Abstract
During the last 30 years, intersectionality has become a central perspective in gender studies, and has travelled across disciplinary and national contexts. This has led to intense debates about the content and methodological implications of the perspective. In a Nordic context, one of these debates has addressed whether intersectionality, through a focus on structures, categories and processes of categorization, entraps analyses in narrow and deterministic theoretical frames. This debate is the point of departure of this article. We thus argue for an understanding of intersectionality that emphasizes three methodological principles: the sensitizing, the process-centered, and the multi-dimensional principle. Such an understanding is in our view well-suited for analyzing interacting, complex and mutually constitutive processes of social differentiation. After outlining this point, we illustrate the potential through an analysis of including and excluding intersectionality in Scandinavian welfare societies with a focus on public debates about ethnic minority men and their subject positions and everyday life.
Translated title of the contribution | Intersectionality - Social Differentiation and Empirical Diversity |
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Original language | Danish |
Article number | nr. 2 |
Journal | Tidsskrift for kjønnsforskning |
Volume | 44 |
Issue number | 2 |
Pages (from-to) | 104-117 |
Number of pages | 13 |
ISSN | 0809-6341 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2020 |
Keywords
- Intersectionality
- social differentiation
- categories
- sensitizing concepts
- multidimensionality
- ethnic minority men
- gender
- class
- ethnicity