POLS 4790 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Intersectionality, Identity Politics

• School: University of Georgia
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLS 4790
• Professor: Andrew Pierce

Document Summary

Grew out of critiques of the feminist movement. Women of color experience unique patterns of oppression based on their race and gender. These systems of oppression overlap at the intersection of racism and sexism. Experiences at this intersection cannot be defined as the sum of their parts. Hancock intersectionality as a normative and empirical paradigm . Big picture: intersectionality provides a beneficial framework for understanding political behavior. Although intersectionality as a concept originally dealt with racism and sexism as systems of oppression, it has been generalized to a broader social science perspective. Hancock is arguing for how intersectionality benefits social science beyond calling attention to the fact that women of color experience unique systems of oppression. It is easy to think of intersectionality of applying to just one group, e. g. latin. It ignores the more complex insights given by intersectionality and benefits that might be gained from studying it as such.