ON CONTINUITY IN ZYGMUNT BAUMANS CULTURAL ENQUIRIES

The article offers a synoptic analysis of the cultural co-ordinate of Zygmunt Bauman's sociological thinking. The analysis has been undertaken in order to substantiate a claim that despite of Bauman's wide and changing interests his scholarship reflects remarkable consistency and continuity of theme and approach than meet the eye. It is argued that the crucial factor, which underlies such a development in Bauman's theoretical project, bears upon his firm view on 'culture'. In this context a particular attention is given to his conceptualization of this notion as the two-sided on-going process responsible both for ordering social life and at the same time for offering of a creative challenge to what has been thereby established as fixed and sedimented. In effect, Bauman's view on culture allows articulating the universal human predicament of ambivalent structured/structuring nature of human activity discernible in every part of social life.