoritative and broad representation of Elias’s oeuvre and work inspired by it. While Elias is best known for his major study of The Civilizing Process, the reach and subtle depths of Elias’s conception of process sociology has been cemented more recently by the English-language publication of Elias’s collected work of 18 volumes. The baton of process sociology is being passed on to further generations of sociologists. Chapters from leading contributors outline the nature of the sociological practice of Elias and address fundamental questions of historical sociology, democratization, gender, racialization processes, and embodiment. Later chapters highlight the contribution of process sociology for understanding developments in nation, state and global sociology, criminology, art, and education.