Intersectionality As A Normative and Empirical Paradigm
Intersectionality As A Normative and Empirical Paradigm
Intersectionality As A Normative and Empirical Paradigm
Smith, Rogers M. 2004. “The Puzzling Place of Race in American Political Science.” PS:
Political Science and Politics 37 (1): 41–45.
Srivastava, Sarita. 2005. “‘You’re Calling Me a Racist?’ The Moral and Emotional
Regulation of Antiracism and Feminism.” Signs 31 (1): 29 –62.
Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy. 2004. “American Democracy in an
Age of Rising Inequality.” Perspectives on Politics 2 (4): 651–66.
Winant, Howard. 2000. “Race and Race Theory.” Annual Review of Sociology 26: 169–85.
Young, Iris Marion. 2005. “Modernity, Emancipatory Values, and Power: A Rejoinder to
Adams and Orloff.” Politics & Gender 1 (3): 492– 500.
As these citations suggest, this kind of work has taken place in multiple
locations simultaneously, often unbeknownst to intersectional scholars
immersed in their study of a specific intersectional group. This
immersion explains why some scholars claim an exclusive origin for
intersectionality in the specific intersectional group they study. Similar to
the political subjectivity of the women they study, the origins of
intersectionality are multiple and intersecting. A comprehensive
intellectual history of intersectionality research has yet to be published,
with two significant ramifications that affect scholars seeking to conduct
intersectional research and those seeking to understand the intellectual
contributions of intersectionality.
First, there is a significant amount of semantic slippage — Chicana
studies, black feminist studies, and Asian American women’s studies are
often all assumed to fall entirely within the rubric of intersectionality
research, when in fact intersectionality research and feminism (of any
variant) in particular are not synonymous terms. The two approaches
have numerous sympathies, of course, but the process of claiming
intersectionality in the name of black women writers, Asian American
female elected officials, or Latin American women’s movements
obscures the very richness of the content – the multivocality for which
intersectionality is known. Moreover, it ignores the ways in which
intersectionality has evolved beyond a content specialization.
Second, inattention to a comprehensive intellectual history of
intersectionality research masks the ways in which intersectionality 1)
can answer new questions as yet unanswerable with traditional models
and 2) can generate strategies for political change that incorporate all of
us as political beings, not simply a subset of the population discussed in
a single comparative case study. I have therefore recently gravitated
toward a position claiming that intersectionality is a normative and
empirical research paradigm (Hancock 2007; see also McCall 2005),
rather than a content specialization.
My point with this claim is not to discredit or ignore the 20þ years of
intersectional work that continues to produce a wealth of rich, deeply
nuanced examinations of groups and populations living at the
marginalized crossroads of various categories of difference. I think we are
now in a position to start moving toward conversations at a broader level
of analysis, not because we have said everything there is to say about
these groups and populations — which have been primarily but not
exclusively women of color — but because intersectionality can also
more comprehensively answer questions of distributive justice, power,
of normative theory and empirical research that proceeds under six key
assumptions:
1. More than one category of difference (e.g., race, gender, class) plays a role in
examinations of complex political problems and processes such as persistent
poverty, civil war, human rights abuses and democratic transitions.
2. While these various categories of difference should be equally attended to in
research, the relationship among the categories is an open empirical
question. For example, while race and gender are commonly analyzed
together, to assume that race and gender play equal roles in all political
contexts, or to assume that they are mutually independent variables that
can be added together to comprehensively analyze a research question,
violates the normative claim of intersectionality that intersections of these
categories are more than the sum of their parts.
3. Categories of difference are conceptualized as dynamic productions of
individual and institutional factors. Such categories are simultaneously
contested and enforced at the individual and institutional levels of
analysis. Intersectionality research demands attentiveness to these facts.
4. Each category of difference has within-group diversity that sheds light on the
way we think of groups as actors in politics and on the potential outcomes of
any particular political intervention.
5. An intersectional research project examines categories at multiple levels of
analyses — not simply by adding together mutually exclusive analyses of
the individual and institutional levels but by means of an integrative
analysis of the interaction between the individual and institutional levels
of the research question.
6. Intersectionality’s existence as a normative and empirical paradigm requires
attention to both empirical and theoretical aspects of the research question.
The conventional wisdom among intersectionality scholars considers
multiple methods necessary and sufficient.
REFERENCES
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the
Politics of Empowerment. 2d ed. New York: Routledge.
Hancock, Ange-Marie. 2004. The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the “Welfare
Queen.” New York: New York University Press.
Hancock, Ange-Marie. 2007. “When Multiplication Doesn’t Equal Quick Addition:
Examining Intersectionality as a Research Paradigm.” Perspectives on Politics 5 (1):
63 –79.
Martinez, Elizabeth. 1993. “Beyond Black/White: The Racisms of Our Times.” Social
Justice 20 (1/2): 22–34.
McCall, Leslie. 2005. “Managing Complexity: Methodologies for the Analysis of Multiple
Categories.” Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society 30: 1771– 800.
Montoya, Lisa J., Carol Hardy Fanta, and Sonia Garcia. 2000. “Latina Politics: Gender,
Participation, and Leadership.” PS: Political Science and Politics 33 (September): 555–61.
Prindeville, Diane-Michele. 2004. “Feminist Nations? A Study of Native American Women
in Southwestern Tribal Politics.” Political Research Quarterly 57 (1): 101–12.
Ragin, Charles. 2000. Fuzzy-Set Social Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Simien, Evelyn. 2004. “Gender Differences in Attitudes toward Black Feminism among
African Americans.” Political Science Quarterly 119 (2): 315–38.
Introduction