Annual Review of Law and Social Science Intersectionality: From Theory to Practice (original) (raw)
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The Potential and Pitfalls of Intersectionality in the Context of Social Rights Adjudication
Intersectionality and Human Rights Law, 2020
Crenshaw's analysis of the impact of such 'intersectional discrimination' harkened back to the earlier insights of Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith and others involved in the Combahee River Collective, whose 1977 Statement had affirmed that 'the major systems of oppression are interlocking…[t]he synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives'. 3 It was itself subsequently further developed by Crenshaw herself, as well as by other critical race feminists, such as Patricia Hill Collins. Over time, Crenshaw's original insightsfocused primarily on the intersection of race and sex discrimination within the specific US contexthave morphed into a cross-disciplinary conceptual/analytical framework, used by scholars and activists across the world to critique the reproduction of social inequalities. This critique emphasises: (i) the porous and mutually-constituting nature of social identities such as gender, class, race, age, disability and sexual orientation; (ii) the intersecting impact of the various forms of discrimination that play out across this complex web of identities; (iii) the way in which such 'intersectional discrimination' reinforces existing structural power hierarchies; and (iv) the limitations of anti-discrimination strategies structured around a single-axis approach, in particular those which adopt a particular 'baseline' identity as their de facto 'central case' and thus constrain their capacity to engage in any meaningful way with intersectional discrimination (e.g. Crenshaw's examples of white women/black men for sex/race discrimination respectively). 4 More generally, it calls into question the traditional
The Curious Reception of Intersectionality in Legal Scholarship1
2013
Although intersectionality analysis originates in a critique of legal doctrine and its confining approach to subject formation, intersectionality has been adopted widely outside of legal scholarship—nationally and internationally—to explain how fields of power operate and interact to produce hierarchy for any limitless combination of identities. Yet, within law, some scholars have raised questions precisely about the capacity of intersectionality to grapple with subjects who occupy multiple social positions and those with “partially privileged” identities in particular. Thus, over roughly a decade, a critique took shape about the theoretical capacity and normative commitment of intersectionality theory to address particular subgroups. This essay tells part of the curious story about how a race-sexuality critique of intersectionality emerged, what may have motivated it, and how it has facilitated an emerging progressive masculinities literature that is “post-intersectional,” i.e., po...
Sociological Theory, 2010
In this article we ask what it means for sociologists to practice intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach to inequality. What are the implications for choices of subject matter and style of work? We distinguish three styles of understanding intersectionality in practice: group-centered, process-centered, and system-centered. The first, emphasizes placing multiply-marginalized groups and their perspectives at the center of the research. The second, intersectionality as a process, highlights power as relational, seeing the interactions among variables as multiplying oppressions at various points of intersection, and drawing attention to unmarked groups. Finally, seeing intersectionality as shaping the entire social system pushes analysis away from associating specific inequalities with unique institutions, instead looking for processes that are fully interactive, historically co-determining, and complex. Using several examples of recent, highly regarded qualitat...
2009
In this article we ask what it means for sociologists to practice intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach to inequality. What are the implications for choices of subject matter and style of work? We distinguish three styles of understanding intersectionality in practice: group-centered, process-centered, and systemcentered. The first, emphasizes placing multiply-marginalized groups and their perspectives at the center of the research. The second, intersectionality as a process, highlights power as relational, seeing the interactions among variables as multiplying oppressions at various points of intersection, and drawing attention to unmarked groups. Finally, seeing intersectionality as shaping the entire social system pushes analysis away from associating specific inequalities with unique institutions, instead looking for processes that are fully interactive, historically co-determining, and complex. Using several examples of recent, highly regarded qualitative studies, we draw attention to the comparative, contextual, and complex dimensions of sociological analysis that can be missing even when race, class, and gender are explicitly brought together.
Sociological Theory, 2010
In this article we ask what it means for sociologists to practice intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach to inequality. What are the implications for choices of subject matter and style of work? We distinguish three styles of understanding intersectionality in practice: group-centered, process-centered, and system-centered. The first, emphasizes placing multiply-marginalized groups and their perspectives at the center of the research. The second, intersectionality as a process, highlights power as relational, seeing the interactions among variables as multiplying oppressions at various points of intersection, and drawing attention to unmarked groups. Finally, seeing intersectionality as shaping the entire social system pushes analysis away from associating specific inequalities with unique institutions, instead looking for processes that are fully interactive, historically co-determining, and complex. Using several examples of recent, highly regarded qualitative studies, we draw attention to the comparative, contextual, and complex dimensions of sociological analysis that can be missing even when race, class, and gender are explicitly brought together.
Intersectionality: The Concurrence of Discriminatory Issues in the Context of Human Rights
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020
The present article aims to bring to the fore the debate on intersectionality and the concurrence of different categories of discrimination with an impact on human rights. The analysis of the intersection of different categories of discrimination from the perspective of a Venn diagram reveals that certain individuals might be at a much greater disadvantage and prone to face a higher risk of discrimination due to the intersectionality of discriminatory issues. Examples around the world reveal how easy it is to violate Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights given the many facets that discrimination can entail at the same time, to the same person. The conclusion highlights the importance of intersectionality and its necessary inclusion in addressing discrimination issues in order to safeguard human rights and guarantee their protection.
The Age of Human Rights Journal, 2023
The paper focuses on the way human rights law has been incorporating notions of intersectionality through legal instruments as well as through human rights courts' decisions. The overall goal is to expose the shortcomings of the current conception of intersectionality as it has been applied by the Inter-American Court, which, I argue, derive from a categorical understanding of group and identity-based rights transplanted from the notion of structural discrimination. The paper argues that approaching human rights violations by means of categorical reasoning is detrimental to intersectional interests, since it perpetuates the problem that intersectionality seeks to overcome in the first place, and suggests that cutting across categories is a potentially more fruitful pathway for the future of intersectionality in the legal field.