Globalizing Bauman

Earlier the talk was all round the postmodern, then globalization. Zygmunt Bauman was also part of this conversation, as in ‘On Glocalization: or Globalization for Some, Localization for Some Others’ and then Globalization . He had been a Marxist, and understood something of the world system. But this new wave meant something different, not least as mediated by the internet. Bauman had been European, East European, East Central European, had sampled American, British, and Israeli modernity, even Australian modernity, as well as Polish, and had ventured into geopolitics via his prizewinning book on the Holocaust. He became both the creature of globalization as well as its critic and commentator. This dialectic is the subject of this chapter. His recognition spread via the new media and the global reach of the English language hegemony via the Polity Press. Prizes followed from Amalfi to Asturias and Frankfurt, accompanied by a string of honorary doctorates. His works were widely disbursed through translation, including to China and especially the Latin sphere. Was this at the expense of the local, or national? As with the postmodern, as he insisted, was globalization explanandum or explanans ? This chapter follows three steps into this labyrinth. First, I unpack the term and the processes of globalization itself. Second, I track the globalization of Bauman’s work after his retirement and turn away from the professoriate to the demos , the broader public. Here the central frame of explanation is provided by his relationship with the Polity Press, and his shift from monographs to little books and then conversational titles. Third, I address the broader global reception of his work in this new.