ABSTRACT
In order to demonstrate that insecurity is indeed one of the ways in which freedom emerges in Zygmunt Bauman's writings, this chapter opens by usefully outlining the concept of insecurity as it emerges in Bauman's English-language writings. After a brief exposition of the concept in some of his earlier sociological work, it notes that the concept of insecurity develops through his work on modernity and postmodernity, becoming an explicit programmatic concern is a watershed moment in his writings, namely his overtly polemical text In Search of Politics. The chapter then argues that there are clear and identifiable thematic affinities between the work of Bauman and Fromm in terms of the ways in which freedom is conceptualized as a source of 'fear' that leads to this urge to escape. It closes on Bauman's pessimistic sounding note that the forces of negative globalization render any such escape from freedom impossible.
