Page 120 - Cultural Theory

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Zygmunt Bauman,

CHAPTER SIX Culture and
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Sociology

Peter Beilharz

Culture is ubiquitous, and so, it sometimes seems, is cultural studies. The visual turn
now replaces the cultural or linguistic turn of the post-war period in Western intel-
lectual life. Ours is a visual age, an age, apparently, of image, sign, symbol. The emer-
gence of popular culture as an intellectual concern, posited by Antonio Gramsci, and
developed through the work of the Birmingham School has led to a process where
textuality rules, whether in written or especially in visual form. Whether or not film
or video replaces the book, or essay, these are nevertheless cultural forms which have
material frameworks and constraints. Modes of information are still, in some senses,
modes of production or creation. Culture needs to be interpreted within and against
the framework of social relations which makes it possible, and frames its availability.
If in this context cultural studies is transfixed with representation, ordinary sociol-
ogy is often so tired as to seem useful without being interesting. There are exceptions;
the work of Zygmunt Bauman is one of them. His work is exceptional because it
responds to the signs of the times, but mediates this practical level of culture with
the theoretical culture we inherit from the classics, not least here Marx, Weber and
Freud. Bauman develops some of leading claims and critiques of classical sociology
to formulate a critique of modernism, and then to anticipate the postmodern, even
as he insists that a sociology of the postmodern may be more powerful or less imma-
nent than a postmodern sociology.
In this chapter I offer a reading of Bauman’s views on culture back through the
work of his classical interlocutors, especially Marx, Weber, and Freud. Returning to
his early work, especially Culture as Praxis (1973b) and Towards a Critical Sociology
(1976), my argument is that these initial sensibilities are worked through with pass-
ing reference to Foucault and especial reference to Lévi-Strauss and the idea of struc-
turing as an activity. Culture is a structuring activity, sometimes successful and
sometimes happy, sometimes significant as creative or ordinary or tragic destruction,
sometimes more anthropologically indicative of the incremental repetition and
innovation of everyday life. Bauman makes sense of culture by manoeuvring its
immediate contents against the larger signs and waves of our times, from capitalism

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