Knowledge has always been the object of special attention and care (as it were "cultivated knowledge"), while at the same time it provides the interpretive contexts that initiate and guide cultural practices. Understanding knowledge as culture contends that the social fundamentals and various forms of knowledge should be regarded as mutually intertwined. A knowledge-oriented approach to pre-modern Southeastern Europe combines the following fields of research:
1) the interplay of oral and written forms of knowledge as well as the significance of multilingualism and multiscripturality;
2) the role of knowledge in and for the establishment, transmission and implementation of claims to power;
3) the plurality knowledge in its evolution, including the reinterpretation or even the loss of traditional forms, by taking account;
4) the prolonged relevance of the religious as the primary form of knowledge that overrides and legitimizes all others;
5) the gradual establishment of written procedures, the juridification of governance and the standardization in other areas as part of institutionalization processes in the transition to modernity.