Zygmunt Bauman was a Polish philosopher, sociologist, teacher and writer. His work influences studies in sociology, philosophy and psychology. He is one of the greatest intellectuals of the 21st century . When studying human interactions in late Modernity, also called Post-Modernity, he realized that “relationships flow through the space between the fingers” .
These are less long-lasting relationships, there is a pervasive fear that makes individuals insecure and self-centered, so security is sought in the immediate pleasure that consumption can offer, in voluntary isolation, in the distance from different people and in the fleetingness of relationships that do not. support errors or adversity.
In these phenomena, Bauman found a common point: liquidity . Based on his acumen and genius, he took a hard look at what he conceptualized as liquid modernity, liquid love and liquid fear.
Also read: Karl Marx – great influencer of Bauman’s thought
Biography of Zygmunt Bauman
Zygmunt Bauman was born on November 19, 1925, in Poznan, Poland . Of Jewish descent, he fled with his family after the invasion of Nazi troops in his country. In 1939, his family took refuge in the Soviet Union . Bauman enlisted in the First Polish Army , serving in the Soviet-controlled group as a political instructor. In 1940, he joined the Unified Workers Party, Poland’s communist party. In 1945, he joined the Military Intelligence Service , where he remained for three years.
Zygmunt Bauman in the uniform of major of the Homeland Security Corps, Polish special military unit (1953).
After the end of World War II , Bauman returned to Warsaw and reconciled his military career with academic studies and political militancy in the Workers’ Party. Studied S ociologia in Political and Social Sciences Academy of Warsaw and continued studies attending master’s degree at the University of Warsaw. In 1950, he left the Workers’ Party, and in 1953, he was expelled from the Polish army.
He completed his master’s degree in 1954 and became an assistant professor of sociology at the university where he studied. Although close to Marxist orthodoxy , influenced by Antonio Gramsci and Georg Simmel, his criticisms of the Polish government, which at the time was communist, brought him persecutions for 15 years , to the point that, in 1968, he was dismissed, lost Polish citizenship and, together with his wife, as well as other Poles of Jewish origin, to be expelled from Poland .
Although critical of his country’s communist government, Bauman was active in a humanist perspective of Marxism and declared himself a socialist until the end of his life. They went into exile initially in Israel, where he taught at the University of Tel-aviv .
In 1971, he was invited to teach sociology at the University of Leeds in England . He worked there until his retirement in 1990. In addition to being a professor, he was director of the department of Sociology at that institution. Since he moved to England and his publications were mostly in English, his notoriety has reached the world. He was one of the greatest intellectuals to talk about the so-called Post-Modernity.
He married also Jewish and writer Janina Bauman , whom he met in his youth, when he served in the war, and with whom he lived until her death in 2009, having three daughters together: Irena, Lydia and Anna. Bauman passed away on January 9, 2017, at the age of 91 .
In all published 50 works, of which the most prominent were: The malaise of P os M odernidade (1997), Modernity l íquida (2000), Liquid Love (2003) and net Fear (2006). His last work, Strangers at our door (2016), spoke about the refugee crisis that migrated to Europe at that time.
Don’t stop now … There’s more after the publicity;)
Theories of Zygmunt Bauman
Bauman, although a professor of classical sociological training , after retiring, turned his attention to the analysis of the new times that pointed on the horizon of late Modernity. The keen and distant look of a man who lived through the most profound experiences that marked the 20th century allowed him to assess with the necessary strangeness the changes that were coming.
His analyzes focused especially on the fluidity of human relationships and the general feeling of fear .
Bauman, one of the most important intellectual voices of this century, coined new concepts: liquid modernity, liquid love, liquid fear. Why the insistence on derivatives of the word liquidity? Because its basic characteristics – malleability, fluidity and diffusion – are easily identified in the way people relate to each other, with time, with themselves, in short, with the way of life that developed in Late Modernity or Post- Modernity.
Zygmunt Bauman remained in intellectual activity throughout his life. [1]
Bauman places individualization as a hallmark of modern society , and shows his ambivalence in terms of giving autonomy to individuals and, at the same time, insecurity in making them responsible for the future and for the meaning of their lives without an external social determination. In this process, individualization is configured as an exchange of the values of freedom and security.
Fear is defined by Bauman as ignorance of the threat and what must be done. It develops the concept of secondary fear, a fear, always socially and culturally updated, which guides the individual’s behavior whether or not there is a direct threat. This feeling, also called derivative, causes a feeling of vulnerability to danger and insecurity and is easily detached from the threats that initially caused it, that is, it is a detached fear from reality , which generates insecurity and anxiety even in the case of hypothetical situations.
In liquid and modern society, there is the fragmentation of primary fear – fear of death – into countless concerns and its incorporation into the flow of daily life, since the idea of death was disconnected from its religious sense of passage to another life and from eternity. This insertion of primary fear in everyday concern makes it total and paramount in the choices to be made and in the very constitution of behavior.
Bauman emphasizes the fact that protection against individual misfortunes, previously delegated to the State (of social welfare) or to communities, becomes the responsibility of individuals, which has the consequence of weakening human bonds , the inconsistency of communal loyalties. and the revocability of commitments. Individuals seek isolated solutions to socially produced problems and are encouraged to prioritize their personal safety. The individual search for any goals and not belonging to a group lead to distrust of the possible solidarity of others and even to the belief that maleficence makes up the intention of others.
Derived fear, as a behavior guide, leads individuals to always be alert about risks, and because fear is diffuse, it can be found anywhere, even in other people’s behavior. Everyone becomes a potential stranger, since it is never possible to fully predict the intent of others. Security is identified in self-isolation, and the supply of the need for social relationships is mediated , in part, by technology that allows a contact not necessarily delimited in a common physical space.
Bauman puts human relationships as fickle. There is a distrust of the faithfulness of the others and unwillingness to build – up durable and strong partnerships . The breaking of relationships (loving or not) is defined as metaphorical death or third degree death.
Relationships are based on the fear of exclusion. You never know where the coup will come from, who will get tired of uncomfortable and difficult commitments first or find more promising relationships. Both before and after this metaphorical death, time is fragmented and discontinuous , the rupture does not delay the flow of life, nor does it interrupt it. The fragility of human bonds allows them not to be feared or difficult to maintain and their disconnection is not so painful, but they also bring insecurity about the possibility of exclusion.
Happiness and security are pursued individually . Pragmatism also penetrates social relationships. Loneliness, defined as an undercover insight into the fear of death, is expelled by the search for the other in a utilitarian and punctual way.
The freedom granted in exchange for security becomes a sensation through consumption . The search for protection is materialized in commodities by manipulating the fear of death as a profit generator. The amount of entertainment services and the imitation of a city within a closed condominium can be seen as ways of forging the freedom lost through spatial isolation. The consumption itself can provoke a sense of freedom, since the possession of money allows several choices of locomotion and acquisition of goods.
Communities are also consumed and are not perpetuated beyond their usefulness. They are flexible, their creation and dismantling are based on choices, and these should not harm or prevent other decisions from being taken. They are transformed into consumer articles aimed at protection.
In this sense, Bauman cites the aesthetic community , created by the entertainment industry. She is guided by appearance and uses seduction as a tool. The reference is some celebrity, someone who has many followers. The transmission of news about experiences, tastes, in short, everything that involves the life of this celebrity, makes fans feel part of it without making uncomfortable commitments. There is a union experienced as if it were real that does not affect the preservation and execution of individual desires.
Another example of a community is the closed condominiums, called Bauman closed communities , places of voluntary exile – which implies the absence of long-term commitments – in which mental and moral distance and the escape from feeling and the construction of intimacy are practiced. All other people, with their different ways of life, are avoided and seen as outsiders. There is a reduction in the possibilities of encountering difference , of facing a cultural challenge. In this context, the self is built based on preferences and consumption possibilities: you are what you like and are able to buy.
The increase in inequality is not an accidental and neglected side effect, it is, rather, an integral part of a conception of human happiness and comfortable life, as well as the strategy dictated by that conception. This conception and strategy can be considered and enjoyed only as privileges, and it is practically impossible to expand its scope. The obsession with security itself is shared more intensely by the privileged group that has more means of guaranteeing protection, and the feared human violence is fueled by established and growing inequalities.
The derived fear, as a stable mental structure, becomes determinant of behavior, and, by decoupling the fear of direct threat, adding to the fact that the fear of death is secularized and diluted in everyday concerns, it becomes totalizing, which reflects in the behavior of individuals as a constant state of alert in relation to the most diverse circumstances and also in relation to people who become strangers as their intentions are unknown.
Communities created and consumed become the place to expel difference and flee from strangers while they are guided by pragmatic and non-possessive social relations, both intense and fleeting, delimited by specific needs and doomed to break as soon as those needs are satisfied. Diffuse fear is personified in strangers , and strangers become combatable as specific categories or simply as difference.
Life in its entirety and in the specificity of human relations is illustrated by Bauman as a succession of episodes and a series of new beginnings.
