ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses the relationship between politico-juridical institutions and the functioning of gender as a conceptual and pragmatic device at both social and institutional levels. It examines the fundamental conflict between the move toward re-establishing identity-based binaries and resistance to such binaries. The book considers the opportunities and limitations that gendered conceptions of human rights represent in the context of the Council of Europe. It examines the relationship between politicized identity, culture and the binary-based nature of identity in the law. The book explores the relationship between the form and the substance of 'doing the law' by conceptualizing the relationship between individual performance and the performativity of the law. It focuses on queer and feminist anthropologist literature on institutions, legal categories and relationships, and points out the vulnerability risks that gender produces in relation to the growing importance of the inheritance institution.
