Vedlejší škody

Collateral damage, a phrase known mainly from military terminology, is used by sociologist Zygmunt Bauman when he reflects on the growing social inequality and marginalisation of human suffering, which are reaching ever greater proportions.

Poverty is commonly perceived as a problem of the inability to earn money and is essentially criminalised. The lowest strata of society are in a position where others would prefer to be rid of them. This understanding of poverty obscures the social roots of inequality, which lie in the combination of the consumerist philosophy of life promoted and inculcated by a consumer-oriented economy and the diminishing life chances available to the poor. In our current, fluid and modern world, the poor are the collateral damage of a profit-driven society. They are the strangers within, deprived of the rights enjoyed by other members of the social order.

The publication of Collateral Damage, subtitled Social Inequalities in a Global Age, builds on Bauman's previous titles (Liquid Evil, Liquid Life, Liquid Fear, and Moral Blindness).