There are other ways of finding satisfaction, recipes for human happiness, enjoyment, dignified and meaningful, gratifying life, than increased consumption that increases production.
Zygmunt BaumanRead
The task for sociology is to come to the help of the individual. We have to be in service of freedom. It is something we have lost sight of.
Interpretation
Sociology should support individual freedom, which is often overlooked.
Zygmunt Bauman emphasizes the role of sociology in aiding individuals by focusing on their freedom. He suggests that in contemporary society, the importance of individual liberty has been overshadowed, and it is the responsibility of sociologists to help restore and support this essential aspect of human existence.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of sociology at a university seminar.
There are other ways of finding satisfaction, recipes for human happiness, enjoyment, dignified and meaningful, gratifying life, than increased consumption that increases production.
Civilisation, the orderly world in which we live, is frail. We are skating on thin ice. There is a fear of a collective disaster. Terrorism, genocide, flu, tsunamis.
In a liquid modern life there are no permanent bonds, and any that we take up for a time must be tied loosely so that they can be untied again, as quickly and as effortlessly as possible, when circumstances change - as they surely will in our liquid modern society, over and over again.
We belong to talking, not what talking is about... Stop talking - and you are out. Silence equals exclusion.
The carrying power of a bridge is not the average strength of the pillars, but the strength of the weakest pillar. I have always believed that you do not measure the health of a society by GNP but by the condition of its worst off.
As far as love is concerned, possession, power, fusion and disenchantment are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
If people dying as a consequence of the implementation of measures cannot count as evidence that the legislation has detrimental effects, what would?
Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance with which they cannot contend.
I'm very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That's my cultural historical background, my genetic make-up, but it's not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.
An adulterer will not commit adultery when he has full faith (in Allah), and a thief will not steal when he has full faith (in Allah).
Evil is license, and that is why it is monotonous: everything has to be drawn from ourselves. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself.
The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.