ABSTRACT
Citizenship has become a living dead category. Since the decline of the welfare state, it provides much less protection or precise rights to vulnerable individuals or precarious communities; however, it remains the primary unit that organises our lives and limits our political imagination, freedom, and ability to be together. Beck and Bauman’s reflections on the position of sociology in post-industrial society was an ongoing dialogue throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. During this time, Bauman and Beck tried to redefine several crucial concepts. Bauman’s 2000 book on community preceded his best-known writings on liquid modernity, which consisted of several books written in an attempt to reinvent sociology for the second modernity. Soon after the publication of Liquid Modernity, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center. September 11, 2001, can be seen as the symbolic beginning of the zombie nation-state’s new era, founded on fear and anxiety of potential threats.
