Zygmunt Bauman’s “Hybrid Sociology”: Literary Imagination and Sociological Interpretation

Zygmunt Bauman is known to be a great sociologist with unique poetic and literary expressiveness. In his oeuvre, Bauman has created a number of impressive sociological portraits, provided an exceptional access to our discovering and understanding of the human conditions and dilemmas in postmodern era. Evidently, metaphors have performed a central role in his theoretical interpretation and diagnostical analysis of the liquid modernity. With his deliberate combination of sociological interpretation and literary imagination, Bauman breaks away from the confines and fetters of the orthodox sociology, thus developing his hybrid sociology. Bauman’s sociological narrative gives a full expression of his moral impulse; and in his enduring research, he is continuously appealing to people to bear their moral and ethical responsibility for the other, for the society. As an optimistic sociologist, Bauman holds the firm belief in the human potential and prospect to ultimately construct “a good society”. However, he does not offer a specific scheme to achieve this great ideal, due to his individualist narrowness and his utopian sociological imagination. His theories and methodological stance, therefore, are inapplicable to the interpretation of the social realities in China.