Agency and structure in Zygmunt Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust. Issue 1 (1st May 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Best, Shaun
• Is Part Of: Irish journal of sociology. Volume 22:Issue 1(2014)
• Page Start: 67
• Page End: 87
• Publication Date: 2014-05-01
• Subjects: Sociology -- Ireland -- Periodicals; Ireland -- Social conditions -- Periodicals; Ireland -- Civilization -- Periodicals; 301.09415
• DOI: 10.7227/IJS.22.1.5
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0791-6035

Abstract

<abstract xml:lang="en"> <title>Abstract</title> <p> The article explores how Zygmunt Bauman's work from <italic>Modernity and the Holocaust</italic> to his liquid turn writings assumes that people live in a deterministic world. Bauman fails to distinguish agency as an analytical category in its own right and as such fails to capture self-determination, agential control and moral responsibility. All of Bauman's work is based upon the assumption that the individual loses their autonomy and the ability to judge the moral content of their actions because of adiaphortic processes external to themselves as individuals giving rise to agentic state in which the individual is unable to exercise their agency. In contrast to the argument in <italic>Modernity and the Holocaust</italic> this article suggests that the Nazis developed a distinct communitarian ethical code rooted in self-control that encouraged individuals to overcome their personal feeling states, enabling them to engage in acts of cruelty to people defined as outside of the community. In his post-2000 work where the emphasis is on the process of liquefaction there is the same undervaluing of human agency in the face of external forces reflected in Bauman's concepts of ambivalence, fate and swarm. </p> </abstract>