Until a decade ago, a comprehensive contestation of the so-called
?transitional? paradigm was largely missing in the post-socialist era. This
reality changed in the last ten years, especially in the region of former
Yugoslavia. Some social movements in this region have started questioning
the very essence of the economic and social misconceptions of the
post-socialist condition. This paper first provides an elaboration of the
very conceptual edifice of the ruling paradigm (hence the object of the
critique of the three social movements in question), as well as a
theoretical and methodological framework. It goes on to map out the
epistemic discursive content of the respective social movements in Belgrade,
Zagreb and Sarajevo, thereby assessing the conceptual content of their
critique of the post-socialist transitional paradigm. Finally, given the
similarities between Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the paper
seeks to explain variations in the critique by how the structural and
contextual features impact the perspective from which it is constructed.
Social movements and critical discourses in former Yugoslavia: Structural approach