Introduction: Intersectionality in European political science research
| Date | 01 November 2016 |
| Published date | 01 November 2016 |
| Author | Liza Mügge,Silvia Erzeel |
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395716665331 |
| Subject Matter | Special Section: Intersectionality and Political Science ResearchGuest Edited by Silvia Erzeel (Université catholique de Louvain; University of Antwerp) and Liza Mügge (University of Amsterdam) |
research-article2016
Special Section Introduction
Politics
2016, Vol. 36(4) 341 –345
Introduction: Intersectionality
© The Author(s) 2016
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in European political science
DOI: 10.1177/0263395716665331
pol.sagepub.com
research
Silvia Erzeel
Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
Liza Mügge
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Power and conflicts over inclusion and exclusion are central themes in political science
research. Political scientists systematically describe, explain, and theorize how power is
acquired and exercised (Caramani, 2014). Doing so raises common sets of questions:
how, why, and when do actors – including individuals, groups, parties, organizations, and
nations – obtain positions of power? How, why, and when do they abstain from it? And
how, why, and when are actors structurally disadvantaged in the political sphere? Over
the past decades, scholars have scrutinized how power structures are gendered. One line
of inquiry has sought to understand how to make women more visible in the public sphere.
A second has sought to uncover the (hidden) gender biases in the workings of political
institutions and processes such as political parties, legislatures, social movements, wel-
fare states, and nation-building projects (Goertz and Mazur, 2008; Waylen et al., 2014).
Building upon these lines of inquiry, the concept of ‘intersectionality’ offers a lens to
study how political power is mediated by the interactions of diverse positions of privilege
with positions of disadvantage. Intersectionality refers to the idea that experiences of
inclusion and exclusion are not solely gendered, but intersect with a range of other iden-
tity markers such as race, ethnicity, social class, and ability (Crenshaw, 1991; Hancock,
2007). Intersectionality draws attention to the complexity of social relations and to the
specific concern that multiple power (in)equalities and (dis)advantages do not operate in
isolation but interact and interlock in a complex manner.
Intersectionality has been characterized as the contribution from gender studies with
the most potential impact for social science research (McCall, 2005). While intersection-
ality is increasingly incorporated by scholars who study the politics of gender, it has not
yet travelled to the wider political science community. The aim of this special section is
to introduce intersectionality to a broader political science audience. In this collection of
four research articles, intersectionality travels to different corners of the discipline includ-
ing political theory, comparative politics, social movement studies, and public policy. In
doing so, we make two distinct contributions. First, these articles offer insights into how
intersectionality can be applied in political science theory and research. Second, this
Corresponding author:
Silvia Erzeel, Université catholique de Louvain, Place Montesquieu 1, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
Email: silvia.erzeel@uclouvain.be
342
Politics 36(4)
collection demonstrates the added value of intersectionality to traditional political science
concerns.
It was the legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) who first coined the concept of
‘intersectionality’ in her study of the US anti-discrimination law. Here, she found that the
forms of violence experienced by Black women were noticeably different from forms of
violence experienced by either White women or Black men. In order to understand the
specific experiences of Black women, she focused on the way that different forms of
discrimination interacted and reinforced each other. Since the 1990s, research on intersec-
tionality has developed in various ways (see Davis, 2008; Hancock,...
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