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ABSTRACT
Intersectionality has gone global. The application and adoption of the concept cuts across disciplinary and territorial boundaries. How can intersectionality inform the work of social justice in the twenty-first century? This essay focuses on the practical implications of intersectionality for social movements. First, this essay reviews prominent definitions of intersectionality, identifies a series of tenets, and presents a brief history of the notion of intersectionality. Second, the essay reviews extant explanations of solidarity. This review ends with a proposal for enacting solidarity that is viable for articulating intersectionally conscious forms of solidarity – intersectional solidarity – suitable for scholars of global politics.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, S. Laurel Weldon, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and feedback.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Leslie McCall (Citation2005, 1771) provides a broader albeit contested definition of intersectionality as “the relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relations and subject formations.” See Alexander-Floyd (Citation2012) for a critique of McCall’s (Citation2005) broad conceptualization of intersectionality.
2. Olena Hankivsky (Citation2012, 1713) delineates a series of tenets for understanding intersectionality:
[H]uman lives cannot be reduced to single characteristics; human experiences cannot be accurately understood by prioritizing any one single factor or constellation of factors; social categories such as race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, and ability are socially constructed, fluid, and flexible; and social locations are inseparable and shaped by the interacting and mutually constituting social processes and structures that are influenced by both time and place.
3. Essentialist notions of social groups assume that there is a unitary, “essential” women’s experience that can be isolated and described independently of race, class, sexual orientation, and other realities of experience (Harris Citation1990, 585). Social groups are collectives of persons differentiated from at least one other group by cultural forms, practices, or lived experiences (Young Citation2011, 43). On this view, people have multiple social group memberships and one social group membership does not define personal identity (Young Citation2000, 99). Individuals may have affinities with more than one social group because of the intersecting social group experiences of persons, social groups do not have unified identities (Crenshaw Citation1991; Young Citation2000). Individual identity is unique and actively constituted by social relations. Individuals are agents that constitute their own identity and are conditioned by their position in structured social relations (Young Citation2000, 101). The positioning of individuals occurs through processes of social interaction in which individuals identify themselves in relation to others and enforce norms and expectations in relation to one another (Young Citation2000, 100).
4. A noteworthy effort to account for the interaction of multiple social structures in the production of oppression had also been presented by Marilyn Frye’s (Citation1983) notion of oppression as a birdcage.
5. The journal Intersectionalities: A Global Journal of Social Work Analysis, Research, Polity, and Practice seeks to share knowledge and facilitate collaborative discourse amongst social work theorists, activists, educators, practitioners and the communities they serve within local, regional, and global contexts.
6. Collins and Bilge (Citation2016, 3) state “intersectionality as an analytic tool is neither confined to nations of North American and Europe nor is it a new phenomenon. People in the Global South have used intersectionality as an analytic tool, often without naming it as such.” Moreover, the authors cite nineteenth century Indian feminist Savitribai Phule’s anti-caste, worker, and women’s rights advocacy as an example of early intersectional political activism.
7. Dara Strolovitch (Citation2007, 11) proposes the following series of practices that movements can adopt to accomplish this redistribution of attention and resources:
… [C]reating decision rules that elevate issues affecting disadvantaged minorities on organizational agendas; using internal processes and practices to improve the status of intersectionally disadvantaged groups within the organization; forging stronger ties to state and local advocacy groups; promoting “descriptive representation” by making sure that staff and boards include members of intersectionally marginalized subgroups of their constituencies; resisting the silencing effects of public and constituent opinion that are biased against disadvantaged subgroups; and cultivating among advantaged subgroups of their constituencies the understanding that their interests are inextricably linked to the well-being of intersectionally disadvantaged constituents.