Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts

Dystopian science-fiction visions of the future are nothing new. Non-fiction treatises of an uncertain but almost certainly unpleasant future awaiting humanity are nothing new. Zygmunt Bauman, at first glance, seems to be just another sociologist who happened to write some books about the effects of modernity on human beings. What makes his reading so vitally relevant is that there are few people in the world who can so seamlessly unite sociology, economics, politics, psychology, ecology, geography, history, and anthropology the way Bauman does. All of these fields are of course related, and yet they are usually studied rather separately. Few people can claim expertise in all of them, and a person who can think, speak, and write authoritatively on all these subjects at once in a manner that is quite lucid and understandable by any "average" person is among the most precious of treasures of humanity.Bauman's ability to convey his vivid ideas concisely makes him yet more valuable. This book is less than 150 pages long, but easily contains more key ideas than most books two or three times as long. The book reads quickly, but the ideas stay with you long after the reading is done. Bauman is a man of ideas, and has that most rare and precious gift of non-fiction writers: The ability to come up with a new idea on nearly every page and thus write a book full of ideas, instead of doing what most contemporary non-fiction writers do, which is very nearly the opposite: Come up with one good idea and somehow pad it out to fill a 300-page book.I've read several books by Bauman, and almost everything he has written is of surpassing importance, but this book is arguably the most important he's written, and therefore probably my favorite among them. What, after all, could be more important for us as human beings than the sustainability of human existence and human society, having a place and a culture where we can actually belong, where our lives are meaningful rather than irrelevant?The core ideas trotted out throughout this book--that the planet is overpopulated, that people need to cut down on waste, that the modern market economy dehumanizes individuals and thus in turn whole societies--are not new, but part of what makes Bauman so important is that he is neither a fanatic waving his arms around and screaming about how the end is near, nor does he try to pacify our concerns. His writing is consistently intelligent, analytical, and informed, and while it's clear that Bauman is not totally unbiased, neither does he go for the easy out of trying to rouse people to some vague cause; at every turn, Bauman simply admonishes us to think and be aware.Like all of Bauman's work--and perhaps like most, if not all, thoughtful discourse--this book is quite tangential, beginning with a lengthy reminiscence on the nature of "waste" itself and the reasons why waste is an integral part of modern society, and indeed, any "planned" or "designed" organization before moving on to the more pressing issues of how waste is impacting our present-day societies, cultures, and ecology. The book contains occasional excursuses which dwell on a specific idea which is not intrinsically related to the subject matter at hand, but which helps to illuminate the mindset that Bauman is approaching the surrounding ideas with.My only criticism of the book is that Bauman offers little in the way of solutions. Indeed, the book openly acknowledges the seeming impossibility of finding locally-generated solutions to global problems. Is our future genuinely hopeless? This idea, always a possibility, maintains an undercurrent of dread throughout the entire book (and indeed, almost everything that Bauman has written), but it's clear that as terrifying as our fear of the unknown future may be, the consequences of ignoring that future are probably even more disturbing. I wholeheartedly give this book my highest recommendation to anyone who is tired of nervous hand-wringing and ready to confront the uncertain future of the human race with both wisdom and courage.

Wasted lives is an important book about the migration phenomenon that is taking place all over the world. Once people decide to leave their country of origin they loose identity, they leave part of themselves behind and face discrimination and zenophobia. Unfortnately the countries of reception do not have well structured political policies to face this situation. Bauman speaks clearly about it, just as the italian sculptor Catalano expreses.

I must begin by stating that I don’t agree with everything (nor even necessarily with most) of what’s expressed in this book, but I still found it a stimulating and interesting read, with ideas worthy of further inquiry.In this book, Bauman postulates that an inevitable by-product of society’s current model of constant economic progress and modernization is waste.He starts by addressing the way on which we’re compelled to throw away “old”/“obsolete” appliances to make way for newer “better” ones thus creating rubbish and a need to find a dump-site to dispose of it… he follows this line of thought to imagine what happens when the dumps fill up and there’s no place to put our trash out of sight: we have live with it in plain view amongst us.Then he goes on to state that just like rubbish, our way of life inevitably produces “human waste”, people who have been deemed redundant and thus “don’t belong” in society and have been earmarked to be dumped... and how once someone has been thus labeled, the prospects of being “recycled” back into society are extremely dim.A factor compounding on the problem, Bauman ascertains, is that the world is “full”, there’s no possible local solution to a global problem, no place to dump the redundant, no colonies, no places in need to be modernized left, so we have to have those wasted humans among us… thus the destitute and the criminal.The author also explores the role the State plays on setting the rules that define what, and who, is included/excluded from “legitimacy”, and that in today’s globalized de-regularized world this role is one of its few if not its only claim to sovereignty and exemption.The book closes with an invitation to assume the challenge we’re confronted with and search for an alternative feasible global paradigm to reshape society.

I almost quit reading this book after the first chapter. I initially found it full of language that was overly general and that was "fuzzy" in the sense that it was abstract and could have multiple meanings. And at times, the author does make strong statements of his personal belief as if they were fact. But even so, this book is haunting and mind opening in a way that few are. Bauman's writing and ideas takes one out of the normal, habitual frame of reference that many of us have and help us consider the world and human institutions and behavior in a new light. This book has changed my sense of reality more than a bit and I am glad that I bought it and read it. I will be reading more of his work.Ryan

Learning great quality needed in writing.

We cannot contribute to making a better world if we cannot see it for what it is. This book will help.

Like reading the work of a prophet. Bauman's importance cannot be overstated. A must read for lovers of Orwell. He is our 21st century Orwell in the guise of a sociologist. Or is he a philosopher? Or is he a historian? Reading this book you see everything he points out in 2003 happening today. And you inderstand why there is no place to run. Knowledge is a kind of power and all the misery in the world is not a figment of imagination but a design

This helps you understand why there is an underclass and not much we can do about it.

The greatest living sociologist. The Marx or C Wright Mills of our day.