Zygmunt Bauman vs. John Urry - en sociologisk supersværvægtskamp og socialitets- om mobilitetsformer

In this article, the authors present a clash of two of the titans of contemporary sociological theory, Zygmunt Bauman and John Urry, with special emphasis on the themes of mobility and sociality. Throughout the piece, and particularly by way of metaphors, Bauman's and Urry's understandings of several quintessential sociological issues are opposed, including: the metaphor of liquid modernity versus the mobility paradigm, tourists and vagabonds versus network capital, mismeeting versus meetingness, non-places versus moorings, society under siege versus mobile network society, moral/utopian sociology versus descriptive/dystopian sociology. The authors conclude the piece not by proclaiming victorious one of the combatants but by insisting that Bauman and Urry both provide important, yet highly incompatible, analyses of contemporary social landscape.