Zygmunt Bauman – The wicked openness of society

Abstract

In this paper, we will analyze Zygmunt Bauman’s understanding of
the idea and the reality of “open” society in the age of “negative globalization”.
He identified many adverse and undesirable effects of this
social process, and as the basic one he names the “openness” of modern
societies. Under the influence of devastating powers of globalization,
the “openness” of societies has turned into its perverted contradiction,
to use Karl Popper’s definition of this notion. In order to understand
Bauman’s point of view, we will analyze: a general meaning of the
idea of an open society, its manifestations in reality and assumptions
regarding it. In the addition, we will investigate a distinction between
an open and closed society made by Karl Popper.