ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the issue of privilege by looking at the notion of social inequality in Bauman's writing. The argument here focuses on the way in which Bauman has increasingly come to use the idea of exclusion as the basis of his approach to social divisions. The discussion embarks upon a brief excursus in order to consider further the idea of exclusion in Bauman's later sociological writings. The chapter elaborates on the issue of social control and considers the shift from Panoptic to 'Synoptic' mechanisms, a concept Bauman borrows from the work of Thomas Mathiesen. It highlights the way in which Bauman focuses upon exclusion and inclusion as an asymmetry of social relations, informed by the idea of freedom. The chapter argues that Bauman takes a basic Marxian opposition between the privileged and the underprivileged and reformulates it, dependent upon what currently interests his sociological imagination.
