Sociology of thinking

The book constitutes a building block in linking sociology with ethical philosophy and establishing a sociological theory of ethics, through criticizing some aspects of liquid modernity, such as Michael Herzfeld in his book on the social production of indifference. This book shows how bureaucratic institutions are capable of silencing moral motivations and suspending moral responsibility thanks to management technology, "not only among employees but also beyond the institution itself. It is achieved not only by appealing to self-preservation but also through the cooperation of victims and moral indifference on the part of bystanders," and proactive compliance may appear, "where victims do their best to please the executioners by guessing their intentions in advance and executing them with great enthusiasm, and in this way, genocidal managers can achieve their goals." Bauman clearly demonstrated this paradox through his book Modernity and the Holocaust, in which he discusses an extreme case (the Holocaust) to establish a sociological approach to this event as part of modernity, or one of its faces, not as a case of deviation or madness resulting from deviation from modernity and its nature. Bauman develops his critical analysis further with other examples in his book Ethics in Liquid Modernity, revealing how liquid modernity facilitates the process of eliminating moral commitments through statistical treatment of human actions, reducing individuals to mere numbers, losing their distinctive character, and depriving them of their independent existence as moral subjects.