Southeast European Integration Perspectives

An Uncharted Transition focuses on the western Balkans and east-central Europe in an integrated approach attempting to evidence the main trends in, review the variety of interacting trajectories of and offer new insights into these regions. This essay sheds new light on some key issues, such as transition, integration, democratisation, the east–west divide and the core–periphery gap. Its aim is to highlight systemic change, to acknowledge the hybridisation of structural factors and individual ones, and to identify the oscillation between formality and informality, consolidation and deconsolidation, and democratisation and de-democratisation.

The author argues, first, that transition—characterised by instability, movement, alterations and ruptures—becomes the rule of any society, not exclusively that of ‘transitional societies’. And, secondly, away from the sequencing theorised on in democratisation studies, transition points tentatively—beyond the post-Wall period—to a new era: an age of transition characterised by uncertainty as well as by movement that creatively empowers a society to self-constitute. Accordingly, democracy is framed as an open-ended process, ‘under construction’, constantly interrogating itself.
An Uncharted Transition invites the reader to explore the new lands of democracy through forward-looking analyses based on a substantial number of sources in multiple languages. It presents if not a manifesto, then a wake-up call to those involved in shaping how Europe, central and eastern Europe specifically, could be in the future.

Christophe Solioz was involved from the early 1990s in various citizens’ initiatives in the former Yugoslavia, most notably in the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly (hCa). A founder member of the Association Bosnia and Herzegovina 2005 (2003–2005) and, later on, of the Center for European Integration Strategies (2005–2014), he was Professor of Philosophy and German literature at the Collège de Genève (2013–2022) and, in 2022, initiated the Multiplex Approach (MAP) Nomad Think Tank. He has written extensively on transition and democratisation as well as on EU integration and regionalism in south-east Europe.

Sarajevo Singular Plural offers a collection of contributions—essays as well as art and photography portfolios—focusing on Sarajevo as a ‘multiplex city’.
The book screens how ‘being with’—at one and the same time co-existence, exposure to each other and hybridisation—is translated into the permanent metamorphosis of a city merging its past and its future. Sarajevo’s recent past contains tragedies, suffering and failures of humanity as well as much unrealised hope and potential. The art and photography portfolios attempt in particular to capture this in delicate and refined ways.
The book scrutinises Sarajevo’s urban space from a diversity of standpoints, combining approaches inspired by architecture, urbanism, literature, art, anthropology, history, philosophy, the social sciences and politics. Sarajevo Singular Plural views the city as ceaselessly active and perpetually changing; it presupposes a multidimensional and collaborative system composed of highly reactive projects connecting a wide range of ‘drivers for change’.
This volume should not be regarded as a closed and completed whole, a form deposited once and for all, or a totality. It amounts rather to an open site, inviting a further combination of the different contributions, which may be conceived as fragments that elicit different readings of the urban space over time.
With contributions by
Gordana Anđelić-Galić | Ferida Duraković | Yvana Enzler | Selma Harrington | Srđa Hrisafović | Jasmina Husanović | Senka Ibrišimbegović | Milomir Kovačević-Strašni | Anida Krečo | Aleksandra Nina Knežević | Emina Kujundžić | Smirna Kulenović | Larisa Kurtović | Jasmina Memić | Nicolas Moll | Asim Mujkić | Jean-Luc Nancy | Edin Numankadić | Wolfgang Petritsch | Haris Piplaš | Christophe Solioz | Igor Štiks | Nenad Stojanović | Sabina Tanović | Nina Ugljen-Ademović | Kenan Vatrenjak | Mejrema Zatrić | Almin Zrno