Zygmunt Bauman was one of the most influential sociologists in the English-speaking world. His work is translated into many languages. Chinese studies of Bauman started later than in the English-speaking world but have their own characteristics. In China, the interest is in sociology, culture, Marxism and aesthetics. This article surveys the current situation of Chinese Bauman studies and establishes the state of Chinese translations and studies of Bauman, and examines Chinese reception and interpretation of Bauman’s thought, especially theories of modernity (...) and postmodernity. Its purpose is to display the state of Chinese Bauman studies on the one hand, and to take Bauman’s thought as a lesson in the construction of Chinese sociology on the other, leaving open the question of what studies of modernity might have to learn from Chinese experience and theory. (shrink)

Circling Marx is both a window on to the forces and concerns that have shaped Thesis Eleven over four decades and an intellectual portrait of the singular post-Marxism of one of its leading thinkers. Beilharz emphasises the existence of multiple Marxes but leans towards a Marx who suggests an expanded materialism, a non-Bolshevik Marx, and a Marx of motion, rather than laws. Addressing Marxism and socialism more widely, Beilharz again underscores multiplicity, favouring those thinkers and currents that acknowledged complexity and (...) limits, that staged something of a conversation between Marx and Weber, and that took distance from the teleology, vanguardism, and hubris that has marked parts of the Marxist tradition. Moving into more clearly post-Marxist territory, through important encounters with Heller and Feher, Bauman, Smith, and Castoriadis, Beilharz’s optic prioritises place, cultural traffic, and ambivalence, combining categories of ambitious scope with epistemological and normative circumspection, criticism with world affirmation. (shrink)

Niklas Luhmann’s approach to relationships was ambivalent. While references to the word abound in his work, his systems theory renders ‘relationship’ redundant as key concept. This has made it difficult for Luhmannian theorists to describe social forms that endure beyond serial interactions. Attempts have been made to overcome this ‘latency problem’ by conceptualising relationships as social systems. Contending that by focusing on communication these attempts reproduce rather than solve the problem, this article proposes an alternative solution. Centred in Luhmann’s conception (...) of meaning, it conceives of relationships as meaning forms ( Sinnformen) in whose construal the phenomenalising capacities of psychical systems play a vital role: mental operations such as imagined interactions routinely bridge phases of non-interaction, which are constitutive elements of relationships. This critical reconstruction aims to contribute to a fuller grasp of the interdependencies between serial interactions and enduring relationships in Luhmann’s own terms. (shrink)

Zygmunt Bauman said of 1968 that he could not empathize with the enthusiasm of the Western Left, that this was some kind of party. In Eastern Europe 1968 stood for an end, not a hope. Soon Bauman would be forced into exile, opening a new and brilliant phase of his intellectual trajectory. Sketches in the Theory of Culture was his last Polish book. It was suppressed in 1968, the contract cancelled in retaliation against his support for reforming politics. Now it (...) has been rediscovered, originally in galley proofs, and translated by Dariusz Brzezinski for Polity Press. Like much of Bauman’s work, it is sprawling and inclusive, taking in anthropology, sociology of culture, ethnology and semiotics. It anticipates his life-long enthusiasm for Lévi-Strauss; and it also foreshadows some of the themes much later to be identified as liquid modern, though it may be the case that the theme of continuity is rather social turbulence from postwar reconstruction to the travails of socialist Poland. In this paper I review some of its themes and its status in the body of his work, and offer some introductory remarks on its importance to the study of culture. (shrink)