ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how modes of belonging shift shape in supermodernity. In supermodernity, people struggle with an ever-increasing number of tasks and duties, and personal and professional commitments must be continuously renegotiated. The chapter draws on aspects of Emile Durkheim's classic analysis of cooperation and social cohesion, which is still of relevance in helping to illuminate how interdependence can be both an effect of and an answer to the problems of supermodernity. It also explores how Angelika Overath's airport opens up Marc Auge's concept of non-places, revealing how places of transit can be the theatre of possible encounter. Flughafenfische might seem to confirm Auge's bleak vision of non-places and the negative consequences of supermodernity for identity and belonging. If examined through the Durkheimian lens, it is clear that Flughafenfische also presents the reader with a plurality of fishy and human relationships that show how diversity can lead to cooperation and social solidarity.
