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We begin by imagining! Perhaps more accurately stated, we begin by “reimagining” ’ as we take the opportunity presented in this book to realize two aims. First, we want to contribute to reinvigorating postcolonial discourse with these chapters serving as a dialogue among contributors and with the reader. The book also serves as an epistemological and methodological encounter with the wider social discourse, underlining urgent and unfinished business. Our second aim is to push the boundaries of postcolonial perspectives, seeking to expose and provoke, deconstruct and reconstruct, centering education as cultural practice and acknowledging it as occurring within community. During our preparation of this book, we have come to recognize that imagination is essential when considering postcolo-nialism, because it is necessary to accommodate a wide range of critical perspectives, which are potentially allied theories concerning the conditions of postcoloniality.

As countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union make the transition from planned to market economies, issues of employment, labor productivity, and financial restructuring tend to dominate social discourse. With immediate, sometimes day-to-day crises commanding the public spotlight, attention fades from less obvious, longer-term processes involving demographic evolution and changing national health profiles. The effects of these processes, however, will have a substantial, tangible impact on how countries define and develop their new socioeconomic agendas.