Intersectionality: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Class

Abstract

From its origins in the Black feminist legal scholarship of Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw to its contemporary centrality in online activist debates, intersectionality has always signaled both academic insights and activist implications. As a basic definition, intersectionality refers to the ways in which race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, and other locations of social group membership impact lived experiences and social relations. The term emphasizes the mobility of social group identities and locations, not simply of their appearances in individual bodies. This chapter examines intersectionality and how it is used in the social sciences, including research in religion, health, gender-based violence, and interdisciplinary studies. In addition to providing definitions and an overview of the history of intersectionality as a theoretical tradition, this chapter also explores how it has been applied in social science research and methodologies, and recommends that future social science research continue both the academic and activist heritage of the intersectional framework.