Zygmunt Bauman

Bauman used "liquid" to describe a society in which jobs, relationships, identities, and institutions no longer retain stable forms for long. He developed the concept most explicitly in his 2000 book Liquid Modernity.

Bauman used both terms during his career but increasingly preferred liquid modernity because it describes a transformed continuation of modern life rather than a clean break from it. Individual choice expands while security and lasting collective structures weaken.

The 1989 book argues that the Holocaust cannot be treated simply as a relapse into premodern barbarism. Bauman examines how bureaucracy, classification, technical efficiency, and divided responsibility helped make mass killing possible.

Bauman lost his academic position and left Poland during the state-sponsored antisemitic campaign of 1968. He eventually joined the University of Leeds in Britain, where he became professor of sociology.