Mini-Symposium: Intersectionality Research

• Published date: 01 March 2011
• Author: Ange-Marie Hancock,Evelyn M. Simien
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912910393647
• Date: 01 March 2011
• Subject Matter: Mini-Symposium

Political Research Quarterly

64(1) 185-186

© 2011 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912910393647

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Since legal theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw first spoke of

intersectionality in the late 1980s, scholars in the social

sciences and humanities have debated its relative

strengths and weaknesses in theoretical, methodological,

and policy terms. Intersectionality research is defined

principally by its focus on the simultaneous and interac-

tive effects of race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and

national origin as categories of difference in the United

States and beyond. This symposium is a conscious

attempt to draw on our expertise in intersectionality and

our identities as political scientists to spotlight different

approaches to intersectionality. Part of our goal is thus to

facilitate the development of innovative theoretical argu-

ments and new empirical research designs in this area of

scholarship by featuring examples of intersectionality

research from distinct subfields.

The essays that follow this introduction speak to a

broad audience, as they represent four distinct subfields:

political theory, American politics, comparative poli-

tics, and public policy. Each essay addresses the grow-

ing body of research focusing on what Dara Strolovitch

(2007) calls intersectionally stigmatized populations at

different levels of analysis. Each article also brings the

tools of political science to bear on topics ripe for inter-

sectional analysis, again reinforcing the notion that

intersectionality theory and political science have much

to offer each other.

Much of the early scholarship on intersectionality has

focused almost entirely on the United States and is often

critiqued as having utility solely in the American context.

Later scholarship, in attempting to address this critique,

opened another avenue of questions, such as, what hap-

pens to a concept when it “goes global” and is applied to

contexts outside of the United States? Comparative poli-

tics scholar Erica Townsend-Bell provides one answer to

this question. Her essay, “What is Relevance? Defining

Intersectional Praxis in Uruguay,” is less focused on

intersectionality as a theoretical construct and more con-

cerned with its development as political praxis. Using the

2005 International Women’s Day March and the 2003

domestic violence coalition as illustrative examples, she

identifies the conditions under which a normative philo-

sophical commitment to intersectionality does not square

with its adaption and translation on the ground. Through

analysis of field interviews with activists Townsend-Bell

attends to the ideological disputes over which identity

categories are most relevant to single-issue and multi-

issue women’s organizations in Uruguay. Linking her

interests in intersectionality with traditional questions of

social movements and group formation, Townsend-Bell

exposes real-life circumstances that arise when social

movement actors attempt to find the most productive and

usable ways of provoking social change collaboratively.

Through her critical analysis of intersectionality’s appli-

cability in the Uruguayan context, she provides further

evidence of the need for intersectional consciousness

(Greenwood 2008) prior to movement building, and her

essay reminds us that intersectionality as a term travels

across time and geographic regions.

Like Townsend-Bell, Nancy Wadsworth’s essay,

“Intersectionality in California’s Same-Sex Marriage

Battles: A Complex Proposition,” also focuses on a long-

standing area of interest shared by intersectionality schol-

ars and political scientists: the tensions and limitations of

majoritarian efforts to protect the rights of minorities.

From a very different political context Wadsworth exam-

ines the coalitional and rhetorical strategies used to mobi-

lize support in favor of a ballot initiative in the United

States, Proposition 8, which eliminated the right to same-

sex marriage in California. Wadsworth makes the case for

a broader, more inclusive conceptualization of intersec-

tionality, insisting that religion qualifies as yet another

identity category of difference. Her essay asks profound

questions about an undertheorized combination of privi-

lege and marginalization located at the intersection of race,

religion, and sexual orientation in the United States. Using

an array of sources Wadsworth argues that cross-racial,

fate-linking strategies based on shared privilege—

marriage rights and religious faith—position LGBT people

as outsiders to their communities. The analysis draws

attention to one of the most vexing and controversial issues

of our time, same-sex marriage, and the threat posed by

XXX10.1177/1065912910393647Simien and HancockPolitical Research Quarterly

Mini-Symposium:

Intersectionality Research

Evelyn M. Simien1 and Ange-Marie Hancock2

1University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

2University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Mini-Symposium