This is not a Diary

Zygmunt Bauman (Author)

9780745655697, Polity Press

Hardback, published 27 January 2012

216 pages
23.9 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.445 kg

"If Bauman had posted the pieces of this book on the internet as he went along, it would have been the world's best blog. But I'm glad he didn't."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/06/et-cetera-non-fiction-reviews-roundup"
Steven Poole, The Guardian

"Bauman, like all the best teachers, encourages independent thinking and insists only that it is informed and above all critical ... Highly recommended."
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/114532"
Morning Star

This is not a diary: while these observations were recorded in autumn 2010 and spring 2011 in the form of dated entries, they are not a personal reflection but an attempt to capture signs of our times in their movement - possibly at birth, at a stage when they are still barely perceptible, and in any case before they have matured into common, all too familiar forms, escaping our attention due to their banality. Some will perhaps settle in our daily life for a long time to come, others will fade and vanish before they would otherwise have a chance to be noted, recorded and explored in depth: in our fast-moving, protean and kaleidoscopic world, it is hardly possible to predict their future course and to decide in advance which of them will grow in volume and significance and which will prove to have been still-born. Whatever their fate, the author tried to take a leaf from William Blake's precept of seeing the universe in a grain of sand - and, having done so, alert us to what is or may be happening to our individual lives, forms of togetherness, shared prospects; to the ways we perceive and relate to each other, the forces that shape our life chances and itineraries; and to the ways we try to control, or at least influence, and sometimes even reform for the better, some or all those dimensions of our existence.

These timely meditations by one of the most perceptive social thinkers of our time will appeal to a wide range of readers.

CONTENTS
SEPTEMBER 2010
On the sense and senselessness of diary-keeping
On the usefulness of fighting windmills
On virtual eternity
On farming words
On superpower, superbroke
On averages
On multi-tasking
On the blind leading the impotent
On Gypsies and democracy
On fading trust and blooming arrogance
On the right to be angry
OCTOBER 2010
On the right to get richer
On many cultures, and one cover-up
On don't say you haven't been warned
On the quandaries of believing
On Cervantes, father of humanities
On one more war of attrition, A.D. 2010-?
NOVEMBER 2010
On why Americans see no light at the end of the tunnel
DECEMBER 2010
On the war to end wars
On hurting flies and killing people
Jerusalem vs. Athens revisited
On why students are restless again
On respect and scorn
On some (not all!) of my idiosyncrasies
On the new looks of inequality
On re-socializing the social
On the friends you have and friends you think you have
On the front pages and other pages
On (selected) quandaries
On whether "democracy" still means anything, and in case it does, what is it?
JANUARY 2011
On The Angel of History, reincarnated...
On finding consolation in unexpected places
On the growth: do we need it?
On sustainability: this time, of social democracy
On consumption getting richer and the planet poorer
On justice, and how to know it is there
On internet, anonymity and irresponsibility
On collateral damages and casualties of cuts
On one of many pages torn out from the history of democratic crusade
On immoral axes and moral axmen
On Berlusconi, and on Italy
On keeping him in by being kept out
On people in the streets
FEBRUARY 2011
On glocalization coming of age
On what to do with the young
On the not-for-anybody virtues
On blessings and curses of not-taking-sides
On human tsunami, and thereafter
On the bottoms beneath the bottoms
On being out inside, and inside but out
On miracles, and not quite miracles
On Facebook, intimacy, and extimacy
On building fortresses under siege
On American Dream: time for obituaries?
MARCH 2011
On H. G. Wells', and mine, last dream and testament

Subject Areas: Society & culture: general [JF]