Yanitsky Oleg. N. Zigmunt Bauman, an outstanding theorist of modernity and postmodernity

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Abstract

The article is an attempt to summarize briefly the Bauman’s (1925-2017) input into modern theoretical sociology. A main point of his works is the ‘Liquid Modernity Concept’ in which social transformations are occurring permanently and simultaneously at all levels of social life, namely at the global, nation-state, local and individual ones. These multi-level transformations are burdened by permanent speeding up of these transformations as well as by the process of shifting of negative consequences of these processes on individual shoulders. It means that the sustainable development concept widely used in world political practice acquires very conditional sense. By the introduction and substantiation of the ‘Liquid Modernity Concept’ Bauman once more confirmed a postulate of system dynamics theory that any ‘sustainability’ has only been a moment of uninterrupted process of geopolitical and social transformations across the world. Another paramount input of Bauman’s work into sociological theory was an introduction in it the concept of ‘interregnum’ borrowed from Antonio Gramsci’s works. This concept signifies a special state of a society in the process of transition from one mode of production (i.e. modernity) to another one (i.e. postmodernity). According to Bauman, this ‘in-between’ state is not only a moment of transition process but a specific state of any social system that deserve detailed analysis. It is rather important that Bauman had not only been a critic of current global state of matters but he had been a humanist considered all social transformations and conflicts from their impact on the life of rank-and-file people.