Intersectionality as Method

Beyond a concept, intersectionality has been developed as a research method and field, raising questions about how to study intersecting categories empirically and rigorously.

Definition

The use of intersectionality as a research paradigm and set of methodological strategies for studying how multiple social categories combine, rather than only as a descriptive concept.

Scope

This topic surveys methodological reflection on intersectionality, including Leslie McCall's distinction among anticategorical, intracategorical, and intercategorical approaches, and the effort by Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall to define intersectionality studies as a field. It treats the debates over operationalizing the framework across qualitative and quantitative research, presenting the methodological options descriptively.

Core questions

• How can research handle the complexity of many intersecting categories without losing analytic clarity?
• Are categories to be deconstructed, used provisionally, or compared systematically?
• Can intersectionality be operationalized in quantitative as well as qualitative research?

Key theories

Three approaches to complexity

McCall's typology distinguishing anticategorical methods, which deconstruct categories; intracategorical methods, which focus on neglected groups at intersections; and intercategorical methods, which provisionally use categories to compare inequality across groups.

Intersectionality as a field

The argument by Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall that intersectionality is best understood not as a single theory but as an analytic sensibility and field encompassing theory, empirical applications, and political praxis.

History

As intersectionality spread across disciplines in the 2000s, scholars turned to questions of method. McCall's 2005 Signs article offered an influential typology, and the 2013 'Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies' sought to consolidate the area, while Collins and Bilge (2016) framed intersectionality as both critical inquiry and praxis.

Debates

Operationalization across methods

Whether intersectionality, rooted in qualitative and critical traditions, can be faithfully translated into quantitative research, and what is gained or lost in doing so.

Key figures

• Leslie McCall
• Kimberlé Crenshaw
• Sumi Cho
• Sirma Bilge

Seminal works

• mccall2005
• cho2013
• collinsbilge2016

Frequently asked questions

What are McCall's three approaches to studying intersectionality?

Anticategorical approaches deconstruct social categories; intracategorical approaches examine specific neglected groups at intersections; and intercategorical approaches use categories provisionally to compare inequality across groups.