Not All That Was Solid Has Melted Into Air (or Liquid)- A Critique of Bauman on Individualization...

Not all that was solid has melted intoair (or liquid): a critique of Baumanon individualization and class inliquid modernity

Will Atkinson

Abstract

Whilst theories of individualization are usually perceived as posing a severe chal-lenge to the oft-disputed concept of class, the recent work of postmodernist-turned-liquid-modernist Zygmunt Bauman in this vein has generally escaped the attentionof faithful class analysts keen to defend their object of study. Indeed, in placesBauman has been mobilised to critique the cognate ideas of Ulrich Beck andAnthony Giddens, despite the fact that the intellectual affinity between the three ispatent and has been rightly flagged by others. This paper seeks to remedy thetreatment of Bauman thus far by tracing his precise views on class as they havedeveloped over his extended career and clarifying his current position on its declinein the face of the sweeping individualization brought by liquid modernity. It thenprovides a critique of his views by pulling out the contradictions and errors besettingthem and, in the process, attempts to render less credible his claim that class is nolonger a significant sociological tool.

Introduction: a curious silence

As sociological concepts go, few have been subject to the same level of con-tinual contestation over not only their nature but their very utility as class.Every decade since the war, it seems, has played host to its own collection ofchallengers declaring the much-maligned concept bankrupt, a trend that in-tensified in the twilight of the twentieth century alongside the proliferation ofclaims that a new period of social history or particular set of processes postmodernity, the information society, globalisation have been set inmotion.Within the current motley crowd of class antagonists, however, thereseems to be one strain of thought that has garnered swathes of critical com-mentary, approving references and fierce rebuttal of late: the theory of indi-vidualization forwarded by Ulrich Beck (1992) in which people are said tohave been disembedded from their old communal modes of life by welfare-state policies and processes and re-embedded in new ones in which they must

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2008.00774.x

The Sociological Review, 56:1 (2008) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review. Published byBlackwell Publishing Inc., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, 02148,USA.

reflexively assemble their life paths and identities themselves and thekindred ideas of Anthony Giddens (1991) on the reflexive project of the self.Whilst it has been argued elsewhere that a comprehensive critical response tothese two thinkers, or even a proper clarification of their arguments as theybear on class, has been surprisingly absent within class analysis (Atkinson,2007a, 2007b), it cannot be denied that Beck and Giddens put in regularappearances on the pages of those keen to cite detractors of class. Strangely,however, the same cannot be said for another important and influential socialtheorist forwarding very similar ideas on individualization that are just asconsequential for class analysis: Zygmunt Bauman.

Take, for example, the special issue of Sociology dedicated to class at the endof 2005 Beck andGiddenswere paraded by several contributors as exemplaryanti-class theorists, but Bauman, though admittedly not missing altogether (seeHey, 2005; Stenning, 2005), played a rather more low-key and ambivalent role.Or again, take Goldthorpes (2007: 91116) focussed attack on those heraldingthe decline of classwith the onset of extensive globalising forces.HereBeck andGiddens,alongwithotherswithin thesamebroadstable suchasManuelCastells,were taken to task repeatedly for their scandalous lack of engagement withserious social scientific research, whilst Bauman, despite having penned aninfluential tract on globalisation overflowing with analogous ideas, evadedcritical attention completely.Finally,take the response to individualization fromthe so-called cultural class analysts. Savages (2000) well-known work on theindividualization of class, for example, in which class reproduction, identitiesand cultures are said to persist but in an individuated form, was constructed inclose dialogue with the perspectives put forward by Giddens and Beck, butBauman,whilemaking several appearances in a number of contexts,did so onlyin an unelaborated way and was even, in places, mobilised to criticise individu-alizationon thebasis of thedepictionof intellectuals seeking aggrandizement inLegislators and Interpreters a book in which Baumans lack of faith in theconcept of class was clearly communicated.To be fair to Savage, this decision toletBauman escape considerationwas not the product of somemyopic oversighton his behalf but, rather, a consequence of the fact that Baumans views onindividualization solidified only contemporaneous with and subsequent to hisinfluential monograph. The same excuse cannot be so readily extended to themore recent work of Skeggs (2004: 54), however, which also bundles Beck andGiddens together as theorists of individualization and reproduces Savagesapplication of Bauman but refrains from taking issue with the liquid modernisthimself.

There are, as always, exceptions. Brannen and Nilsen (2005), for instance,have rightly recognised Baumans affinities with Beck and others on class,even if their coverage of his precise views was slight, whilst Warde (1994)explicitly grouped together and chided Giddens, Beck and Bauman on con-sumption, though this treatment, being over ten years old, targets an outdatedsnap-shot of a body of thought that underwent a considerable restyling at theturn of the millennium. Still, the general trend has been to attack or at least

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2 2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review

cite Beck and Giddens whilst remaining curiously silent on the position of theotherwise influential Polish thinker. Why this is so is not entirely clear, but acouple of likely contributing factors spring to mind. To begin with, thoughBeck and Giddens hardly claim the social world is harmonious and egalitarianthere is perhaps some sense in which Bauman is seen as being more critical ofthe entrenched inequality, poverty, degradation and power differentials pro-duced by the noxious union of neo-liberalism and consumerist individualism,and thus as more in line with those devoted to the concept of class who takethe same issues as objects of analysis.Added to this is the fact that Baumansviews on class in liquid modernity have never been set out in a systematic wayin a few key texts, but are instead spread fairly thinly through a range of works,often only between the lines of his central theses and with a fair helping ofambiguity to encourage multiple interpretations.1

With all this in mind, then, it seems that some kind of clarification ofBaumans current position, along with steps toward a critical evaluation, isoverdue. In what follows, I intend to go some way towards achieving this task,starting first by piecing together Baumans scattered remarks, particularlythose pertaining to his theory of individualization within liquid modernitywhich stands as a culmination and nuancing of much of his earlier work,pinning down their location within his intellectual trajectory and revealingthem to be just as challenging to class analysis as the allied thoughts of Beckand Giddens. Once this has been accomplished, I will attempt to sketchsome of the chief contradictions, inconsistencies and weaknesses that riddlehis propositions and gnaw at their credibility with the aim of enfeebling hisprovocative claims that class is no longer a relevant sociological category.Theassessment will thus be one primarily of the logical coherence and consistencyof the liquid modernists position on class rather than its empirical soundness,though the latter will not be altogether absent, and therefore forms only oneprong of what should be a pincer movement a comprehensive scrutinizationof Baumans perspective, as I will suggest in the concluding section, requiresthe conduct of original research as well.2

From modern Marxism to the individualized society

Someone whose earliest works in English include a defence of a modern,humanistic version of Marxism apt for modern times (Bauman, 1969), analysesof the British labour movement (Bauman, 1972) and socialism as a utopia andcounter-culture to capitalism (Bauman, 1976), and an explicit identification ofclass, defined in terms of relation to the means of production, as a key sourceof inequality in socialist (let alone capitalist) societies (Bauman, 1974), mightseem an unlikely candidate to feature in todays inventory of anti-class theo-rists. Yet through the eighties Baumans vision of the social world changed,leading him to draw the conclusion, worked out in Memories of Class (1982),Legislators and Interpreters (1987) and Freedom (1988), that class was no

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longer a salient feature of society. Not only had the demands of the workingclass been successfully integrated into the corporatist capitalist system, heargued, but the steady decline of industrial workers through automation hadinduced rounds of economic restructuring and created a new system of divi-sion between permanent, full-time workers on the one hand and the new poorof casual workers and the unemployed on the other (Bauman, 1987: 178).Moreover, Bauman declared, because capitalism no longer engages society asproducers in its reproduction, centring work and class as the principle axes ofstruggle and identity, but as consumers, it is now the freedom to consume andto choose which symbols of self-identity are to be appropriated that constitutethe central stratifying principle of society, with the new poor being seenthrough the lens of consumerism as flawed consumers. Not only was theworking class on the way out (Bauman, 1987: 179), then, but viewing theworld in terms of class at all now clouds rather than clarifies vision (Bauman,1982: 193).

Many of these ideas culminated in and were elaborated through Baumansconversion to postmodernism, signalled by Modernity and the Holocaust(1989) and Modernity and Ambivalence (1991), at the turn of the nineties.Expanding his theoretical vocabulary, individuals were now claimed to beengrossed in an unceasing and apparently unconstrained self-constitutionand self-assembly of their identities, achieved through the adoption of sym-bolic tokens of belonging (Bauman, 1992: 1915; cf. 1991: 206). No longer wasidentity, as it was in the modern age, much like a pilgrimage committed to asingle destination, solid, stable and progressive through time (eg the identityconstructed out of ones lifelong job or career). Instead, in the era of postmo-dernity, it now centred around avoiding fixation and keeping the optionsopen (Bauman, 1996: 18), that is, the refusal of long-term commitments to anyone place or vocation, personified not by the pilgrim but by the tourist, stroller,player or, if one is less fortunate, the vagabond (Bauman, 1996; cf. 1995:80104). Recently, however, Bauman has rebranded his thought, leavingbehind his image as the prophet of postmodernity (Smith, 1999) to becomethe herald of liquid modernity (see especially Bauman, 2000). Sure enough,many of the themes that established him as an original diagnostician of thepostmodern condition, and indeed that he first set out twenty-five years ago,are retained and elaborated especially the underpinning premise of the shiftfrom a production society to a consumer society. But in this latest batch ofwritings Bauman has further extended the transience he identified in theconsuming self to social structures themselves and, in so doing, has becomemore generalising and fixed on the theme of epochal change than ever. Prideof place, furthermore, now belongs to the Beck-inspired concepts of disem-bedding, individualization and the individualized society, and it is with thesethat the decline and fall of class in liquid modernity, to echo the provocativeclaim of Robert Nisbet (1959) half a century earlier, is conveyed.

Essentially, Baumans central proposition, modifying Becks thesis, isthat the condition of liquid modernity is characterised by a process of

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disembedding without re-embedding (Bauman, 2001: 4156, 14052; cf. 2000:327).Modernity, he argues, has always been characterised by disembedding that is, the socially sanctioned (Bauman, 2000: 32) deracination of individualsfrom the plot in which they germinated and from which they sprouted (inGane, 2004: 32). Yet this was always promptly followed by a process ofre-embedding in which individuals had to actively forge their self-identificationwith one of the beds (broadly equivalent to a collectivity) ready to subse-quently house them. When feudal estates were replaced by classes in thetransition to capitalism, for example, individuals were uprooted from theirascribed position and forced to re-identify with a social class by

actively conforming to emerging class-bound social types and models ofconduct, [by] imitating, following the pattern, acculturating, not falling outof step, not deviating from the norm . . . classes, unlike estates, had to bejoined, and the membership had to be continuously renewed, reconfirmedand tested in day-by-day conduct (Bauman, 2001: 145).

Once formed, however, class membership

tended to become as solid, unalterable and resistant to individual manipu-lation as the premodern assignment to the estate. Class and gender hungheavily over the individual range of choices; to escape their constraint wasnot much easier than challenging ones place in the divine chain of beings.If not in theory, then at least for practical intents and purposes, class andgender looked uncannily like facts of nature and the task left to mostself-assertive individuals was to fit in into the allocated niche throughbehaving as its established residents did (Bauman, 2001: 145).

Moreover, class membership was by no means freely chosen but, instead,dependent upon access to material resources. Those endowed with fewerresources had fewer options of self-assertion and identification open tothem, but, Bauman (2001: 46) argues, their deprivations added up and con-gealed into collective, class interests whilst their ineffectuality as individualswas compensated through the engagement in communal, class-orientatedaction:

People endowed with fewer resources, and thus with less choice, had tocompensate for their individual weaknesses by the power of numbers byclosing ranks and engaging in collective action. As Claus Offe has pointedout, collective, class-oriented action came to those lower down on the socialladder as naturally and matter-of-factly as the individual pursuit of theirlife goals came to their employers (Bauman, 2001: 46).

In liquid modernity, however, where social bonds and conditions of actioncannot, as in the past, keep their shape for long, and where jobs for life have



evaporated according to the demands of the evermore dominant market,individualization has assumed a modified form: individuals continue to bedisembedded and compelled to take their identity as a task rather than a given,but no longer are there any firm beds waiting to accommodate their self-identification. Instead, individuals must remain chronically disembedded, onthe move, searching out and choosing their flexible identities as they go fromthe vast array of options available, all the while feeling incomplete, insecureand unfulfilled. As Bauman (2000: 334; cf. 2001: 146) puts it:

No beds are furnished for re-embedding, and such beds as might bepostulated and pursued prove fragile and often vanish before the work ofre-embedding is complete. There are rather musical chairs of varioussizes and styles as well as of changing numbers and positions, which promptmen and women to be constantly on the move and promise no fulfilment,no rest and no satisfaction of arriving, of reaching the final destination,where one can disarm, relax, and stop worrying.

In other words, it is not only the individual placements in society, but theplaces to which the individuals may gain access and in which they may wishto settle that are now melting fast, and this affects all equally, unskilled andskilled, uneducated and educated, work-shy and hard working alike(Bauman, 2001: 146). The problem of identity for agents is thus no longerhow to obtain the identities of their choice and how to have them recognizedby people around or how to find a place inside a solid frame of social classor category, as it was in the preceding epoch, but which identity to chooseand how to keep alert and vigilant so that another choice can be made in casethe previously chosen identity is withdrawn from the market or stripped ofits seductive powers (Bauman, 2001: 147). Accordingly, the idea of a wholelife project is no longer desirable; instead, a flexible identity, a constantreadiness to change and the ability to change at short notice, and an absenceof commitments of the till death do us part style have become not onlyattractive options but prerequisites for survival (Bauman, 2002: 356; cf.2007a: 4). Of course, Bauman (2001: 50) adds, this implies there is a greaterfreedom for an ever growing number of men and women to experimentwith their identity and self-assert in liquid modernity, realised in the con-sumer market, but the necessary accompaniment is an unprecedented levelof insecurity, the underside of freedom.

A corollary of all this, Bauman argues, is that problems generated by socialorganization or, more specifically, by deregulated markets and extraterritorialcapital, have come to be seen as personal failings and responsibilities that mustbe dealt with individually.3 For example, if people

. . . stay unemployed, it is because they failed to learn the skills of gaining aninterview, or because they did not try hard enough to find a job or becausethey are, purely and simply, work-shy; if they are not sure about their career

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prospects and agonize about their future, it is because they are not goodenough at winning friends and influencing people and failed to learn andmaster, as they should have done, the arts of self-expression and impressingthe others (Bauman, 2001: 47).

Personal troubles, to deploy C.Wright Mills (1970) phraseology, may appearsimilar but are no longer considered to be connected to public issues orcollective interests, like those of class, and in fact the company and advice ofothers assumes the form of little more than a reassurance that fighting thetroubles alone is what all the others do daily (Bauman, 2001: 48; see alsoBauman, 1999). In Baumans (2004a: 35) words, capital and labour no longerseem to offer a common frame inside which variegated social deprivationsand injustices can (let alone are bound to) blend, congeal and solidify into aprogramme for change. Instead individuals are cast as autonomous, respon-sible individuals de jure, even if they remain, as they do in liquid modernity, farfrom autonomous individuals de facto. To secure the latter, ironically, requirescollective work (Bauman, 1999: 7), and this can only be achieved through arevitalisation of the agora, that is, the space where private and public issuesmeet and mutually translate.

Despite all this, however, issues of stratification, polarisation and inequalityhave never disappeared from Baumans work.4Whether conceived in terms ofthe freedom to consume and experiment with ones identity versus exclusionas flawed consumers and bearers of unshakeable, stigmatising identities(Bauman, 1998a, 2004a: 38), in terms of freedom to move around the globe atwill (tourists) versus either those who have to move because of the inhospi-tality of the world (vagabonds) or those who can not move for lack ofresources (Bauman, 1998b), or simply in terms of a polarisation of wealth,income and life chances (Bauman, 2001: 115), there are, in Baumans vision ofsociety, always winners and losers. In fact, the latter are, in their function ofoffsetting the otherwise repelling and revolting effects of the consumers lifelived in the shadow of perpetual uncertainty by reminding the former of whatmay befall them if things go awry (Bauman, 2001: 116), crucial to the repro-duction of liquid modern social order, whilst the winners constitute notadversaries against which the losers shall struggle until the final dnoue-ment, as Marx put it, but the idols they yearn to become (Bauman and Tester,2001: 118). However, because of Baumans frequent appeal to the differencesin economic resources in defining whether individuals are winners or losers,some have argued that despite his rhetoric of fluidity and his rejection of classas an axis of inequality, his ideas on the stratification of freedom are in factnothing but a theorisation of rigid class differences (Gane, 2001a, 2001b). ButBauman has replied to this charge, emphatically arguing that not only do thelosers stand outside of any class hierarchy, thereby eroding the class-basedorder of society itself (2007b: 123), but more importantly the two actual,feared or desired social conditions of freedom and un-freedom are not class-ascribed (in Gane, 2004: 34, some punctuation removed). Instead, he claims,



. . . freedom and un-freedom are realistic prospects for each and everyresident of a liquid modern society. None of the currently privileged andenjoyable situations is guaranteed to last, whilst most of the currentlyhandicapped and resented positions can be in principle renegotiated usingthe rules of the liquid modern game.There is, accordingly, a mixture of hopeand fear in every heart, spread over the while spectrum of the emergentplanetary stratification (in Gane, 2004: 345).

Bauman rarely states it this baldly, but in a society where structures that limitindividual choices no longer keep their shape for long (2007a: 1), whereindividuals are granted a new freedom to annul and disable the constraintsimposed by the past so that what one was yesterday will no longer bar thepossibility of becoming someone totally different today (2007b: 104), andwhere assignment to waste becomes everybodys potential prospect ratherthan a misery confined to a relatively small part of the population (2005: 32)because endemic flexibility and insecurity in the world of work mean thateveryone is potentially redundant or replaceable and every position,however elevated and powerful it may seem now, is in the long run precariousand its privileges fragile and under threat (2001: 52), the logical result, heholds, is that class divisions are cancelled (2005: 101).5

As regards class analysis, then, Baumans views appear no less consequen-tial than those of Beck or Giddens, even if, as theories of individualization andrelated processes go, his is without a doubt the most critical of contemporarycapitalist societies and the enduring poverty and inequality they produce,bristling as it does with insights into the deleterious operations and effects ofconsumer markets, the flexibilisation of work patterns and, even if it is nolonger held to fit the mould of class, the plight of the poorer denizens of liquidmodernity. Nevertheless, Baumans perspective suffers from a multitude ofdeficiencies and inconsistencies that seriously undermine what he has to say.Some of these are relatively minor and need not be explored in any depth forexample, his abstract, generalising style, his dependence on scraps of othersresearch or anecdotes as his primary source of evidence and his questionablecharacterisation of the transition to classes at the dawn of capitalism. Others,however, are rather more substantial and, as such, require rather moreattention.

Ambiguous freedoms

A first niggling but persistent problem in Baumans theory of individualiza-tion is his ambivalence and contradiction on the characterisation of freedomin liquid modern societies. As seen above, the general thrust of his argumentwould seem to be that the lack of solid beds in which to be re-embedded hasallowed a new level of freedom and autonomy for an ever growing numberof people class and other such beds, after all, no longer hang heavily over

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the individual range of choices as they once did. This new found freedom,this emancipation from constraints (Bauman and Tester, 2001: 103) orbeing free of chains, is, Bauman adds, indispensable for decent human life(in Gane, 2004: 32), though so too is security, a casualty of the increase infreedom that can only be rescued and restored alongside it through a decou-pling of earning entitlement from earning capacity (Bauman, 1998a, 1999).However, Bauman then seems to utterly contradict this conception offreedom when he goes on to contend, like Adorno and Horkheimer (1944/1997) half a century earlier, that, in fact, the freedom on offer in liquidmodern consumer society is a false freedom; that the new form of privatisedindividuality so prevalent today means, essentially, unfreedom (Bauman,1999: 63). No longer are the majority of the populace deemed to haveattained something indispensable for decent human life: de facto freedomand autonomy the ability to gain control over [ones] fate and make thechoices [one] truly desire[s] (Bauman, 2000: 39) that looks uncannily likethe emancipation from constraints achieved more or less across the boardabove now remains a distant reality and de jure autonomy autonomy byright all the bulk of the populace have. Then again, Bauman is hardlyconsistent on the de jure/de facto dualism either. In some places, for example,he claims that only a collective translation of private troubles into publicissues will suffice to make de facto autonomy a reality for most individuals(eg Bauman, 1999), yet, elsewhere, we are told that the passage to de factoautonomy, though littered with obstructions and difficult to sustain, is achiev-able by individuals, especially if they are endowed with money (Bauman,2005: 23ff). In fact, his model of the stratification of freedom is, it seems,measured in terms of de facto freedom it would be senseless to describethe elite as privileged, as he often does, if this was not the case with theelite free to pick and choose their identities and travel at will at the top, theimmobile and stigmatised at the bottom, and most of us struggling to balancefreedom and security in the middle,

never sure how long our freedom to choose what we desire and renouncewhat we resent will last, or whether we will be able to keep the position wecurrently enjoy for as long as we would find it comfortable and desirable tohold it (Bauman, 2004a: 38).

It may be insecure, but now the majority in the middle do have more than dejure freedom after all.

The new stratification order

This leads us to consider a second area of difficulty in Baumans perspective,namely his take on the composition of the new stratification order of liquid



modernity that supposedly serves as a replacement for classes. It is obviousthat, most of the time, Bauman envisages this order in terms of a polariseddichotomy between the winners and losers, seduced and repressed, touristsand vagabonds (see eg Bauman, 1987: chaps 10 and 11; 1998b: chap 4; Gane,2004: 23ff). This is a powerful image, no doubt, but one that suffers from atleast two problems. First of all, who exactly constitutes the minority and whothe majority in the polarisation varies considerably across Baumans writ-ings. In some places, for instance, the losers the new poor, flawed con-sumers or underclass are seen very much as the minority (Bauman,1998a), counterposed to John Kenneth Galbraiths ever freer contentedmajority of consumers (Bauman and Tester, 2001: 154). Elsewhere, however,the dividing line of the polarisation is suddenly said to have moved up thehierarchy in liquid modernity, with the elite of extraterritorial global actorsat one end and, at the other, the great majority for whom effective therapy(apparently higher education) against the afflictions of liquid modernity hasbeen lifted beyond reach (Bauman, 2004b: 14; cf. Gane, 2004: 23ff). In yetother places, though much more rarely, the dichotomy is, as indicated above,thrown out completely and most are said to reside in the middle. Such incon-sistency, especially when added to the oscillations on freedom, makes it dif-ficult to take any one of his positions seriously who might now be judgeda winner and who a loser may change dramatically over the page, so tospeak and, ultimately, chips away at the credibility of Baumans overallperspective.

Secondly, it has to be said that Baumans tendency to draw a single dividingline between winners and losers in liquid modernity is incredibly simplistic anddetached from the intricacies of daily life, bunching together in each camp amyriad of heterogeneous actors and failing to recognise any internal modes ofdivision and differentiation (cf. Savage et al., 2005: 205). Doubtless such abinary view of society stems from Baumans Marxist roots he often depictsthe global elite/localised masses division of today as an outgrowth of thecapital-labour relation (eg Bauman, 2001: 25;Gane, 2004: 26; cf. Bauman, 1987:chap 11), and even, in some places, still refers to the elite as (extraterritorial)capital.6 But an undifferentiated binary division loses its justification whenthe Marxist categories are jettisoned. After all, there is no necessary nexusbetween Baumans winners and losers like there is between Marxs bourgeoi-sie and proletariat, no relation of exploiter and exploited, no sense that eachgroup depends on the other for its existence yet stands utterly opposed to it onthe plane of interests to the extent that the ensuing struggle between the twowill inevitably result in the dramatic conclusion of historys dialectic espe-cially in those instances where the winners are held to be the consumingmajority rather than the elite minority. Having said that, even Marx wasfaithful to the complexities of the social world in a way that Bauman clearly isnot, recognising the existence of multiple class fractions, as Poulantzas (1978)called them, in his more detailed analyses, as are the more sophisticatedMarxist writers on class today (eg Wright, 2005: 15ff).

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The conception of class

Evoking Baumans Marxist background raises a further, basic aspect of hisposition: he has a very particular conception of class and, thus, what it takesto kill it off. Only when labour ceased to provide a meaningful frame foraction (Bauman, 2004a: 345; cf. 1982), that is, and when capital qua capital money which serves first and foremost to turn out more money ratherthan simply income and wealth ceased to confer a position of advantageand dominance (Bauman, 1998a: 31), did the concept of class pass away inBaumans eyes. Now this is all fine and well as a case against Marxism, butsuch claims would hardly perturb a neo-Weberian, for example, for whomthe elements Bauman cites are irrelevant to the measurement and substan-tiation of classes. As Goldthorpe and Marshall argue explicitly taking intheir crosshairs Baumans Memories of Class and other ex-Marxists who,having lost faith in the Marxist class analysis that once commanded theirallegiance, or at least sympathy, now find evident difficulty in envisioning anyother kind demolishing the Marxist project scarcely provides the quietusof class analysis tout court (1992: 3812), for [v]arious objections that maybe powerfully raised against Marxist class analysis the lack of class-basedcollective action, the inadequacy of exploitation as a concept, the poverty ofhistoricism, and so forth simply do not apply to the version of class analy-sis they champion (1992: 393). All that is needed to demonstrate the prom-ising future of class analysis is, for them, empirical evidence that an agentsposition in employment relations impacts on their life chances, social identityand social values in some way something they feel they have no problemproducing.

Similarly those who, like me, are sympathetic to Bourdieus theoreticalframework have little to fear. In fact, with a modicum of conceptual manoeu-vring much (though not all) of what Bauman has to say can be readily assimi-lated to the late French thinkers perspective. For Bourdieu (1984),7 let usremind ourselves, there is the objective social space of objective positionsdistributed relationally according to the volume and composition of capital ie whether it is predominantly economic (money, wealth) or cultural (educa-tional qualifications, knowledge) held by individuals and the symbolic spaceof tastes and practices which, because they are the product of dispositions builtout of the material conditions furnished by the possession of capital, arehomologous with the social space.Whilst agents generally cluster in regions ofsocial space, forming theoretical classes or classes on paper, the actual waysof carving up the spaces in perception and the labelling of groups said to existare not automatically given, as they are for Marxists or Goldthorpe, butstruggled over dependent on the interests and experiences of agents and thedifferential distribution of the symbolic power to name, represent andmobilisespecific sets of agents (see especially Bourdieu, 1984: 46684; 1987, 1991b).8

Now, from this point of view Baumans above definition of capital is obviously



far too narrow, yet, it could be argued, his continued underscoring of the rigidstratification of society in terms of freedom can be read as nothing other thanan insistence on the continued potency of the social space which, of course,maps the stratification of freedom from necessity conveyed in a differentconceptual terminology. Reinforcement for this view is provided by Baumans(2004b: 14) stress on not just the continued influence of economic resourcesin shaping this hierarchy, but also educational qualifications, that is, theinstitutionalised form of cultural capital. His prevarications over the pertinentdividing line can then be seen as simply his own inconsistent impositionof principles of division on this space devoid of rigid dividing lines in realitydepending on his purpose at hand.

Further weight is added to this reworking by the fact that, unlike Beck forwhom it entails a transfiguration of objective life chances, Baumans remarkson disembedding construe it largely as a subjective process whereby individu-als can no longer identify with fixed groups but are instead forced to constructand revise their identities themselves, which, taken together with his assertionthat individuals are increasingly cast in liquid modernity as either flawedconsumers or autonomous individuals responsible for their own lot, can bereinterpreted as a perfectly plausible description of the decline of old ways ofcutting up the social space in perception and the emergence of new ones withcertain social changes and possessors of symbolic power for example, dein-dustrialisation and the emergence in the political sphere of the individualistThatcher government of the eighties and its patent residue in New Labour.Rethinking one of Baumans dualisms, de jure freedom could then be under-stood as the widespread construction of social space as composed of autono-mous, atomised individuals, with de facto freedom referring to the real degreeof freedom granted by ones position in social space, in essence testifying againto the continued salience of (theoretical) classes.

The upshot of this, then, is not that Baumans ideas should be rejected outof hand or that they can be safely ignored by those not loyal to the Marxistvision of class, but that his explicit claims on class are actually extremelylimited in scope and that many of his central propositions, mutatis mutandis,are not necessarily antithetical to the enterprise of class analysis. Of courseit is probably not too outlandish to suggest that Marxist class analysts, ifthey were to acknowledge them, would object to Baumans claims tooand, if Wrights (1996) response to Pakulski and Waters (1996) con-troversial funeral oration for class is anything to go by, would probably tryto point to all kinds of conceptual clarifications and empirical trends in sodoing.

Spurious fluidity

Perhaps with all this in mind Baumans statement above in response toNicholas Gane that whilst freedom and un-freedom are indeed delegated by

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material wealth they are by no means ascribed according to classes in liquidmodernity can be seen in a new light there is, after all, nothing Marxistabout such a position (Gane, 2004: 27). Yet there is more to this crucialstatement, one of the most explicit rebuttals of class as a meaningful conceptin Baumans recent work, than that, and, when examined further, it revealsitself as a major source of serious error. On the one hand, Bauman makes thepoint that, given the intensified insecurity and flexibilisation of employmentacross the occupational spectrum, none of the privileged positions is boundto last (in Gane, 2004: 35). This kind of statement, highlighting the shift inemployment culture under neo-liberal capitalism toward incessant redun-dancy, downsizing, streamlining and so on in both the private and the publicsector, is relatively commonplace in social science today, with versions pro-pounded by Beck (2000), Bourdieu (1998b, 2001) and Richard Sennett (1998) three thinkers with whom Bauman professes intellectual affinity. It has not,however, been without its challengers. Goldthorpe and McKnight (2006), forexample, use statistical analysis based on Goldthorpes class schema to dem-onstrate that the experience of frequent and long-term unemployment,despite claims to the contrary, remains a misfortune visited predominantlyupon the working class, particularly those at the lower end of this category, notleast, they argue, because of the form of employment contract, that is, the spotcontract carrying little expectation of continuity, supposedly defining theirclass membership.The measurement of class and proffered explanation aside,Goldthorpe and McKnights argument provides an effective reminder thatBaumans statement cannot, despite its general currency, be accepted as atruism.

On the other hand, Bauman also claims more overtly than either Beck orGiddens that the reverse of this scenario also holds: that the currently handi-capped and resented positions can be in principle renegotiated using therules of the liquid modern game (in Gane, 2004: 35). It is not entirely clearwhether Bauman is actually referring to the prospect of upwards mobilityhere or just the ability to renegotiate ones identity using consumer prod-ucts, but either way it is perhaps one of the most contradictory and super-ficial comments in his entire oeuvre. It goes against all that he has said onthe predicament of the immobile or vagabond, stigmatised poor in liquidmodernity, described throughout his work as permanently excluded(Bauman, 2004b: 78; 2007a: 69) or made permanently redundant by theglobal economy (Bauman, 1999: 175), unable and not allowed to shed theirstereotyping, humiliating, dehumanizing, stigmatizing identities (Bauman,2004a: 38) and pushed only deeper into the precipice of indignity (Baumanand Tester, 2001: 154). Furthermore, the appeal to the rules of the liquidmodern game seems a little out of place with all that he has said before onthe falling apart of any hard and fast rules in liquid modernity (Bauman,2001: 11), adding weight to the suspicion that the statement is little morethan an ad hoc response to a well-targeted question with no firm reasoningbehind it.



Conclusion

What all this hopefully shows is that, as it stands, the vision of the waningrelevance of class embedded in Baumans depiction of liquid modernitycannot be readily accepted: it is, in a nutshell, an intellectual edifice con-structed out of acutely unsound materials the contradictions over the char-acteristics and possibilities of freedom, the damaging prevarications over thecomposition of the new stratification order, the narrow conceptualisation ofclass in play that severely circumscribes the scope of his claims and the spu-rious comments on the fluidity of the social world. The exact consequences ofthis conclusion for the rest of Baumans project are unclear his is a body ofwork, after all, with multiple facets but given that the shaky supporting pillarof his current views on class, individualization, occupies a prominent positionwithin his recent thought on the maladies of contemporary societies ingeneral, it is certainly not encouraging.

On the other hand, however, there is a sense in which theoretical critique ofthe type presented here itself perhaps only indicative and a first step towardsa more comprehensive conceptual assessment is not, on its own, enough torefute Baumans cogitations outright, for there remain many themes runningthrough them which, when extricated from the conceptual problems high-lighted in the foregoing, might yet manifest themselves in the social world insome way. In other words, the specific theorisation may be deeply flawed, butthe overall spirit of his diagnosis, once viewed through the conceptual lens ofwhichever class theory one claims allegiance to, might still hold water.Whether agents increasingly see themselves as atomised, self-governing indi-viduals with full responsibility for their actions and no ties to collective framesof meaning and whether identities, lifestyle choices and political orientationshave been set afloat from the class docks can thus only be definitivelyanswered by means of a dialogue with the social world itself in the form ofdetailed empirical work, and whilst there are perhaps shreds of existing evi-dence that can be collaged together and marshalled against Bauman in oneway or another we await research addressed explicitly to his exact contentions.

University of Bristol Received 18 June 2007Finally accepted 28 September 2007

Notes

1 In fact, even outside the confines of class theory it appears that, amongst social theorists,Bauman is given an easier time than most: he is cited, discussed and made the subject ofintroductory books and journal special issues, but little in the way of concentrated criticalevaluation is ever directed his way (for an exception see Gane, 2001b). Perhaps part of thereason for this and this also contributes to his neglect by class theorists is the fact thatBauman is perceived as more of a sociologically-minded social commentator these days with

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a broad audience and, as Therborn (2007: 106) puts it, an unusual life wisdom, a trainedobservers eye, and a fluent pen than as a mainstream sociologist genuflecting to the usualanalytical demands of the discipline, and therefore as less in need of critical interrogation.Givenhis influence and the challenging implications of his claims, however, this is unfortunate.

2 I am working with the assumption that, as philosophers of science as diverse as Popper andKuhn would agree, logical coherence and consistency are crucial components of any viabletheoretical scheme along, of course, with empirical validation and that an assessment of theformer is thus an important endeavour in advancing social scientific knowledge and not simplya vacuous, theoreticist exercise. Bourdieu (1991a: 376), with whose general theoretical andepistemological stance I am sympathetic, has implied as much in his brief remarks on thescientific logic (which unfortunately, he argues, competes with the political logic revolvingaround rhetoric and the power of numbers) of the sociological field (see also Bourdieu et al.,1991).To avoid confusion I should perhaps make clear from the outset that I am sympathetic tothe endeavour of class analysis, and in particular to a broadly Bourdieusian version, but thatbecause the criticisms forwarded either bear on internal logic and consistency or make refer-ence to more than one standpoint alone the critique is that of Baumans theory in its own termsand is therefore not weighted too heavily by conceptual prejudices.

3 Purging Giddens phrase of its intended positive connotations, Bauman often describes this asa supplanting of politics with life politics (see especially Bauman, 2002).

4 And neither has a commitment to socialism, albeit a liberal variant, disappeared fromBaumanspolitical ideals (Bauman and Tester, 2001: 153ff).

5 Hence, and when added to all that has already been said, Beilharzs (2000: 32) assertion thatBaumans is not a frame of interpretation within which we encounter the end of class seemsa little misplaced.

6 One commentator explicitly dubs Bauman a post-Marxist, arguing that Marx has disappearedinto Baumans work like labour into the product (Beilharz, 2000: 49).

7 This is necessarily a brief and thus regrettably crude account of Bourdieus position.8 It should be pointed out that representations are firmly anchored in the social space and thedifferences it yields and do not, therefore, take place in a social void or come ex nihilo(Bourdieu, 1998a: 12). Yet, Bourdieu argues, proximity in social space by no means automati-cally engenders unity (1998a: 11), guarantees symbolic and discursive articulation or gives riseto mobilised groups as Wacquant (1991: 57) puts it, classes at the symbolic level are largelyunderdetermined at the structural level.

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Not All That Was Solid Has Melted Into Air (or Liquid)- A Critique of Bauman on Individualization...

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