Trapped society

Author: (English) Zygmunt Bauman
Translator: Hun Jianli
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Society is in a state of being besieged—it suffers attacks on two fronts: one is the global frontiers, where old structures and rules can no longer be preserved, and new ones have yet to take shape; the other is the fluid, uncertain field of life politics. The space between these two fronts—so far governed by sovereign nation-states and understood by sociologists as "society"—is increasingly difficult to imagine as a self-contained entity. This poses new challenges to established concepts in the social sciences: sovereignty and power are detaching from the politics of regional nation-states but have not yet been institutionalized in new spaces. What are the consequences of the profound transformation in social life? What kind of world will it create for the 21st century? This extraordinary work by one of today's most original social thinkers attempts to trace the trajectory of this transformation and assess its impact on the living conditions of ordinary individuals. The book's first part is dedicated to exploring the new global stage: due to the powerful forces of globalization, people can no longer find external, hidden spaces to escape and hide, and territorial wars have given way to new types of "reconnaissance wars." The second part primarily discusses the backdrop of life politics taking the helm and flourishing. Bauman argues that the great challenge we face today is whether we can find new ways to reshape our inherent human differences into a calling for human unity.