ABSTRACT
Zygmunt Bauman is a leading social theorist of modernity and postmodernity. His work is increasingly used to enhance our understanding of social, cultural and political changes in Western societies. Bauman’s reputation, at least in Europe, has grown by an emergent publication industry around his work (Beilharz, 2000; Best, 2013; Poder and Jacobsen, 2008; Smith, 2000; Tester, 2004) and the establishment of the Bauman Institute at Leeds University. While Park’s politics and theoretical ideas are informed by a liberal reformist agenda and US pragmatism, Bauman, a sociologist and critical theorist, emerges from the tradition of Marxism. Bauman’s Jewish origins and his experience of war contrast sharply with Park’s life as a native-born son of the commercial classes, raised with an understanding of US identity that was immersed in the contrasting figures of Lincoln and Jesse James (Matthews, 1977, pp. 2-3). Whereas these distinctions throw into sharper relief the cultural and intellectual differences between Park and Bauman, there are aspects of their work that bring them closer: both focus on the relationship between modern society or civilisation and hybridity, and both are influenced by Simmel and his concept of the stranger.
