ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to go ‘beyond’ Zygmunt Bauman by advancing his view of the overall purpose and role of sociology. In particular, I will discuss the connections he draws between the vocation of sociology, his sociological hermeneutics method and the legislator and interpreters roles. By pursuing these connections Bauman has given us a particular and well-elaborated view of what sociology is and should be (Bauman et al. 2014); one which I hope to push in new directions.1 Reflecting on this vision of sociology Bauman once wrote that:
By doing its job – re-presenting human condition as the product of human actions – sociology was and is to me a critique of extant social reality. Sociology is meant to expose the relatively of what is, to open the possibility of alternative social arrangements and ways of life, to militate against the TINA (‘There Is No Alternative’) ideologies and life philosophies. As an interpretation of human experience laying bare its invisible, hidden or covered-up links, the mission of sociology, as I understood it all along, was to keep other options alive.
