Introduction

The introductory chapter attempts to set the cornerstone points for drawing the framework to initiate critical re-examination of the modernization and modernism paradigms from the perspective of progressive ideologies and global histories of colonialism, enslavement, and subjugation of smaller and weaker nations worldwide. Since there is hardly any territorial nor geographical rationale to unify all the postsocialist countries, our focus in a geopolitical sense is on the area of The Balkans and South-Eastern Europe. After the self-undermining movement of postmodernism, our goal was to remind ourselves of the ideal of progress and the improvement of the human condition as crucial modern ideals. Second, the chapters present a reflection of a motivation to seek common features within the transformations all of them are facing after the transition to capitalism and abandoning the direction of alternative modernity. The overall goal of the collection is to initiate a critical examination of the transition paradigm and its real consequences, while at the same time, the aim is to open the door for imagining the progressive grounds for developmental politics of the states encaptured into a state of “postsocialist condition”, which relates to the self-declared socialist regimes or regimes which were characterized as such by the outside observers. As a concluding part, two more directions of how to explore the future common-grounded epistemologies have been drawn: one of them being the open exposure of the problematic foundation of the modernizing agendas rather than using the oversimplified meaning of the notion of decolonization in practice. The other direction could be seen as opening the ground for conducting country-specific, practical analysis grounded in the political philosophies of justice of distribution of knowledge production and growth; rather than just “culturalising” the problem of knowledge production inequalities on a global level.