[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Indeed, as Bauman (1998a:97) points out, much of the politics in the society of tourists can be explained as an ongoing effort to eradicate the vagabonds from the picture of their reality, such as through an obsession with security, law and order, and the criminalization of poverty.On the other hand, however, to a certain degree the life of the tourists actually depends upon the presence of the vagabonds for its enjoyment.The insecurities associated with life as a tourist are made all the more palatable for being haunted by the prospect of the nightmare that is the life of a vagabond.As such, it is worth highlighting that in order to keep the tourists in the global game, the hands of the vagabonds must remain forever unequal.The globalized world of ‘liquid modernity’ is thus an evermore hospitable and friendly place for tourists and an evermore unwelcoming and hostile place for vagabonds.It is this stark opposition between tourists and vagabonds that Bauman (2004) develops further in his more recent ideas on the ‘wasted lives’ brought about by processes of globalization.At the basis of this development is Bauman’s observation that both sides of the identified opposition between tourists and vagabonds can be characterized by their freedom to move.However, whereas the former travel for enjoyment or profit, and are rewarded for doing so, the latter travel for survival, and– alarmingly – are condemned for doing so.For Bauman, it is this ‘lie of the free trade promise’ that marks the present day combination of the annulment of entry visas and the reinforcement of immigration controls with a particular symbolic significance.In short, it lays bare the fact that ‘access to global mobility’ is the basis of a world-wide re-stratification.To put it in a nutshell: if indeed we are nowadays ‘all on the move’, only some of us are permitted to be so.Moreover, Bauman notes how the dismantling of all barriers to the free movement of capital, commodities and information, and its carriers, is accompanied by the concomitant production of new and ever-higher barriers to keep out the multitude wishing to follow suit and go where the opportunities beckon.This is supported by the sociological and political phenomenon highlighted at the start of the chapter in relation to the world being ‘full’.This new ‘fullness’ of the planet – or, perhaps more accurately, of those particular areas of the planet where dreams and desires are most likely to be realized – have resulted in an acute crisis of what Bauman calls the“human waste disposal industry” (Bauman 2004:7).According to him, globalization has become a prolific production line of ‘wasted humans’ precisely because of the global spread of the ‘liquid modern’ form of life as a single homogenising force.Those different forms of human life and togetherness that, heretofore, represented adequate ways and means of survival in both the biological and sociological sense are destroyed by the dominance of the global over all aspects of the local.As a result, those who represent difference – and thus evoke precisely those feelings of uncertainty and insecurity endemic to ‘liquid life’ – are uniquely suitable to play the part of visible local target for the unloading of frustrations caused by invisible global forces.As Bauman suggests:3 For an insightful discussion of the concept of ‘utopia’ in Bauman’s sociology more broadly, see Jacobsen (2006).146The Sociology of Zygmunt BaumanAfter all, asylum seekers and ‘economic migrants’ are collective replicas (an alter ego?, fellow travellers?, mirror-images?, caricatures?) of the new power elite of the globalized world, widely (and with reason) suspected to be the true villain of the piece.Like that elite, they are untied to any place, shifty, unpredictable.Like that elite, they epitomize the unfathomable ‘space of flows’ where the roots of the present-day precariousness of the human condition are sunk (Bauman 2004:66).And it is these groups of asylum seekers, ‘economic migrants’ and refugees that represent the ‘human waste’ of globalization, the vagabond nightmare in the society of tourists.All periods of modernity have, of course, produced social suffering amongst the excluded.However, Bauman (2004) argues that the suffering experienced by the growing ranks of vagabonds is unique insofar as the included do not forge any common cause with those ‘wasted humans’ precisely because they rarely come into contact with them.By being managed and administered in localized camps or ‘sink estates’, the tourists have no opportunity to converse with vagabonds and, as a result of their stigmatization and criminalization, frequently have little desire to do so.As a consequence, an entire way of human-being-in-the-world is denied its reality and so easily removed from the realm of moral obligation.Indeed, it is this that represents one of the central ethical challenges that faces humanity in the era of globalization: the need to recognize the plight of the ‘wasted humans’ produced by those global processes that make the life of the tourist so desirable.One of the main obstacles to this ethical challenge is precisely the experience of insecurity and fear that ‘wasted humans’ are so often taken to embody.Furthermore, Bauman notes how current local solutions to these problems fail to address their global causes – ‘there are no local solutions to global problems’, as he frequently asserts.The growing pervasiveness of fear in ‘liquid modern’ society, coupled with an absence of global solutions, has led Bauman to explain globalization as entirely‘negative’.Negative Globalization and Liquid FearFear has become the dominant currency of contemporary public life.It is the public resource increasingly mined in order to boost the legitimacy and authority of extant political and economic institutions, as well as individual politicians themselves.As the individualized society comes increasingly under siege from processes of globalization, there is a reduction in, and perhaps the cancellation of, the ability of ordinary men and women to collectively negotiate the reality of those fears and anxieties that they may all privately feel.The ‘flexibilization’ inherent in these processes of globalization – which themselves are taken to be entirely ‘negative’ –have led to a political economy of insecurity in which human misery is commonplace and the human condition is characterized by humiliation, distress, anxiety and fear.The negative impulse of globalization not only leads to the experiential awareness of an exponentially changing world, but also to the realization that our collective ability to manage and shape this change has become impotent [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Indeed, as Bauman (1998a:97) points out, much of the politics in the society of tourists can be explained as an ongoing effort to eradicate the vagabonds from the picture of their reality, such as through an obsession with security, law and order, and the criminalization of poverty.On the other hand, however, to a certain degree the life of the tourists actually depends upon the presence of the vagabonds for its enjoyment.The insecurities associated with life as a tourist are made all the more palatable for being haunted by the prospect of the nightmare that is the life of a vagabond.As such, it is worth highlighting that in order to keep the tourists in the global game, the hands of the vagabonds must remain forever unequal.The globalized world of ‘liquid modernity’ is thus an evermore hospitable and friendly place for tourists and an evermore unwelcoming and hostile place for vagabonds.It is this stark opposition between tourists and vagabonds that Bauman (2004) develops further in his more recent ideas on the ‘wasted lives’ brought about by processes of globalization.At the basis of this development is Bauman’s observation that both sides of the identified opposition between tourists and vagabonds can be characterized by their freedom to move.However, whereas the former travel for enjoyment or profit, and are rewarded for doing so, the latter travel for survival, and– alarmingly – are condemned for doing so.For Bauman, it is this ‘lie of the free trade promise’ that marks the present day combination of the annulment of entry visas and the reinforcement of immigration controls with a particular symbolic significance.In short, it lays bare the fact that ‘access to global mobility’ is the basis of a world-wide re-stratification.To put it in a nutshell: if indeed we are nowadays ‘all on the move’, only some of us are permitted to be so.Moreover, Bauman notes how the dismantling of all barriers to the free movement of capital, commodities and information, and its carriers, is accompanied by the concomitant production of new and ever-higher barriers to keep out the multitude wishing to follow suit and go where the opportunities beckon.This is supported by the sociological and political phenomenon highlighted at the start of the chapter in relation to the world being ‘full’.This new ‘fullness’ of the planet – or, perhaps more accurately, of those particular areas of the planet where dreams and desires are most likely to be realized – have resulted in an acute crisis of what Bauman calls the“human waste disposal industry” (Bauman 2004:7).According to him, globalization has become a prolific production line of ‘wasted humans’ precisely because of the global spread of the ‘liquid modern’ form of life as a single homogenising force.Those different forms of human life and togetherness that, heretofore, represented adequate ways and means of survival in both the biological and sociological sense are destroyed by the dominance of the global over all aspects of the local.As a result, those who represent difference – and thus evoke precisely those feelings of uncertainty and insecurity endemic to ‘liquid life’ – are uniquely suitable to play the part of visible local target for the unloading of frustrations caused by invisible global forces.As Bauman suggests:3 For an insightful discussion of the concept of ‘utopia’ in Bauman’s sociology more broadly, see Jacobsen (2006).146The Sociology of Zygmunt BaumanAfter all, asylum seekers and ‘economic migrants’ are collective replicas (an alter ego?, fellow travellers?, mirror-images?, caricatures?) of the new power elite of the globalized world, widely (and with reason) suspected to be the true villain of the piece.Like that elite, they are untied to any place, shifty, unpredictable.Like that elite, they epitomize the unfathomable ‘space of flows’ where the roots of the present-day precariousness of the human condition are sunk (Bauman 2004:66).And it is these groups of asylum seekers, ‘economic migrants’ and refugees that represent the ‘human waste’ of globalization, the vagabond nightmare in the society of tourists.All periods of modernity have, of course, produced social suffering amongst the excluded.However, Bauman (2004) argues that the suffering experienced by the growing ranks of vagabonds is unique insofar as the included do not forge any common cause with those ‘wasted humans’ precisely because they rarely come into contact with them.By being managed and administered in localized camps or ‘sink estates’, the tourists have no opportunity to converse with vagabonds and, as a result of their stigmatization and criminalization, frequently have little desire to do so.As a consequence, an entire way of human-being-in-the-world is denied its reality and so easily removed from the realm of moral obligation.Indeed, it is this that represents one of the central ethical challenges that faces humanity in the era of globalization: the need to recognize the plight of the ‘wasted humans’ produced by those global processes that make the life of the tourist so desirable.One of the main obstacles to this ethical challenge is precisely the experience of insecurity and fear that ‘wasted humans’ are so often taken to embody.Furthermore, Bauman notes how current local solutions to these problems fail to address their global causes – ‘there are no local solutions to global problems’, as he frequently asserts.The growing pervasiveness of fear in ‘liquid modern’ society, coupled with an absence of global solutions, has led Bauman to explain globalization as entirely‘negative’.Negative Globalization and Liquid FearFear has become the dominant currency of contemporary public life.It is the public resource increasingly mined in order to boost the legitimacy and authority of extant political and economic institutions, as well as individual politicians themselves.As the individualized society comes increasingly under siege from processes of globalization, there is a reduction in, and perhaps the cancellation of, the ability of ordinary men and women to collectively negotiate the reality of those fears and anxieties that they may all privately feel.The ‘flexibilization’ inherent in these processes of globalization – which themselves are taken to be entirely ‘negative’ –have led to a political economy of insecurity in which human misery is commonplace and the human condition is characterized by humiliation, distress, anxiety and fear.The negative impulse of globalization not only leads to the experiential awareness of an exponentially changing world, but also to the realization that our collective ability to manage and shape this change has become impotent [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]