Review: Bauman, A Biography

Izabela Wagner’s biography of Bauman’s life offers a rich and extensive trajectory of how a young Jewish pole became an influential global thinker. The book invites one to reflect upon how Bauman’s rich personal life story has drove his sociological analysis of our contemporary society. Wagner illustrates how his repeated exile and life ruptures have provided him with an intersubjective and critical eye onto the social struggles and injustices he tackled eloquently in his work. Though Bauman repeatedly argued; ‘there was nothing unusual about my case’ (40) ‘many people went through all those turbulences. I am just a typical product of my times’ (401), his biography narrates a life that is far from ‘usual.’