43 Dragana Vilic Zygmunt Bauman – Te wicked openness of society Dragana Vilić 1 Original scientifc paper University of Banja Luka UDC 316.334.3:929 BAUMANZ. Faculty of Economics DOI 10.7251/SOCEN1713043V Department for Business Accepted: 22.9.2017. Economics and Management  Majke Jugovica 4, 78000 Banja Luka dragana.vilic@ef.unibl.org Zygmunt Bauman – Te 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 glo- balization”. He identifed many adverse and undesirable efects of this social process, and as the basic one he names the “openness” of modern societies. Under the infuence of devastating powers of globalization, the “openness” of societies has turned into its perverted contradiction, to use Karl Popper’s defnition 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. Keywords: Open society, closed society, negative globalization Introduction Te advocates of postmodern theory believe that at the end of the 1960s we witnessed the end of modernism and organizational character of the in- dustrial society (culture, style, way of life, way of production etc.) that pre- vailed in Europe since the 17th century. Te lifestyle of the industrial age has undergone a signifcant transformation, and postmodern theoreticians no 1 PhD in Sociology, Scientifc area Teoretical Sociology, Associate Professor.