The Revival of the Left in the Balkans (Filip Balunović)

This Transformative Seminar explores how the critical discursive breakthrough of social movements in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia disrupted the post-socialist transitional status quo – it is based on the author's 2025 book The Revival of the Left in the Balkans. Counter-Hegemonic Activism and Ideas that Fueled It (Routledge).

While critical ideas have long fueled social and political actions, the specifics of their relationship with activism have received limited scholarly attention. This seminar discusses the emergence of new left actors through the lens of a maturation of consciousness, rather than the opening of structural or other “windows of opportunity,” suggesting the potential for such actors to emerge stemmed from the exposure of a segment of the populace to critical ideas. Questions surrounding the relevance of different types of knowledge in contemporary movements, their origins, dissemination, and the organizational factors shaping their adoption within social movement collectives are central to this work as the Balunović digs into the intricate relationship between critical knowledge and activism, explores the cognitive underpinnings of critical social and political engagement, and examines the influence of both non-theoretical and theoretical knowledge.

Filip Balunović is a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade and an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Media and Communication (Singidunum University in Belgrade). Balunović received his PhD from the Department of Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence (2020).

More information on this event: https://www.recet.at/event-news/events/detail/the-revival-of-the-left-in-the-balkans

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