Bauman, Zygmunt

Zygmunt Bauman (b. 1925) is an East European critical theorist and sociologist of the postmodern. Bauman grew up in Poznan, Poland, and moved as a youth to Russia with his family to escape the Nazi invasion. He fought in the Polish army during the Second World War and rose to the level of major, only to be sacked in the anti-Semitic wave of 1953. Bauman turned to social sciences, in the European tradition, where sociology is aligned with continental philosophy. In 1968, having risen to the rank of professor of sociology at Warsaw University, he was again sacked and persecuted, along with other Jewish radical professors, in a subsequent anti-Semitic wave. Together with his family, Bauman left Poland for Leeds, in the United Kingdom, via ...