Book review: Hillary Potter, Intersectionality and Criminology: Disrupting and Revolutionizing Studies of Crime
| Author | Amanda Burgess-Proctor |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480616638958 |
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480616638958
Theoretical Criminology
2017, Vol. 21(1) 96 –108
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480616638958
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Book reviews
Hillary Potter, Intersectionality and Criminology: Disrupting and Revolutionizing Studies of Crime,
Routledge: New York, 2015; 193 pp., 9780415634397, £68.50 (hbk); 9780415634403,
£26.99 (pbk)
Reviewed by: Amanda Burgess-Proctor, Oakland University, USA
Intersectional analyses are growing increasingly popular both within and beyond crimi-
nology, so much so that intersectionality has become something of an academic buz-
zword in recent years. However, not all scholarship that identifies as intersectional
successfully employs the tenets of intersectionality. Conversely, scholarship that does
utilize intersectional principles is not always identified as such. In this context, Hillary
Potter’s Intersectionality and Criminology is a timely and relevant text offering a much
needed synthesis of intersectionality within criminology, where the need to embrace
intersectional principles is both urgent and largely unmet.
The first three chapters provide a rationale for integrating intersectionality into crimi-
nological scholarship. Potter defines the term intersectionality as referring to ‘the con-
cept or conceptualization that each person has an assortment of coalesced socially
constructed identities that are ordered into an inequitable social stratum’ (p. 3). One
particularly compelling contribution of Chapter 1 is the discussion of how intersectional-
ity can help unpack ‘Whitemaleness’, or the normative, default social location by which
all people are measured. This theme is continued in the overview of feminism (particu-
larly as developed by women of color) and intersectionality presented in Chapter 2. In
discussing the development of feminist thought, Potter highlights women of color femi-
nist perspectives, including Chicana, Puerto Rican, and indigenous women’s feminisms
(pp. 56–9), that often are overlooked in summaries of feminist scholarship, especially
within criminology. Similarly, Potter observes that some young women of color femi-
nists prefer to identify themselves according to ‘signifiers that reflect contemporary
music genres created by people of Color, such as hip-hop feminists and crunk feminists’
(p. 63). These terms may be unfamiliar to many criminologists, thereby expanding and
deepening readers’ exposure to the rich tradition of women of color feminisms.
To highlight the ways that intersectionality can challenge mainstream criminology,
Potter uses an intersectional lens in Chapter 3 to critique three prominent theoretical
contributions to ‘orthodox criminology’ (p. 36), a term Potter prefers over ‘mainstream
criminology’ as the latter (problematically) suggests normativity of the theories
638958TCR0010.1177/1362480616638958Theoretical CriminologyBook reviews
book-review2016
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