INTERSECTIONALITY: Mapping the Movements of a Theory.
TL;DR: This special issue reflects upon the genesis of intersectionality, engages some of the debates about its scope and theoretical capacity, marks some of its disciplinary and global travels, and explores the future trajectory of the theory.
Abstract: Very few theories have generated the kind of interdisciplinary and global engagement that marks the intellectual history of intersectionality. Yet, there has been very little effort to reflect upon precisely how intersectionality has moved across time, disciplines, issues, and geographic and national boundaries. Our failure to attend to intersectionality's movement has limited our ability to see the theory in places in which it is already doing work and to imagine other places to which the theory might be taken. Addressing these questions, this special issue reflects upon the genesis of intersectionality, engages some of the debates about its scope and theoretical capacity, marks some of its disciplinary and global travels, and explores the future trajectory of the theory. To do so, the volume includes academics from across the disciplines and from outside of the United States. Their respective contributions help us to understand how intersectionality has moved and to broaden our sense of where the theory might still go.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine three interdependent sets of concerns: intersectionality as a field of study that is situated within the power relations that it studies, intersectional as an analytical strategy that provides new angles of vision on social phenomena, and intersectional knowledge project as critical praxis that informs social justice projects.
Abstract: The term intersectionality references the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena. Despite this general consensus, definitions of what counts as intersectionality are far from clear. In this article, I analyze intersectionality as a knowledge project whose raison d'etre lies in its attentiveness to power relations and social inequalities. I examine three interdependent sets of concerns: (a) intersectionality as a field of study that is situated within the power relations that it studies; (b) intersectionality as an analytical strategy that provides new angles of vision on social phenomena; and (c) intersectionality as critical praxis that informs social justice projects.
1,228 citations
Cites background from "INTERSECTIONALITY: Mapping the Move..."
...From various vantage points, scholars claim the language of intersectionality (Carbado et al. 2013, Cho et al. 2013)....
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...…of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, volume 54, issue 1, in 2010; Social Politics, volume 19, issue 4, Winter, and Gender and Society, volume 26, issue 1, February, in 2012; Signs, volume 38, issue 4 (Cho et al. 2013), in 2013; and Du Bois Review, volume 10, issue 2 (Carbado et al. 2013), in 2013....
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TL;DR: The current interest in intersectionality in psychology presents an opportunity to draw psychologists' attention more to structural-level issues and to make social justice and equity more central agendas to the field.
Abstract: Intersectionality is receiving increasing attention in many fields, including psychology. This theory or framework has its roots in the work of Black feminist scholar-activists, and it focuses on interlocking systems of oppression and the need to work toward structural-level changes to promote social justice and equity. Thus, the current interest in intersectionality in psychology presents an opportunity to draw psychologists' attention more to structural-level issues and to make social justice and equity more central agendas to the field. The large, ever-growing bodies of research demonstrating the wide-ranging adverse consequences of structural- and interpersonal-level oppression, inequality, and stigma for the health and well-being of many diverse groups of people support that these issues are central to the field of psychology. We as individual psychologists and the field as a whole can work to fully incorporate the insights of intersectionality and therefore contribute to making social justice and equity more central across the varied subfields and realms of our work. Specific ways that we can do this are to (a) engage and collaborate with communities, (b) address and critique societal structures, (c) work together/build coalitions, (d) attend to resistance in addition to resilience, and (e) teach social justice curricula. There are important examples both within and outside of psychology that can guide us in achieving these goals. These suggestions are meant to foster conversation and consideration by psychologists across all subfields and areas of focus. (PsycINFO Database Record
264 citations
Cites background from "INTERSECTIONALITY: Mapping the Move..."
...One example of how psychologists can build on and add to multicultural and diversity curricula to address social justice and equity issues is to directly teach about power and privilege at a structural level in psychology courses (Case, 2013)....
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TL;DR: Whether being in or out of the closet is associated with depression and anxiety largely depends on gender, and clinical and policy implications are discussed in terms of the unique stressors facing men and women both in and out the closet.
Abstract: Objectives
Previous studies find that sexual orientation concealment affords escape from stigma and discrimination but also creates a psychological toll. While disclosure alleviates the mental burden of concealment, it invites the stress of navigating a new public identity. Population-based samples that include both “in” and “out” sexual minorities provide an ideal opportunity to resolve limitations and inconsistencies of previous non-probability investigations into the mental health correlates of concealment and disclosure.
147 citations
Cites background from "INTERSECTIONALITY: Mapping the Move..."
...…tests of interaction to capture the nuanced meaning and mental health consequences of possessing multiple stigmatized identities, both concealable and visible, in contexts of inequality across the life course (Carbado, Crenshaw, Mays, & Tomlinson, 2013; Clarke & McCall, 2013; Cole, 2009)....
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TL;DR: In 1989, Crenshaw introduced the term intersectionality to the academy to demonstrate how U.S. structures, such as the... as mentioned in this paper, can be classified as intersectional.
Abstract: Grounded in Black feminist and critical race theories, legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw introduced the term “intersectionality” to the academy in 1989 to demonstrate how U.S. structures, such as the...
128 citations
Cites background from "INTERSECTIONALITY: Mapping the Move..."
...Although legal theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the term “intersectionality” in 1989 and used it to frame the marginalization of Black women in antidiscrimination law (Carbado et al., 2013), the origins of intersectionality date back much further....
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01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: Loiselle et al. as discussed by the authors used the 1979 movie Norma Rae as an entry into the global textile and garment industry and as an example of contested cultural production to reveal the importance of status and capitalist mechanisms in the arena of cultural politics, especially regarding questions of who contests and shapes the visibility and meanings for “working class,” “worker, and “American.”
Abstract: This dissertation uses the 1979 movie Norma Rae as an entry into the global textile and garment industry and as an example of contested cultural production. It argues that U.S. colonial experimentation with the labor of Puerto Rican needleworkers helped to propel a disaggregation of manufacturing, but an American fascination with poor white southerners led media to focus on Crystal Lee Sutton in the 1970s. In recycling the narrative of white workingclass individuals in isolated circumstances, Norma Rae elided a history of collective southern activism and contributed to the erasure of Puerto Rican women. The dissertation does not simply recover Sutton but reevaluates the context in which she labored, expanding it to the Atlantic U.S. as a whole, including Puerto Rico. The dissertation makes a vital contribution in its use of archives fragmented by colonialism and racialized labor practices. The women were interconnected, if not interchangeable, labor markets critical to how the diverse working class coalesced. The argument contradicts the dominant historical narrative of industry relocating in a direct line from the Northeast to the South to a final stage in the Global South. A detailed study of Norma Rae then shows how popular culture works to rearticulate familiar meanings and obscure such disconcerting complexities due to its own reliance on Aimee Loiselle – University of Connecticut, 2019 gendered, racialized, and colonial narratives. The dissertation argues Hollywood professionals used legal and financial contrivances to remove Sutton from the production when her insistence on the collective efforts of workers did not suit their commercial ambitions. It reveals the importance of status and capitalist mechanisms in the arena of cultural politics, especially regarding questions of who contests and shapes the visibility and meanings for “working class,” “worker,” and “American.” These contests in the business and politics of culture generated the Norma Rae icon, a representation of a white woman standing alone, with its individualist narrative and affect of inspirational defiance. Creating Norma Rae: The Erasure of Puerto Rican Needleworkers and Southern Labor Activists in a Neoliberal Icon by Aimee Loiselle B.A., Dartmouth College, 1992 M.A., University of Vermont, 1998 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History at the University of Connecticut
118 citations
References
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TL;DR: This paper explored the race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color and found that the experiences of women of colour are often the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourse of either feminism or antiracism.
Abstract: Over the last two decades, women have organized against the almost routine violence that shapes their lives. Drawing from the strength of shared experience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices. This politicization in turn has transformed the way we understand violence against women. For example, battering and rape, once seen as private (family matters) and aberrational (errant sexual aggression), are now largely recognized as part of a broad-scale system of domination that affects women as a class. This process of recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual has also characterized the identity politics of people of color and gays and lesbians, among others. For all these groups, identity-based politics has been a source of strength, community, and intellectual development. The embrace of identity politics, however, has been in tension with dominant conceptions of social justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream liberal discourse as vestiges of bias or domination-that is, as intrinsically negative frameworks in which social power works to exclude or marginalize those who are different. According to this understanding, our liberatory objective should be to empty such categories of any social significance. Yet implicit in certain strands of feminist and racial liberation movements, for example, is the view that the social power in delineating difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of political empowerment and social reconstruction. The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite- that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring differences within groups frequently contributes to tension among groups, another problem of identity politics that frustrates efforts to politicize violence against women. Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color' have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrains. Al-though racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices. And so, when the practices expound identity as "woman" or "person of color" as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling. My objective here is to advance the telling of that location by exploring the race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color. Contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. Focusing on two dimensions of male violence against women-battering and rape-I consider how the experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourse of either feminism or antiracism... Language: en
15,236 citations
01 Jan 2005
TL;DR: The authors discusses structural intersectionality, the ways in which the location of women of color at the intersection of race and gender makes their real experience of domestic violence, rape, and remedial reform qualitatively different from that of white women.
Abstract: Contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. To overcome this difficulty, an original approach is suggested here: that of intersectionality. In the first part, the paper discusses structural intersectionality, the ways in which the location of women of color at the intersection of race and gender makes their real experience of domestic violence, rape, and remedial reform qualitatively different from that of white women. The focus is shifted in the second part to political intersectionality, with the analysis of how both feminist and antiracist politics have functioned in tandem to marginalize the issue of violence against women of color. Finally, the implications of the intersectional approach are addressed within the broader scope of contemporary identity politics.
11,901 citations
01 Jan 1989
TL;DR: The authors argues that Black women are sometimes excluded from feminist theory and antiracist policy discourse because both are predicated on a discrete set of experiences that often does not accurately reflect the interaction of race and gender.
Abstract: This chapter examines how the tendency is perpetuated by a single-axis framework that is dominant in antidiscrimination law and that is also reflected in feminist theory and antiracist politics. It suggests that this single-axis framework erases Black women in the conceptualization, identification and remediation of race and sex discrimination by limiting inquiry to the experiences of otherwise-privileged members of the group. The chapter focuses on otherwise-privileged group members creates a distorted analysis of racism and sexism because the operative conceptions of race and sex become grounded in experiences that actually represent only a subset of a much more complex phenomenon. It argues that Black women are sometimes excluded from feminist theory and antiracist policy discourse because both are predicated on a discrete set of experiences that often does not accurately reflect the interaction of race and gender. The chapter discusses the feminist critique of rape and separate spheres ideology.
11,236 citations