Sociologists Zygmunt Bauman and Alain Touraine win Spanish Prince of Asturias award

Sociologists Bauman, Touraine win Spanish award

MADRID — Sociologists Zygmunt Bauman and Alain Touraine have been awarded Spain’s prestigious Prince of Asturias Communication and Humanities award for their contributions to modern thought, the organizing foundation said Thursday.

Bauman and Touraine are “two of the highest representatives of current European thought,” the Prince of Asturias Foundation said.

They are credited analyzing changes in contemporary social structures and “developed key concepts for the understanding of fundamental issues of our time.”

Frenchman Touraine was a Harvard University Rockefeller Fellow and in 1956 founded the Research Center for the Sociology of Labor at the University of Chile.

He coined the term “postindustrial society” and published 20 books in which he explored the “sociology of action” and the analysis of social movements.

He strongly opposed the neoliberal political movement of the 1990s and advocated social movement against globalization, which he said fragments society and fosters individualism.

Bauman was Polish-born of Jewish descent but today is a British national. He moved to the Soviet Union at the start of World War II, and later returned to teach at Warsaw University before being exiled for political reasons in 1968.

He has taught at Tel Aviv University and at universities in the United States, Australia, Canada and now as emeritus professor of Sociology at Leeds University in Britain.

Bauman’s analysis of the links between modernity, Nazism and postmodern communism earned him international acclaim.

He researched concepts like liquid modernity, which defines the contemporary era as one of change and constant movement in which individuals no longer have consistent frames of reference.

His theories are a major influence on the anti-globalization movement, and in his book “Modernity and the Holocaust” (1989) he argues that the Nazi extermination of Jews in the 1940s was a phenomenon linked to the development of modernity.

The communication and humanities award is one of eight handed out each year by the Prince of Asturias Foundation, ranging from arts and humanities to scientific research.

The awards are named after Spain’s Crown Prince Felipe.