This book offers an incisive and original perspective on the works of Zygmunt Bauman, perhaps the greatest sociologist of the late twentieth century. It examines the limitations of his approach while recognising the importance of his legacy as a theorist who insisted on the need for moral engagement.

Ali Rattansi was Professor and is now Visiting Professor of Sociology at City, University of London. His many books include Marx and the Division of Labour, Postmodernism and Society and the Oxford University Press Very Short Introductions to Racism and Multiculturalism.

Introduction
Part I: The dark side of modernity
The question of modernity
Modernity and the Enlightenment
Bauman on the Enlightenment and modernity
The Holocaust's modernity
The ambivalences of modernity: a preliminary interrogation of Bauman's Eurocentric, white, male gaze
Part II: Living with postmodernity
Modernism and postmodernism
Legislators and Interpreters: extending the critique of Bauman's first exposition of postmodernity and postmodernism
Sociology and postmodernity
Aspects of Bauman's sociology of postmodernity: a critical commentary
Postmodern ethics: Bauman's Levinasian turn
Part III: Floating, slipping, sliding, drowning, boiling and freezing: the perils of liquid life
Why had Bauman become a postmodernist?
The whys and wherefores of the demise of postmodernism
'Liquid' modernity vs 'reflexive' modernity: Bauman's problem of agency, again
'Metaphoricity' in Bauman's sociology
On the liquid metaphor: what is this liquid in 'liquid modernity'?
'Solid' modernity
'Liquid' writing and liquid modernity: some ethical considerations
Liquid modernity: the bare essentials
Aspects of liquid modernity: critical reflections
Conclusion: a sociologist of hope or a prophet of gloom?
Index