Structural and Political Intersectionality
Crenshaw distinguished several dimensions of intersectionality, including structural and political intersectionality, to specify how overlapping systems shape both experience and the conflicts of social movements.
Definition
A set of distinctions within intersectional analysis separating how intersecting systems shape material experience (structural), how they place people between competing political agendas (political), and how they shape cultural representation (representational).
Scope
This topic examines the analytical distinctions Crenshaw drew in 'Mapping the Margins': structural intersectionality, concerning how the convergence of disadvantages shapes lived experience, and political intersectionality, concerning how those positioned at intersections are caught between agendas of separate movements. It also notes her related notion of representational intersectionality. The treatment is descriptive.
Core questions
- How does the convergence of race, gender, and class shape the concrete circumstances people face, such as access to services?
- Why are those at intersections often marginalized within the very movements that claim to represent them?
- How do cultural images reflect and reinforce intersecting disadvantages?
Key theories
- Structural intersectionality
- Crenshaw's account of how the convergence of multiple disadvantages, illustrated through the situation of women of color facing domestic violence, shapes experiences in ways that single-axis frameworks and services fail to address.
- Political intersectionality
- Crenshaw's analysis of how people positioned within at least two subordinated groups are pulled between political agendas, such as antiracism and feminism, that often treat their concerns as secondary or divisive.
History
These distinctions were elaborated in Crenshaw's 1991 Stanford Law Review article, which extended her 1989 introduction of the term by analyzing violence against women of color and the failures of both antiracist and feminist politics to address it. The structural and political framings have been widely adopted and adapted in subsequent intersectional research.
Debates
- Categories as tools or as reifications
- Whether naming intersecting categories risks treating them as fixed and essential, or whether, as Crenshaw argued, categories can be used provisionally to expose and contest concrete inequalities.
Key figures
- Kimberlé Crenshaw
Related topics
Seminal works
- crenshaw1989
- crenshaw1991
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between structural and political intersectionality?
- Structural intersectionality concerns how overlapping systems shape a person's material circumstances; political intersectionality concerns how such people are caught between, and often marginalized within, separate social movements.