Abstract
Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge’s second edition of their volume Intersectionality provides a solid overview of the ways that the multifaceted concept of intersectionality is theoretically understood and practically applied in a range of fields. Intersectionality is a helpful guidebook for anyone who is exploring the history and use of the concept. The language and style are accessible, without being simplistic, offering valuable definitions and clarifying the central debates of intersectionality. I read Intersectionality as divided into three parts.
The first part is comprised of chapters 1 to 3, where Collins and Bilge present a sociological perspective on the histories of intersectionality, spanning from the late 1960s all the way to term’s academic adoption by Crenshaw in the 1990s and its current global trends. The authors offer a plethora of intersectionality examples, successfully relating the concept to our social world, such as the FIFA World Cup and the women’s movement in Brazil. Their concise definition (Collins and Bilge, 2020:2) is that Intersectionality is a way of understanding and analysing the complexity in the world, in people, and 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.
This definition showcases the diverse character of concept.
Collins and Bilge are concerned with the complexities of social inequality and argue that to acknowledge our social experience, it is paramount to understand intersectionality as a social justice tool to eradicate all facets of oppression, inequalities, and discrimination. The authors examine intersectionality as an expression of critical praxis, signifying various strategies on contesting the status quo, such as synergy among scholarship and practice, which is key to Collins and Bilge’s expression of intersectionality. They explain that by applying the concept as an inclusive worldview, activists and academics, “aim to transform power relations” (2020:33). This is what they view as the intersectional thought process; a process embedded in the ethics of social justice.
The second part of the book, covering chapters 4 to 7, focuses on the connections between marginalized identities within power structures. The debate focuses on the ways power structures affect global inequalities, particularly on the concept of relationality. Collins and Bilge adopt an inclusive framework for the analysis of marginalized identities and connections. According to the authors, such connections expose the delicate intricacies of power within social contexts, which in turn affect the analysis of intersectionality. Those intricacies set up intersectionality as a sophisticated analytical tool that requires a firm grasp of social justice. For Collins and Bilge, intersectionality’s primary goals are to introduce complex and all-encompassing analyses, regarding the persistence of social inequalities. Collins and Bilge (2020:190) cite Freire’s classic Pedagogy of the Oppressed as a “core text for intersectionality” and mention that “those oppressed today are homeless/landless people, women, poor people, black people, sexual minorities, disabled people, and the young.” Thus, they re-negotiate identity categories through critical theory and explain how such categories are still oppressed and require liberation.
The authors are critical of the concept’s academic treatment as a one-size-fits-all discourse, which they claim, drives intersectional analysis away from its social justice roots. They condemn this academic approach as reductionist; particularly when the analysis focuses exclusively on identity and differentiation instead of dismantling the dominant perspectives of identity categories. The authors argue that reductionist analysis perpetuates and re-produces inequality structures, thus negatively affecting the intersectional scholarship. The authors consider the re-thinking of collective identities as the vehicle for improving intersectional scholarship; while acknowledging the missed nuances when identity categories are re-defined and are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division . . . but by many axes that work together and influence each other. Intersectionality, as an analytic tool, gives people better access to the complexity of the world and of themselves. (2020:193)
Last, chapter 8, Intersectionality Revisited stands alone, as the authors examine intersectionality’s “creative tension” (2020:219). Between inquiry and practice. Collins and Bilge highlight that the concept should be understood as a combination of critical theory and praxis, as they strive to achieve a conceptual balance between the influence of academic thought and their everyday strategic practice. Intersectionality is an excellent introductory text for young scholars, policy practitioners, and activists who wish to advance their knowledge of intersectionality, and are not only willing to explore the concept’s academic progression but also wish to start examining the world around with a fresh pair of eyes.