On the Margins: Bauman at the University of Leeds, 1971-91

It is an irony of Bauman’s position as a public sociologist that international recognition and accolade came to him following his formal retirement from academic sociology, in 1991. This chapter concerns Zygmunt Bauman’s tenure at the University of Leeds up until this point. Bauman was appointed head of Sociology in 1971 and would remain at Leeds in the wake of the publication of Modernity and the Holocaust, the book which would propel him to global renown and see him win the Amalfi and Adorno prizes. Eschewing a focus on this propulsion, this chapter has three aims. Firstly, it will consider the development of Bauman’s very rich and still (unjustly) neglected books of the Leeds period, including Culture as Praxis, Socialism: The Active Utopia and Critical Sociology (both 1976), Hermeneutics and Social Science, and Memories of Class, and key articles, which tend to be marginalised in commentaries on his work. Secondly, drawing on archive research, this chapter will situate Bauman’s work and ideas in the context of his intellectual networks at Leeds and especially his teaching activities. It will also consider lesser-known aspects of Bauman’s intellectual practice, such as his membership of the Leeds Camera Club, and explore the influence on his thought of a de-industrialising Leeds amid the period of Margeret Thatcher’s Conservative government. Thirdly, this chapter explores the role how Bauman made productive various kinds of marginality – positional, geographical, intellectual – in the development of his searing theorisation of the margins and support for the marginalised.