Sociology of Genders
11 Theory of Intersectionality
Debjani Chakravarthy
Introduction: Intersectionality may be defined as an approach to analyze how social
and cultural roles, identities, and categories intertwine to produce multiple axes of
oppression. What does this mean? Simplistically, if you think about individual
identities—perhaps your own—you know that the answer to the question ―who are
you?ǁ is complex. You cannot describe yourself completely and effectively in a
sentence; neither can your gender, religion, social class, or political affiliation tell the
whole story of your life and self. Just as your identity constitutes of your social roles,
social status, personal history and future aspirations— any individual or group identity
has a similar multifaceted composition. Intersectionality is used as an important
theoretical paradigm in sociology, women and gender studies, and critical race theory.
The complexity and compounding of social roles, social processes, and their histories
that create various outcomes, such as oppression and privilege cannot be understood
by concentrating on one analytical category (such as gender), or one source of
oppression (such as powerful men in a heteropatriarchal society). We have to
understand identity categories as entwined, and social processes as intersecting.
Identity categories such as ―male,ǁ ―female,ǁ ―Brahmin,ǁ ―Muslim,ǁ ―middle-
class,ǁ or ―differently abledǁ are not merely labels; they have long, sometimes painful
histories of social construction and suppression of desires and rights. Identities have
associated social and signifying practices; they are located in various socio-economic
hierarchies. Patriarchy in a heteronormative society—sometimes known as
heteropatriarchy— is such a hierarchical order that accepts and rewards people‘s
gender expression/identity and sexual orientation. To be ―normal,ǁ you are expected to
be straight, cisgender, i.e. identifying with the gender given at birth, married at a
―suitableǁ age and raise a family. Thus, social acceptance is contingent on not just
gender expression and sexuality, but also age, and economic status. Having a career,
giving children a good and stable home, being a good citizen, being healthy—these are
not merely issues of character, will-power and morality, they are also dependent on
one‘s socio-economic status. Within a patriarchal system, social expectations placed on
men and women are different by gender and men are supposed to dominate women in
terms of wielding power within the family and society. This system of domination is not
merely contingent on a man‘s gender, but on other aspects of his identity. You might
notice that not all men dominate women, not all women are oppressed, not all men are
1
breadwinners, and not all women are stay-at-home mothers. The overarching theory of
intersectionality helps us understand not just how social structures operate, but also
how we exercise our agency within given social structures. It helps us think critically and
see clearly beyond stereotypes and helps us understand not just oppression, but also
privilege. This in turn helps us be better scholars, activists, and better stakeholders in a
continuously changing society. Intersectionality teaches us that identities are not
monolithic, and that social realities have multiple, intersecting and sometimes hidden
facets that we must pay attention to.
Intersectionality as a concept emerged from Black Feminist Legal Studies. Black
feminist tradition studies marginalization from the perspective of race relations and
racial domination; it studies current social processes as rooted in African American
history and the lived experience of marginalized races. In the next section we will take
up the intellectual legacy and current theoretical work on intersectionality and learn
about Black Feminist thought in the process.
Section 1: History, Development, and Some Major Theoreticians: The term
―intersectionalityǁ was coined by the feminist legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw.
Crenshaw wrote an article in 1989 titled “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and
Sex,” where she attempted to understand how a single categorical axis of
oppression/discrimination (race) erases Black women as a theoretical category, and
imports such erasure to legal reforms and activism. She showed, like other Black
feminists before her, that Black women are systematically excluded from feminist theory
and sometimes anti-racist politics.
Being a legalscholar, Crenshaw made her arguments through analysis of three court
cases. She outlined the problem of a doctrinal response to discrimination, where the
experience of racism must be aligned to Black men‘s experiences— and the experience
of sexism, to white women‘s. Therefore, Black women were protected only to the extent
that their experiences coincided with the experiences of either of the two groups.
In DeGraffenreid vs. General Motors, the court refused to recognize that there is
compounded discrimination against black female employees. They analyzed the claims
of the plaintiff by using records of white female employment as the ―historical baseǁ for
conditions of female employment in the organization. The experience of white female
employees did not demonstrate the very specific forms of discrimination suffered by
Black female employees. In Moore vs. Hughes Helicopter, [Link] a woman who claimed
to have been discriminated as a Black woman was not allowed to use overall sex
2
disparity statistics in the company. The experience of sexism of a Black woman was not
considered sexism at all, no matter what the statistics projected. In Payne vs.
Travenolthe court held that Black women could not represent an entire community of
blacks ―due to presumed class conflicts in cases where sex additionally disadvantaged
Black women. As a result, in the few cases where Black women are allowed to use
overall statistics indicating racially disparate treatment Black men may not be able to
share in the remedy (Crenshaw 1989, 148).ǁ
What does this mean? Black women‘s Blackness or femaleness continues to place their
needs and perspectives at the margin of feminist and Black civil rights agenda. The
singularity of the burden (one‘s race, OR sex OR class) becomes THE defining factor in
rights, theorization, jurisprudence and justice.
This kind of monolithic thinking about identity places the most vulnerable in society at
precarious positions, from a policy as well as public opinion perspective. When you
think about a poor village of mostly Dalit people— as an activist or policymaker— will
you focus on the villagers‘ caste oppression? Their abject poverty?Their segregation
despite untouchability being illegal in India?The lack of educational and civil amenities
in the village? Why not everything all at once? You might have to participate in solving
one problem at a time, but if you see the problems as entwined and intersecting— and it
is likely that the people will tell you it is so, always a good idea to work with people
rather than for them based on your own pre-conceived assumptions—chances are you
will have a clearer understanding of the situation. This is exactly what Crenshaw
advocated.
The problem of social justice, Crenshaw averred, is not a lack of political will, but a
disturbing, uncritical acceptance of the dominant paradigm of discrimination, which
adopts a single issue framework. The parameters of discrimination are tightly defined so
as to make the process simplistic. This marginalizes people whose experiences cannot
be explained through a singular axis of oppression. Crenshaw wrote about marginalized
women in the United States. The theoretical framework however, has universal
applicability.
Let us take a few steps back and understand the Black feminist tradition that
intersectionality emerges from. Patricia Hill Collins, eminent sociologist and theorist of
Intersectionality states that, ―Black feminist thought demonstrates Black women’s
3
emerging power as agents of knowledge. By portraying African-American women as
self-defined, self-reliant individuals confronting race, gender, and class oppression,
Afrocentric feminist thought speaks to the importance that oppression, Afrocentric
feminist thought speaks to the importance that knowledge plays in empowering
oppressed people (Collins 1990, 221).ǁ
Thus, Black Feminist standpoint is all about expanding the boundaries of feminist
theories and activism and including multiple experiences, perspectives, and standpoints
in it. Feminist theory is not merely the domain of middle-class White women (notice the
intersectional categories) or upper class academicians. Everyone‘s voices must be
included lest we start believing in only one form of oppression, sexism— affecting one
identity category, white women who wrote about their experience that circulated in
academia and media as feminist consciousness.
Patricia Hill Collins (1990, 3) emphasized the need for looking at race, class, and
gender as ―interlocking systems of oppression.ǁ This meant a radical re-visioning of
how we understand oppression and privilege collectively and individually. We all exist,
Collins theorized, in a matrix of domination where structures of gender, race/ethnicity,
class, age, religion determine our experiences. It is difficult to pry one structure apart
and label it as most or least oppressive.
Kimberle Crenshaw has argued that mainstream feminist thought derives a lot of
theoretical and dialogical strength from Black women‘s history and experiences. Yet
lessons from power oratory or writings (such as Sojourner Truth‘s ―Ain‘t I a Woman?ǁ)
are never fully assimilated or applied in feminist intervention. The challenges to
patriarchy embedded in Black feminist writings could be, and is useful to feminist theory,
but feminist theory per se couldn‘t be useful to Black women because, written from a
privileged white feminine perspective, the claims and premises were inapplicable and
unresponsive to women of color. The authoritative universal voice of the white woman is
quite similar to that of ―non-racialǁ ―non-genderedǁ ‗objectiveǁ white man‘s. The
feminist voices arising from a similar socio-cultural context, concentrate only on gender,
but never race. There is no understanding of ―differentǁ social, historical, economic
and political contexts that shape lives within the Black community where notions of
―menǁ ―womenǁ ―powerǁ and ―patriarchyǁ are differently understood and applied.
Another example where myopic thinking operates in feminist theory is in the discourse
on rape that is understood as male control over female sexuality, never as an
instrument of racial terror or economic domination. That explains why prosecution of a
4
white male for raping a Black female—this was common in the era of slavery— was
historically unheard of. Yet the protection of white female sexuality was often the pretext
for terrorizing the Black community. In the United States, till date, Black men are seen
as a threat and are arrested and incarcerated regularly and unfairly. They are often the
target of police brutality.
Neither Black liberation politics nor feminisms that came together during the civil rights
struggle of the 50s and 60s America can ignore ―the intersectional experiences of
those whom the movements claim as their respective constituents (1989, 166).ǁ There
must be an understanding that the sources of oppression are multiply fused, often not
clearly identifiable or explicable by prevailing singular paradigms. Crenshaw believed
that a more effective language and framework needs to develop that recognize the
―intersectionǁ and those that are impaired by their location within. The issue is not so
much of a political will than of limited understanding of life experiences shaped by
various forms of disadvantaged roles and identities. The existing discourse on
discrimination needs to be revised and re-centered, which would lead to more effective
politics, policies and legislations. Till date, she is promoting the usefulness of
intersectionality as a powerful tool of sociological/legal analysis.
In recent years, scholars such as Leslie McCall and Jennifer Nash have written about
the complexity and significance of Intersectionality. McCall (2005) has delineated three
approaches to address the methodology of Intersectionality. ―Anticategorical
complexityǁ is based on a methodology that deconstructs analytical categories, because
social life is too complex ―overflowing with multiple and fluid determinations of both
subjects and structures—to make fixed categories anything but simplifying social
fictions that produce inequalities in the process of producing differences. This approach
has its roots in feminist writings of 1980s ―when hegemonic feminist theorists,
poststructuralists, and antiracist theorists almost simultaneously launched assaults on
the validity of modern analytical categories (McCall 2005, 1776).ǁ Deconstruction of
categories such as women, gender, Black was akin to deconstruction of inequality.
Language was seen to create categorical reality, not the other way around. The second
approach, intracategorical complexity takes marginalized intersectional identities as an
analytic starting point ‘…in order to reveal the complexity of lived experience within
variously disadvantaged groups. This approach usually utilizes the case study method.
The third method, intercategorical complexity “requires that scholars provisionally adopt
existing analytical categories to document relationships of inequality among social
groups and changing configurations of inequality along multiple and conflicting
dimensions (ibid. 1773)ǁ Relationships and interactions between groups and categories
5
are more importance than (the futility or importance) of the categories themselves.
Starting from traditional categories of identity this approach appreciates that ―no single
dimension of overall inequality can adequately describe the full structure of multiple,
intersecting, and conflicting dimensions of inequality (ibid. 1791).ǁ This approach uses
quantitative techniques and large data sets, as well as methodological triangulation. The
distinction between qualitative and quantitative method and their philosophical
underpinnings often create barriers for research on intersectionality. Quantitative
method can be used successfully to conduct research on intersectionality taking the
intercategorical approach.
Jennifer Nash (2008) has taken the discussion on intersectionality beyond
methodological discussions to rethink its theoretical importance. She believes that
intersectionality subverts race/gender binaries in the service of theorizing identity in a
more complex fashion. The destabilization of race/gender binaries is particularly
important to enable robust analyses of cultural sites. Intersectionality trains scholarship
to come to terms with the legacy of exclusions of multiply marginalized subjects from
feminist and anti-racist work, and the impact of those absences on both theory and
practice. Intersectionality, by focusing on the ways in which the differences between
various social groups and categories are constructed, is useful to understand how these
differences become relevant to politics confronting simultaneity of oppression.
Intersectionality argues for the new conceptualizations of categories and their role in
politics, ―rather than seeking an abolition of categories themselves.ǁ
How can the categories of identity and history be re-conceptualized? In the next section
we discuss three basic concepts within the theory of Intersectionality that sheds light on
this. If you are using intersectionality in your own analyses, activism, and
research—regard this section as a conceptual toolbox.
Section 2: Basic Concepts
You can use these concepts like tools to reveal the hidden, often largely invisible nature
of oppression. Add these to your intellectual/conceptual toolbox for actively
understanding issues of a gendered society. These concepts give names to some
issues we actively experience but sometimes have no name or expression for.
6
Intersection:Intersectionality is the notion that individual and community lives are
located at a social location of intersecting identities. These identities can be
race/ethnicity; gender; social class; religion; age; (dis)ability status; nationality; geo-
political location and linguistic abilities. Feel free to add to that list; as you know,
social/political/individual identities are numerous. Due to these intersections, our
identities are composite and contingent.
Crenshaw explained the notion of intersections with her analogy of a traffic intersection,
or what is commonly known as a traffic junction in India. She explains:
Consider an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions.
Discrimination, like traffic though an intersection may flow in one direction and it may
flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars
travelling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a
Black woman is harmed because she is in the intersection, her injury could result from
sex discrimination or race discrimination. Judicial decisions which premise intersectional
relief on a showing that Black women are specifically recognized as a class are
analogous to a doctor‘s decision at the scene of an accident to treat an accident victim
only if the injury is recognized by medical insurance. Similarly, providing legal relief only
when Black women show that their claims are based on race or sex is analogous to
calling an ambulance for the victim only after the driver responsible for the injuries is
identified. But it is not always easy to construct an accident: sometimes the skid marks
and the injuries simply indicate that they occurred simultaneously, frustrating efforts to
determine which driver caused the harm. In this case the tendency seems to be that no
driver is held responsible, no treatment is administered and the involved parties simply
get back in their cars and zoom away (1989, 149).ǁ
Thus focusing on ONE aspect of identity means creating a simplistic notion of
singularity of the burden of oppression and taking an either/or approach. A both and
approach could work better. Applying intersections as a visual clarifies issues of
intersectionality and signifies feminist theories‘ moving away from the
difference/similarity approach towards an explanation of relational and interlocking
processes. To understand identities at an intersection is to focus on the ways in which
the differences between various social groups and categories are constructed as well as
to understand how these differences become relevant to politics confronting
simultaneity of oppression.
7
Interlocking Axes of Oppression: This expression means that oppression is
constantly being supported by systems of privilege, and that multiple identities entwine
to produce this oppression and/or privilege. For Patricia Hill Collins, this concept is a
way to understand how race, gender and class intersect to produce oppression at
individual and institutional levels. This is concept is a move away from additive models
of oppression that rank the identities as more or less marginalized. She states:
Replacing additive models of oppression with interlocking ones creates possibilities for
new paradigms. The significance of seeing race, class, and gender as interlocking
systems of oppression is that such an approach fosters a paradigmatic shift of thinking
inclusively about other oppressions, such as age, sexual orientation, religion, and
ethnicity. Race, class, and gender represent the three systems of oppression that most
heavily affect African-American women. But these systems and the economic, political,
and ideological conditions that support them may not be the most fundamental
oppressions, and they certainly affect many more groups than Black women. Other
people of color, Jews, the poor white women, and gays and lesbians have all had
similar ideological justifications offered for their subordination. All categories of humans
labeled Others have been equated to one another, to animals, and to nature(1990, 225).
Interlocking axes of oppression also account for the fact that each individual or
community is located in a matrix of domination whereby they derive some reward and
penalty for being located in various intersections, sometimes complying, sometimes
resisting, and sometimes undecided/immobile/neutral. Intersectionality sensitizes one to
the hegemonic moves that legitimize the concept of a self-referencing, unified subject of
modernity by emphasizing ―that different dimensions of social life cannot be separated
out into discrete and pure strands (Brah and Phoenix 2004, 76).ǁ
Identities within the Matrix of Domination: Interlocking systems of racism, sexism,
classism etc. strengthen the larger and complex systems of oppression such as
patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism. Patriarchy, as you know, is a social system
whereby males wield power and control in society. Therefore, the system of patriarchy is
contingent of people fulfilling social expectations tied to their gender and sexuality. As
mentioned earlier in the chapter, social class is also central to one‘s appropriate
patriarchal performance. Since patriarchy and heterosexism, or heterosexuality as the
only normal way of being goes hand in hand, scholars and activists use the
term heteropatriarchy often. Capitalism as we all know is about free markets and perfect
competition that thrives on the labor of the unfree—the slaves, the low-wage workers,
8
the lower caste. Capitalism is a system of domination that creates and encourages
discrimination in the form of racism, sexism, and ageism. Capitalism perpetuates
classism. Colonialism, defined as power and control over people and spaces by making
them economically dependent and drained counts on the support for patriarchy, its
motives being deeply capitalist. Profit motive drives not just capitalism, but colonialism
also, and colonizers try to hide that logic by talking about the colonies‘ ―barbaricǁ
religious and gender practices.
Notice how systems of oppression intersect? Patricia Hill Collins and bell hooks, Black
feminist scholars explain this phenomenon by the term ―matrix of dominationǁ and
―politic of dominationǁ respectively. Varied forms of oppression, for bell hooks, come
together ―…like a house, they share the foundation, but the foundation is the
ideological beliefs around which notions of domination are constructed (2015, 175).ǁ
Section 3: Intersection of Gender, Caste,Religion, and Class in India.
As you know, issues of religion and state, nationalism and democracy can rarely be
separated in India. Issues of women‘s rights are inextricably connected with issues of
social class and developmental paradigms, the caste system and caste politics, religion
and religious fundamentalisms, and issues of gender and globalization. Let us look at
the issues of Uniform Civil Code (henceforth UCC), affirmative actions, and women‘s
movements in India intersectionally.
How can we use intersectionality to analyze the non-implementation of the civil code?
UCC has organized and unified two kinds of social movements in India, the women‘s
movement and the religious fundamentalist or the Hindutva movement. Another
stakeholder is the changing ruling regime at the center. It is interesting to note that while
feminist legal activists in India have been demanding a UCC— a demand that brought
various factions of women‘s movements in India together in rare moments of
consensus, contemporary feminist legal activism has distanced itself from the UCC
debate. In the 1950s, feminist demands for more egalitarian laws led to the
secularization of various Hindu laws resulting in Hindu Code Bill and the Hindu Marriage
Act. The state continued to make changes in Hindu Laws and there is a history of case
laws that attempts to balance between the fundamental right of religious expression and
freedom and issues of women‘s rights and human rights. However, in spite of feminist
leanings towards a UCC that will standardize civil laws and eliminate traditional
9
oppression of women in all religious communities, no ruling regime attempted to actually
go down the path of introducing a bill and amending the constitution to make UCC a
reality. The barriers are enormous. The simplistic idea that the best legal practices from
various religious laws are to be codified as one common body of law applicable to all
citizens is clearly problematic. Religious groups, spiritual practices, and belief systems
in India are deeply heterogeneous. Our uneven democracy is marked by irresoluble
diversity. Uniform Civil Code if often posited as an issue of gender and religion, but what
about regional variations in gender relations and religious practices? How can we unify
those?
Historically in India, Women‘s groups and feminist activists have recognized gender
injustice in these laws and have demanded secular and uniform laws. However, since
the groundbreaking Shah Bano case in 1986, the women‘s movement has had to shift
its position because Hindu right lobbied for the imposition of the uniform code and linked
this demand with majoritarian politics of Hindu fundamentalist domination. With that, the
broad ideological consensus that the women‘s movement had achieved in the 1970s
and early 80‘s broke down. While a section of the movement (including Muslim women‘s
organizations) denounced the outcry arguing that Muslim Personal Law was indeed
oppressive in nature, another section denounced the judgement itself as anti-Muslim
rather than pro-women.
This stirred up the existing debate that waged right from the independence about
personal laws being the site of constitutional contradictions between fundamental rights
to religious communities (and minorities) and fundamental rights of women as citizens.
Intersectionality can problematize the binaries and essentialist identity categories in the
UCC debate namely gender/religious affiliation/class/caste and as it become clear in the
Shah Bano case—notions of age and motherhood. Shah Bano finally did not accept the
maintenance the court awarded her;it seems that she publicly retracted from the
Supreme Court Judgment for the cause of being a sincere Muslim first. Thus she chose
poverty over excommunication.
1
The bare facts of the Shah Bano case are: Shah Bano, a poor divorced Muslim woman
in her 60s approached the courts to make her husband pay maintenance, which he had
since their divorce in 1978 refused to. On April 23, 1985, in the Mohamed Ahmed Khan
vs. Shah Bano Begum and ors) case, the Supreme Court pronounced a landmark
judgement compelling the husband to provide maintenance to the ex-wife. This
dismissed the appeal Ahmed Khan had made: he had claimed that since Shah Bano
10
was no longer his wife (after the triple talaq), and since he had already paid her
maintenance for the iddat period, under Islamic personal law he was not supposed to do
anything else. The Madhya Pradesh High Court had in 1979 ordered Ahmed Khan to
pay a monthly maintenance to Shah Bano as per section 125 of the Criminal Procedure
Code. Ahmed Khan in his appeal asserted that section 125 conflicted with his religious
rights. He had fulfilled the obligation of paying the mehr in accordance with section 127
(3) (b) of the Islamic Personal Law. The Supreme Court upheld the M.P High Court‘s
decision reasoning that section 127 (3) (b) did not indemnify the Muslim husband
against a maintenance order under section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code, if the
ex-wife was in need of maintenance. In such cases the provisions of the Criminal
Procedure code would take precedence over Islamic personal law. The court supported
its judgement by detailed citations from relevant ayats and suras of the Koran that
instruct the husband to provide for their divorced wives, if the wife was unable to provide
for herself, till her remarriage or death. This led to a huge outcry amidst sections of the
Muslim community all over India, and it catapulted to a national controversy.
Reactionary Muslim pontiffs and their supporters challenged the right of the judiciary to
interfere in their personal laws and interpreted the judgement as an attack to their
religious identity. To pacify the segment of Muslims enraged by the Shah Bano
judgement, a hastily drafted bill named The Muslim Women‘s (Protection of Rights on
Divorce) was moved in the parliament on 25th February 1986. The Bill was passed with
a resounding majority. This bill (Act) was criticized by the women‘s organizations on
several grounds.
Recent movements against gender-violence in India focus not just on gender, but also
location, caste and class. Every cause taken up by women‘s movements in India: anti-
price rise, anti-dowry and violence, anti-rape culture, to name a few, were rarely ever
just about women or just about gender. In terms of affirmative action embodied in the
Women‘s Reservation Bill, there have caste-based opposition as well as support. Some
people who were seemingly opposed to the Mandal Commission are enthusiastic about
women‘s reservation –a step towards inclusion and representation of women in Indian
democracy. During Mandal Commission, many people seemed opposed to it from
standpoints of caste, meritocracy, and social class. Some people including sociologists,
such as G.S. Ghurye found reservation to be antinationalist and patronizing, a move
reminiscent of colonial divide and rule.2Sociologist Sujata Patel noted how caste as a
crucial identity category of analysis was glossed over in the social science literature on
the Mandal Commission. Patel(1995) has argued how the violent, fatal, suicidal protests
against the reservations manifest a crisis of social formation in India; where agents are
juxtaposed and pitted against the ―otherǁ by the state or people in power. This crisis
has its roots in anti-colonial nationalist mobilization whereby religion, caste and class
11
become salient identities and they are connected sociologically through theories of
communalism, casteism, and reservation; yet economics and theories of development
are legitimized as the focus of the Indian nation state, and the aforementioned identities
are legitimized in political ideology and mobilization. This theoretical and embodied
instability can be analyzed through the theory of intersectionality. Sometimes it is difficult
to separate politics, standpoints, and identities, and intersectionality points at the
possibility of studying them as a compounded crisis of a democracy with many colonial
features intact. The next time you hear about an issue on the media or in academia,
notice whether one identity or ideology takes precedence over the other.3 Perhaps
intersectionality will inspire you to dig deeper under the surface to see who are the real
stakeholders and social actors, and whose voice remains silenced.
Conclusion: What Intersects in and Around You?
2
Nicholas Dirks (2001) has argued that ―Ghurye may not have been the first to argue
against the policy of reservation nd its effects of politicizing caste, but he made the most
eloquent, academically sound critique of the contemporary relationship of caste and
politics in the decades surrounding independence. Further Ghurye was perhaps the first
serious scholar to suggest that the politicization of caste was not merely a natural
outgrowth of the traditional institution but a conscious design of British colonial policy
(2001, 249).ǁ Notice how caste intersects with colonialism to erase its traditional history
of oppression and become re-historicized as a colonial apparatus of divide and rule.
3
SharmilaRege (2011), while making a strong case for intersections of identity, language
and sociology, states that: ―The language of ‗good sociology‘ continues to be
structured by the binaries of body/mind, tradition/modernity, social/political, social
world/knower, experience/knowledge, objectivism/subjectivism, and theoretical
Brahman/empirical Shudra. Language of good sociology and those of sociologies
emerging from disruptions of narratives of the national-modern stand as if on two sides,
talking past each other or at each other.ǁ Have you experienced this as a student of
sociology? If so, imagine how the theory of intersectionality can address the issue of
binary thinking/speaking.
Intersectionality teaches us to consider how systems of oppression mutually constitute
each other; that colonialism strengthens capitalism, capitalism pushes certain kinds of
12
lifestyles and privileges one identity over the other; that democracy simultaneously
encourages and discourages inclusion and equity; that feminist movements can be
simultaneously unjust and equitable. Women‘s movements are rarely only about
women: such movements often recognize that the very idea of a ―womanǁ is co-
created by connected processes of colonialism, casteism/colorism/racism,
heteropatriarchy, and religion.
Look carefully around you. How do identities and communities form? What about your
own identity? Have you ever felt uncomfortable on the first day of class or during a quick
conversation with a stranger where you had to introduce yourself or describe who you
are in just a sentence, may be two? We are complex human beings and social actors
with multiple identity categories rolled into one ―self,ǁ fulfilling multiple social roles and
overlapping, sometimes contradictory social expectations. Our complex realities,
experiences and aspirations are hard to capture in so few words and impossible to be
reduced to unitary references. When we say ―I am a student,ǁ or ―I am from
Mumbai,ǁ or ―I am working towards a degree in sociology and want to be in politics
someday,ǁ we are highlighting some aspects of our lives that we are proud of or feel
comfortable sharing with others. When we talk about ourselves, we usually do not refer
to our basic visible or invisible identities such as gender, race, class, ethnicity, age, and
religious beliefs (or lack thereof). This dilemma you face while describing who you are is
one of intersectionality at a personal, individual, micro-level. Due to underlying
assumptions and stereotypes about identity categories and the fact that they intersect in
our lives, it is difficult to express who we are and how our realities are formed by trying
to decide on which one identity takes precedence. This problem is also true of
communities and often tied inextricably to civil rights and social justice. Have you ever
felt that you are not absolutely oppressed or privileged—that you are both
simultaneously? Think about whether the theory of intersectionality offers an
explanation for that. Intersectionality also helps us see beyond our differences and find
common grounds—however conditionally— to create social justice and social
movements.
you can view video on Theory of
Intersectionality
Bibliography:
Brah, A. and Phoenix, A. [Link]‘t I a Woman? Revisiting Intersectionality.
Journal of International Women‘s Studies, 5 (3): 75-86.
13
Collins, P. H. 1998. It‘s All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and
Nation. Hypatia 13(3): 62–82. _______ [Link] Feminist Thought:
Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Boston: Unwin
Hyman.
Crenshaw, K. W. [Link] the Intersection of Race and Sex: A
Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and
Antiracist [Link] of Chicago Legal Forum 14: 538–554.
Crenshaw, K. W. [Link] the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics,
and Violence against Women of [Link] Law Review 43(6): 1241–1299.
Dirks, N. 2001. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India.
New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Ghurye, G. S. 2008. Caste and Race and India. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan.
Hooks, Bell. 2015. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. New York:
Routledge. ___ [Link] is for Everybody: Passionate
Politics. Cambridge: South End Press.
McCall, L. 2005. ―The Complexity of Intersectionality,” Signs 30.3:1771-1800.
Nash, J. C. 2008. “Re-Thinking Intersectionality,” Feminist Review 89, 1-15.
Patel, S. 1995. ―The Ideological and Politcial Crisis of Early Nineties: On
Mandal, Mandir and Communal Tensions,ǁ in Savur, M. andMunshi, I.(
Ed.) Contradictions in Indian Society. Jaipur: Rawat Publications.
Phoenix, A., and P. Pattynama. 2006. Editorial: Intersectionality. European
Journal of Women’s Studies 13(3): 187–192.
Rege, S. 2011. ―Exorcising the Fear of Identity: Interrogating the ‗Language
Question‘ in Sociology and Sociological Language,ǁ in S. Patel (ed.) Doing
Sociology in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Shields, S. A. 2008.”Gender: An Intersectionality Perspective,” Sex Roles 59:
301-11. Walby, S. [Link] Theory, Systems Theory, and Multiple
Intersecting Social [Link] of the Social Sciences 37(4):
449–470.
14