VOLUME PROJECT - GENDER IN STUDY. Stereotypes, identities, codes and politics Editors: Christian DE MONTLIBERT (University March Bloch, Strasbourg) Daniela RADU (University of South-East Europe, Bucharest) Andreea ZAMFIRA (University of South-East Europe & Centre Régional Francophone de Recherches Avancées en Sciences Sociales, Bucharest) I. ARGUMENTUM American clinical psychologists (John Money, 1950; Robert Stoler, 1968) have reported counts of dissociation between patients’ anatomical structure and the configuration of their identity. Since the ‘70s, various theoretical models have explained and described the male/ female syntagm as a natural, biological given, and the masculine/ feminine one as a cultural construct defined as a result of individuals’ interactions within social and micropolitical spaces (Anne Oakley, Thomas Laqueur, Michel Foucault, Elisabeth Badinter, Pierre Bourdieu, etc ). This turning point not only brings more conceptual clarity regarding gender but also the necessity of developing around it an ordered system of thought, gender studies. Thus, starting with the ‘80s, gender becomes a useful instrument in understanding, constructing, and deconstructing the male/ female relation, and gender studies generously offer a wide interdisciplinary field of specific approaches such as: anthropology, history, sociology, political studies, international relations, etc. The premises of gender studies are shaped around the idea that the attributed biological status does not represent more than the primary material that is subsequently transformed by values and norms, through the process of primary or secondary socialization, into masculinity and femininit y. The cultural and social construction of masculinity and femininity is the result of an intellectual distinction between the biological and cultural/ social dimensions, but also offers the perspective to reconsider the terms of this interaction. Researchers in gender studies extract their research objects either from the vaster category of the traditional fields (labor market, migration, discrimination within professional or home environments, lack of access to resources and gendering public spaces) or they address other areas such as the reproduction of stereotypes and of the subordination relations that were socially and historically constructed, the manner in which role conflict contributed to the reconfiguration of identities, the relation between human rights, negative freedom and what is considered to be politically correct at a national and community level, etc. The epistemological exigency demands the insertion of every research within a clearly defined field of study. A research that is conducted from the perspective of gender studies could entail obstacles precisely because of the plurality of interdisciplinary perspectives that it encompasses. It comes down to the researcher to have the ability to use this plurality in his/ her favor, thus establishing a privileged approach which could be complemented by other supplementary approaches that have a role in enriching and underlining the originality of the paper. Another challenge for researchers in the field of gender studies could be represented by the operationalization of indicators. Measuring gender inequalities could be a difficult challenge, since they are historically determined and they reflect the cultural and social relations of domination at a community level. II. DESCRIPTION OF THE VOLUME This volume is mainly based on papers presented at 2015 LUSEEC Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences in Bucharest. LUSEEC Conference was dedicated to Perspectives on Gender in a Global World. The conference aimed to scientifically address the gender balance encompassing various approaches: Philosophy, Anthropology and Sociology, History and Law, Political Science and International Relations. Beside these written versions of the LUSEEC communications, the volume includes papers gathered through open call and rigorously selected by our peer-review committee. The contributors of this volume, most of them having the gender studies as major academic field of specialization, work in universities from the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Poland, Slovakia, Albania, Romania, etc. The title, Gender in Study. Stereotypes, identities, codes and politics, emphasizes the centrality of the gender issue and the multidisciplinary structure of the volume. Not only the authors belong to different disciplinary fields. Also the editors have quite different academic backgrounds. Christian de Montlibert is a French sociologist, Professor Emeritus at the University March Bloch of Strasbourg, with representative research for the structuralist-constructivist perspective initiated by Pierre Bourdieu and particularly interested in explaining the different forms of social and symbolic domination. Daniela Radu is a Romanian lecturer and researcher in International Relations and a practitioner of Human Rights (within projects of UN Geneva & University of Geneva), mainly preoccupied by the situation of the vulnerable categories of population in Africa (women, children). Andreea Zamfira, Romanian political and social scientist, member of Francophone research centres (CEREFREA – Bucharest and CEVIPOL – Brussels), has dedicated the majority of her works to social representations and political behaviours in multiethnic communities. Having in common the interest for social psychology, for the social construction of (social, ethno-cultural, gender) differences and their reproduction, the editors aim to form an interdisciplinary volume of gender studies on how stereotypes, identities, codes and politics are structured and structure the contemporary societies. IV. GENERAL GUIDELINES Ø Number of characters for each paper is recommended to be around 40 000 – 50 000 (with spaces), including bibliography. Ø Every author is invited to transmit an abstract of approx. 15-20 lignes, 5-7 keywords and a short presentation (of no more than 10 lignes) of her/ his academic profile (studies, institutional affiliation, main domain of research, one or two of the most relevant publications). Deadline for submitting: 1 November 2016 V. PUBLISHING HOUSE The editors’ objective is to publish this collective volume to an A2 or A1 Publisher. Contact address: andreea.zamfira@ lumina.org