Zygmunt Bauman: Soziologie unterwegs zur Flüchtigen Moderne

Zygmunt Bauman has from his beginning in the early sixties followed an interest in clarifying the social meaning and consequences of modernity, postmodernity, and finally, liquid modernity. This process was accompanied by theoretical, methodological, and diagnostical considerations. All of these considerations follow the idea of the centrality of power for the social order to avoid ambivalence as the central issue and problem of all kind of sociation. The social solution for this problem is the avoidance of ambivalence as well as the bifurcation of the social between the haves and the have-nots. Sociology has to react on these circumstances by developing a new methodology and theory of sociation, leaving behind the idea of a united society and opening up to ideas which can grasp liquidity as the central element of sociation. Liquidity is the starting point for the development of a new sociology for the future of society where »all that’s solid melts into air«.