ABSTRACT
In honouring Zygmunt Bauman, who occupied the Chair of Sociology at the University of Leeds from 1971 to 1990 and whose seventieth birthday falls this year, this volume departs from the customary format of the Festschrift. It contains no lengthy homages to, or extensive personal recollections about, the man it honours. Despite his undoubted gifts and scholarly achievements, Zygmunt Bauman is a modest man with a low public profile and a book of that kind would have been an anathema to him. Neither are the contributions collected here those of pupils working within a particular paradigm founded by him. Although, as we show in the Addendum, there are thematic continuities in Bauman’s writings, he is nevertheless not a system-builder and has never made any pretence at founding a school of sociology, as such.
