Utopianism in the Work of Zygmunt Bauman: towards a sociology of alternative realities

Utopia has been a concern of philosophers for centuries. For most sociologists, however, a preoccupation with such a theme has been regarded as scientifically redundant and as an unnecessary departure from reality. For them, sociology must deal with what is, not with what could be or ought to be. In recent years, the sociological theory of Zygmunt Bauman has been instrumental in pointing to the possibilities, for sociology as well as for society, in utopian thinking which, in his view, must lead to social action and a change in the current condition of what he terms liquid modernity. His theories, though, also contain an uncompromising critique of and challenge to conventional modernist understandings of utopia and he instead proposes a line of utopian thought pointing to alternative realities alongside or parallel to contemporary society. Only by proposing utopia as an open-ended vision of the good society or the common good can we escape the iron-cages of no alternatives, human suffering and precariousness, which Bauman regards as signs of the times, and replace them with a free, autonomous, and moral social order based on mutual responsibility and solidarity.