How Can the Intersections between Gender, Class, and Sexuality Be Translated to an Empirical Agenda?

Abstract

The social categories of gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity, and their relation to subjectivities have received theoretical attention, but their empirical interrelationships remain underexplored. In this article, the authors consider how class, gender, and sexuality interrelate in practice by drawing and reflecting on (a) an empirical study of women in the wine industry that they have undertaken and (b) a selection of contemporary works that links multiple social categories. In conclusion, they argue that to investigate power and tension within and across multiple social categories meaningfully, a useful approach is to combine life histories with theories of embodiment.