Retrotopia

Each of Bauman's books from the last decade can be read as a masterpiece. Ulrich Beck. "Make America great again" is the slogan of the current US President. It is not about moving "forward," as Barack Obama promised during the 2012 campaign, but rather about returning to former greatness. People seem to have given up hope for a better life in the future and instead turn to a supposedly good old time. In his last book completed during his lifetime, the great sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman examines the reasons for this global epidemic of nostalgia. According to his thesis, five hundred years after the publication of Thomas More's Utopia, nation-states have lost the ability to fulfill their promises of prosperity and security. Those seeking orientation in a globalized world...