Eléments pour une sociologie des études féministes en Europe centrale et orientale

Abstract

Women's/gender studies were established in the Eastern European postcommunist countries during the 1990s, as a new field of academic research and higher education. Works produced in this framework are often used as expert studies and aim to contribute to the improvement of the condition of women in that region, being at the core of the social and political reconstitution programs during the post-communist era. They were established by agents who were simultaneously active in different social spheres (scientific space, civil society associations, or institutionalized politics) and who exemplarily personify the multisituated feminism of the globalization era. These studies criss-cross national and international levels as well as scientific and militant logics. Hence they seem a pertinent entry to study the reconstruction of social sciences, the emergence of new academic topics, the international circulation and the importation of scientific questions and, finally, the recomposition of the academic elites within the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The article begins with a general point about the East-European context of the 1990s, when the socio-economic degradation of women's condition met a widely-spread rejection of feminist ideas due to their ideological manipulation by the socialist regimes. Then a zoom on the Romanian case allows us a reflection on the construction of the 'women's issue' during the post-communist transition, when several types of agents involved in the democratization reforms make theirs the transnational concern for women's rights. Finally, on the basis of these preliminary ideas, some research axes and working hypotheses are presented, such as: the sociology of gender studies as a new academic discipline, in a perspective inspired by the social history of social sciences; the sociology of the international circulation of feminist ideas and of the dynamics of EastÁWest intellectual debates on the topic of women's condition in the post-communist countries; the analysis of the multiplying bureaucratic uses of 'gender' consequences.Le domaine de recherche et d'enseignement des women's/gender/feminist studies 1 s'est institutionnalisé dans les pays d'Europe centrale et orientale (PECO) pendant la décennie 1990. Les travaux rangés sous ces labels fonctionnent souvent à des fins d'expertise, se donnent pour but de contribuer à améliorer la condition des femmes et se situent au coeur des programmes de recomposition sociale et politique lors de la sortie du communisme. Mises en place par des agents qui investissent simultanément des espaces sociaux contrastés (associatif, scientifique et politique), ces études se *

Between Westernization and Traditionalism: Central and Eastern European Academia during the Transformation in the 1990s

“…pp. 5-21;Rossman 2021;Cîrstocea 2010; 2019. 117 Discussed in Pető 2006.118 Rossman 2022;Titarenko, Zdravomyslova 2017, p. 131.…”

Feminist gender wars

“…Such concept has been used by different authors in different countries in order to explain a large variety of social phenomena, bringing important insights in how and why our society works the way it works, and why is it organized the way it is organized (Almeida et al, 2004;Beigel, 2010;Canêdo, 2009;Canêdo, Tomizaki, & Garcia, 2013;Cîrstocea, 2010;Convert & Heilbron, 2004;Garcia, 1993Garcia, , 2005Garcia, , 2009aGarcia, , 2009bGarcia, , 2013Heilbron, 1995;Hey, 2008;Lebaron, 1997;Matonti & Poupeau, 2004a, 2004bSapiro, 1999;Sorá, 1998Sorá, , 2011. Some of them have used such concept to explain the space of knowledge production in universities and the higher education system as a whole, following many of Bourdieu's propositions in his book Homo Academicus (Bourdieu, 1984c).…”