Practicing Intersectionality in Sociological Research: A Critical Analysis of Inclusions, Interactions, and Institutions in the Study of Inequalities

2010/06/01 by Hae Yeon Choo, Myra Marx Ferree · 15 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Gender Diversity and Inequality #Gender Politics and Representation #LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy

paper · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9558.2010.01370.x

openalex publication_date 2010/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

In this article we ask what it means for sociologists to practice intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach to inequality. What are the implications for choices of subject matter and style of work? We distinguish three styles of understanding intersectionality in practice: group-centered, process-centered, and system-centered. The first, emphasizes placing multiply-marginalized groups and their perspectives at the center of the research. The second, intersectionality as a process, highlights power as relational, seeing the interactions among variables as multiplying oppressions at various points of intersection, and drawing attention to unmarked groups. Finally, seeing intersectionality as shaping the entire social system pushes analysis away from associating specific inequalities with unique institutions, instead looking for processes that are fully interactive, historically co-determining, and complex. Using several examples of recent, highly regarded qualitative studies, we draw attention to the comparative, contextual, and complex dimensions of sociological analysis that can be missing even when race, class, and gender are explicitly brought together.

Citations

• A Sociology of the Unmarked: Redirecting Our Focus
• The Complexity of Intersectionality
• It's All In the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation
• Inequality Regimes
• When Multiplication Doesn't Equal Quick Addition: Examining Intersectionality as a Research Paradigm

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• Eastern Europe’s ‘peripheral whiteness’: class and gender racialization among Polish migrants and returnees
• Intersecting Biases: Does Veteran Status Overcome Disability and Gender Disadvantages in the Employment Landscape?
• Intersectionality: are we taking enough notice in the field of work and employment relations?
• Sexual Harassment, Workplace Authority, and the Paradox of Power
• The Glass Escalator, Revisited
• Shifting analytics and linking theories: A conversation about the “meaning-making” of intersectionality and transnational feminism
• Beholding Inequality: Race, Gender, and Returns to Physical Attractiveness in the United States
• Race and Disability: From Analogy to Intersectionality
• Employment Outcomes Among Men and Women with Disabilities: How the Intersection of Gender and Disability Status Shapes Labor Market Inequality
• The Mystery Revealed—Intersectionality in the Black Box: An Analysis of Female Migrants' Employment Opportunities in Urban China
• Reproductive Justice

Related

• Intersectionality's Definitional Dilemmas
• Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis
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