Bauman is one of the greats — a Polish-Jewish socialist and towering sociologist who ended up in the UK after the war. His work rips apart the smug objectivity of social science, which pretends morality is just a social construct and socialisation is always good. In reality, as Bauman shows, socialisation created the Holocaust.

In Nazi Germany, it was conformity that allowed genocide — not a lack of it. Morality didn’t come from society, it came from within individuals who refused to go along with it. Bauman zeroes in on “proximity” — the distance from the suffering of others that enables barbarism. It hit me hard because my own research at King’s College London focused on the same thing, completely independently.

Proximity breaks down dehumanisation. Disconnection allows it to flourish. We need social designs that build closeness, community, and care. Bauman saw that modernity — with its complexity and instrumental rationality — was leading us to disaster. We see it now as the death project of global carbon emissions.

– Roger Hallam
Read Roger’s top ten list of books from prison here.