The Other as a Sociological Phenomenon in Zygmunt Bauman's Thought

Abstract

Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish sociologist of Jewish origin, faced Nazism and was exposed to it. Accordingly, he developed critical thoughts on modernity. These ideas include comparisons between modernity and postmodernity. These comparisons mainly consist of questions and determinations about how the other is positioned in the modern and postmodern situation. This study is a compilation of Zygmunt Bauman's ideas on the other. The ongoing but at the same time, in Bauman's words, liquid modernity and the filling of the gap by postmodernity arising from the rejection of modernity's approach based on order and getting rid of the discrete are discussed around the figure of the other in this study. In both cases, how the other is positioned in the social sphere, how it is perceived, and what constitutes a friend and what constitutes an enemy are discussed and evaluated on the basis of Bauman's ideas in his works. The concept of the other, which is one of the basic research objects of social sciences, emerges in Bauman's sociological evaluations not as passive and to be transformed, but as an analogy for the self to make space for it. This is both a way and an ethical way to escape from the destructive and uniformizing effect of modernity. At this point, while Bauman criticizes modernity, it is also discussed in this study that his ideas that have survived to the present day are still valid.