Copyright © Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge 2016

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1
What is Intersectionality?

In the early twenty-first century, the term "intersectionality"

has been widely taken up by scholars, policy advocates,
practitioners, and activists in many places and locations.
College students and faculty in interdisciplinary fields such as
women's studies, ethnic studies, cultural studies, American
studies, and media studies, as well as those within sociology,
political science, and history and other traditional disciplines,
encounter intersectionality in courses, books, and scholarly
articles. Human rights activists and government officials
have also made intersectionality part of ongoing global public
policy discussions. Grassroots organizers look to varying
dimensions of intersectionality to inform their work on
reproductive rights, anti-violence initiatives, workers' rights,
and similar social issues. Bloggers use digital and social media
to debate hot topics. Teachers, social workers, high-school
students, parents, university support staff, and school person
nel have taken up the ideas of intersectionality with an
eye toward transforming schools of all sorts. Across these
different venues, people increasingly claim and use the term
"intersectionality" for their diverse intellectual and political
projects.
If we were to ask them, "What is intersectionality.^" we
would get varied and sometimes contradictory answers.
Most, however, would probably accept the following general
description:
2 What is Intersectionality?
Intersectionality is a way of understanding and analyzing the
complexity in the world, in people, and in human experiences.
The events and conditions of social and political life and the
self can seldom be understood as shaped by one factor. They
are generally shaped by many factors in diverse and mutually
influencing ways. When it comes to social inequality, people's
lives and the organization of power in a given society are
better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of
social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes
that work together and influence each other. Intersectionality
as an analytic tool gives people better access to the complex
ity of the world and of themselves.

We begin this book by recognizing the tremendous hetero

geneity that currently characterizes how people understand
and use intersectionality. Despite debates about the meaning
of this term, or even whether it is the right term to use at
all, intersectionality is the term that has stuck. It is the
term that is increasingly used by stakeholders who put
their understandings of intersectionality to a variety of uses.
Despite these differences, this general description points
toward a general consensus about how people understand
intersectionality.

Using intersectionality as an analytic tool

People generally use intersectionality as an analytic tool to

solve problems that they or others around them face. Most
US colleges and universities, for example, face the challenge
of building more inclusive and fair campus communities. The
social divisions of class, race, gender, ethnicity, citizenship,
sexuality, and ability are especially evident within higher
education. Colleges and universities now include more college
students who formerly had no way to pay for college (class),
or students who historically faced discriminatory barriers to
enrollment (race, gender, ethnicity or citizenship status, reli
gion), or students who experience distinctive barriers and
discrimination (sexuality and ability) on college campuses.
Colleges and universities find themselves confronted with
students who want fairness, yet who bring very different
 What is Intersectionality? 3
experiences and needs to campus. Initially, colleges recruited
and served groups one at a time, offering,for example,special
programs for African Americans, Latinos, women, gays and
lesbians, veterans, returning students, and persons with dis
abilities. As the list grew, it became clearer that this one-at-
a-time approach not only was slow, but that most students
fit into more than one category. First-generation college stu
dents could include Latinos, women, poor whites, returning
veterans, grandparents, and transgender individuals. In this
context, intersectionality can be a useful analytic tool for
thinking about and developing strategies to achieve campus
equity. '
Ordinary people can draw upon intersectionality as an
analytic tool when they recognize that they need better frame
works to grapple with the complex discriminations that they
face. In the 1960s and 1970s, African-American women
activists confronted the puzzle of how their needs simply fell
through the cracks of anti-racist social movements,feminism,
and unions organizing for workers' rights. Each of these
social movements elevated one category of analysis and action
above others, for example, race within the civil rights move
ment, or gender within feminism or class within the union
movement. Because African-American women were simulta
neously black and female and workers, these single-focus
lenses on social inequality left little space to address the
complex social problems that they face. Black women's spe
cific issues remained subordinated within each movement
because no social movement by itself would, nor could,
address the entirety of discriminations they faced. Black
women's use of intersectionality as an analytic tool emerged
in response to these challenges.
Intersectionality as an analytic tool is neither confined to
nations of North America and Europe nor is it a new phe
nomenon. People in the Global South have used intersection
ality as an analytic tool, often without naming it as such.
Consider an unexpected example from nineteenth-century
colonial India in the work of Savitribai Phule (1831-1897),
regarded as an important first-generation modern Indian
feminist. In an online article titled "Six Reasons Every Indian
Feminist Must Remember Savitribai Phule," published in
January 2015, Deepika Sarma suggests:
4 What is Intersectionality?
Here's why you should know more about her. She got inter
sectionality. Savitribai along with her husband Jyotirao was
a staunch advocate of anti-caste ideology and women's rights.
The Phules' vision of social equality included fighting against
the subjugation of women, and they also stood for Adivasis
and Muslims. She organized a barbers' strike against shaving
the heads of Hindu widows,fought for widow remarriage and
in 1853, started a shelter for pregnant widows. Other welfare
programmes she was involved with alongside Jyotirao include
opening schools for workers and rural people, and providing
famine relief through 52 food centers that also operated as
boarding schools. She also cared for those affected by famine
and plague, and died in 1897 after contracting plague from
her patients. (Sarma 2015)

Phule confronted several axes of social division, namely caste,

gender, religion, and economic disadvantage or class. Her
political activism encompassed intersecting categories of
social division - she didn't just pick one.
These examples suggest that people use intersectionality as
an analytic tool in many different ways to address a range of
issues and social problems. They find intersectionality's core
insight to be useful: namely, that major axes of social divi
sions in a given society at a given time, for example, race,
class, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and age operate not as
discrete and mutually exclusive entities, but build on each
other and work together. Many people typically use intersec
tionality as a heuristic^ a problem-solving or analytic tool,
much in the way that students on college campuses developed
a shared interest in diversity, or African-American women
used it to address their status within social movement politics,
or Savitribai Phule advanced women's rights. Even though
those who use intersectional frameworks all seem to be situ
ated under the same big umbrella, using intersectionality as
a heuristic device means that intersectionality can assume
many different forms.
In this book, we examine the perspectives, definitions, and
controversies that characterize intersectionality but, for now,
we want to show three uses of intersectionality as an analytic
tool. As Cho et al. point out (2013: 795), "what makes an
analysis intersectional is not its use of the term 'intersection
ality,' nor its being situated in a familiar genealogy, nor its
 What is Intersectionality? 5
drawing on lists of standard citations." Instead, they argue,
"what intersectionality does rather than what intersectional
ity /s" lies at the at the heart of intersectionality (ibid.; our
italics). In the remainder of this section, we demonstrate three
uses of intersectionality as an analytic tool that were inspired
by important global events that took place in 2014.

Power plays: the FIFA World Cup

Brazil's international reputation as a football (soccer) power

house raised high hopes for its winning the 2014 FIFA World
Cup. As one of the most successful national teams in the
history of the World Cup, Brazil was the only country whose
teams had qualified for and attended every World Cup tour
nament. Brazil had also produced some of the greatest players
in the history of world football. The legendary Pele remains
Brazil's highest goal-scorer of all time. Italy, Germany, and
Argentina are all football powerhouses, yet, in terms of star
power and status, they were no match for Brazil.
Because the 2014 tournament was held in Brazil, the stakes
were especially high. The potential payoff for a winning Bra
zilian team in Brazil could be huge. Hosting the FIFA World
Cup would enable Brazil to shed vestiges of its troubled
history of being ruled by a military dictatorship (1964-1985),
as well as signal its arrival as a major economic player. Bra
zil's victory, both on the field and via its hosting, would
attract global attention. The World Cup was the most widely
watched and followed sporting event in the world, exceeding
even the Olympic Games. From the perspective of Brazil's
policy makers and financiers, the possibilities of reaching a
massive global market were endless. For example, the cumu
lative audience for all matches during the 2006 World Cup
was estimated to be 26.29 billion people, with an estimated
715.1 million people watching the final match in Berlin, an
astonishing one-ninth of the entire population of the planet.
So how did the 2014 FIFA World Cup games go.^
The challenges associated with hosting the games began
well before the athletes arrived on the playing fields. Brazil
estimated a figure of US$11.3 billion in public works-
spending for the event. The initial plan presented to the public
6 What is Intersectionality?

emphasized that the majority of the spending on infrastruc

ture for the World Cup would highlight general transporta
tion, security, and communications. Less than 25 percent of
total spending would go toward the twelve new or refur
bished stadiums. Yet, as the games grew nearer, cost overruns
increased stadium costs by at least 75 percent, with public
resources reallocated from general infrastructure projects.
The FIFA cost overruns aggravated ongoing public demon
strations in several Brazilian cities against the increase in
public transportation fares and political corruption. For
example, on June 20, 2013, one and a half million people
demonstrated in Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest metropolitan area
with a population of 18 million people. In this context, the
exorbitant cost of stadiums, the displacement of urban dwell
ers for construction, and the embezzlement of public funds
became a new theme at the forefront of public protests (Cas-
tells 2015: 232). As the countdown to the kickoff began,
Brazilians took to the streets with banners against the World
Cup. "FIFA go home!" and "We want hospitals up to FIFA's
standards!" were common slogans in protests throughout
more than a hundred cities. "The World Cup steals money
from healthcare, education and the poor. The homeless are
being forced from the streets. This is not for Brazil, it's for
the tourists," reported a Guardian article (Watts 2014).
The games began as this social unrest intensified. Of the
thirty-two teams that qualified for the World Cup, Brazil was
one of four that reached the semifinals, facing an undefeated
Germany. The match wasn't even close. Germany led 5-0 at
half time, scoring an unheard of four goals in a span of six
minutes, and went on to win the World Cup. For its stunned
fans in the stadium, as well as for the massive global audi
ence, Brazil's loss was shocking. The media depicted the
match as a national disgrace, with Brazilian newspapers car
rying headlines such as "The Biggest Shame in History," "A
Historical Humiliation!," and "Brazil is Slain." Global media
joined in with headlines that described the defeat as the "ulti
mate embarrassment" and the "most humiliating World Cup
host nation defeat of all time."
On the surface, intersectionality seems far removed from
Brazil's 2014 FIFA World Cup experience. Because many
people enjoy sporting events or play sports themselves, sports
 What is Intersectionality? 7
seem distant from intersectionality's concern with social ine
quality. Yet using intersectionality as an analytic tool to
examine the FIFA World Cup sheds light on the organization
of power. Intersectionality as an analytic tool examines how
power relations are intertwined and mutually constructing.
Race, class, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, ethnicity, nation,
religion, and age are categories of analysis, terms that refer
ence important social divisions. But they are also categories
that gain meaning from power relations of racism, sexism,
heterosexism, and class exploitation.
One way of describing the organization of power identifies
four distinctive yet interconnected domains of power: inter
personal, disciplinary, cultural, and structural. These four
dimensions of the organization of power provide opportuni
ties for using intersectionality as an analytic tool to better
understand the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

The interpersonal domain of power First, power rela

tions are about people's lives, how people relate to one
another, and who is advantaged or disadvantaged within
social interactions. Without the athletes, there would be no
World Cup. The athletes are individuals and, whether famous
or not, their actions shape power relations just as much as
the policy makers who bid on the games, the media that
covered the Brazilian national team's defeat, or the activists
who took to the street to protest cost overruns.
As a people's sport, football can be played almost any
where by almost anyone. Each team is composed of a constel
lation of individuals who, on some level, love football and
have chosen to play. One does not need expensive lessons, or
a carefully manicured playing field, or even shoes. It requires
no special equipment or training, only a ball and enough
players to field two teams. Compared with ice skating, tennis,
skiing, or American football, soccer has far fewer barriers
between athletic talent and the means to develop that talent.
Across the globe, there is no way of knowing exactly how
many people play football. Yet FIFA's surveys provide a good
guess: an estimated 270 million people are involved in foot
ball as professional soccer players, recreational players, reg
istered players both over and under age 18, futsal and beach
football players, referees, and officials. This is a vast pool of
8 What is Intersectionality?

potential elite athletes and a massive audience reaching across

categories of social class, age, gender, ethnicity, and nation.
When one adds the children and youth who play football but
who are not involved in any kind of organized activity detect
able by FIFA, the number swells greatly.
The fanfare granted to the World Cup is a small tip of the
iceberg of the everyday social interactions that shape people's
relationships with one another in regard to football. From
elite athletes to poor kids, football players want to play on a
fair playing field. It doesn't matter how you got to the field:
all that matters once you are on the field is what you do on
the field. The sports metaphor of a level playing field speaks
to the desire for fairness. Whether winners or losers, this team
sport rewards individual talent yet also highlights the collec
tive team nature of achievement. When played well and unim
peded by suspect officiating, football rewards individual
talent. In a world that is characterized by so much unfairness,
competitive sports such as football become important venues
for seeing how things should be. The backgrounds of the
players should not matter when they hit the playing field.
What matters is how well they play. The cries of anguish from
the losing 2014 Brazil team may have made the news, but
few people questioned the outcome of the game. Fair play
ruled.
Football is a people's sport, but not all people get to play.
One important rule of football, and of most sports for that
matter, is that men and women do not compete directly
against one another. The rules of fair play may apply within
gender categories, yet how fair are those categories.^ Sports
generally, and professional sports in particular, routinely
provide opportunities for men that are denied to women. By
this rule of gender segregation, the 2014 World Cup showed
that the kind of football that counts for FIFA and fans alike
is played by men.
Using intersectionality as an analytic lens highlights the
multiple nature of individual identities and how varying com
binations of class, gender, race, sexuality, and citizenship
categories differentially position each individual. Regardless
of the love of soccer, these axes of social division work
together and influence one another to shape each individual
biography.