ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book identifies four distinct phases of Zygmunt Bauman's work: phase one as a Marxist revisionist, writing about actually existing socialism in Poland; phase two as a Marxist revisionist, writing about socialism as an active utopia that could resolve the human problems facing the Western capitalist society; phase three in which Bauman loses faith in modernity in general and socialism in particular, a phase in which his work becomes associated with postmodernism, and finally; phase four as proponent of the liquid turn, in which Bauman distances himself from postmodernism and engages in an analysis of social change understood by Bauman as a process of liquefaction. For Zygmunt Bauman, sociology is a product of modernity and, as such, sociology has never had the conceptual tools to provide a detached or credible evaluation of the processes of modernisation or the human consequences of modernity.
