Intersectionality and Social Movements

A Conference Within A Conference

Organizers:

Fernando Tormos-Aponte (UMBC)

Valeria Sinclair-Chapman (Purdue)

Shariana Ferrer-Núñez

Intersectionality’s growing prominence within social movement theory, methods, and practice is marked by the publication of studies on the implications of intersectionality for social movements, disciplinary efforts to center intersectional scholarship and scholars from historically underrepresented groups, and the recognition that intersectionality emerged within minority women’s social movement and scholarly spaces. Various studies document intersectional forms of coalition politics (Adam 2017; Cole 2008; Chun, Lipsitz, and Shin 2013; Laperrière and Lépinard 2016; Luna 2016; Roberts and Jesudason 2013; Tungohan 2016; Verloo 2013), the presence or absence of an intersectional organizing approach and movement agenda (Smooth and Tucker 1999; Strolovitch 2007; Tormos 2019), the extent to which intersectional issues drive movement participation (Fisher et al., 2018), and the use of intersectionality as part of movement discourse (Fisher et al 2017; Heaney 2019). In turn, Liu (2017) developed an intersectionality and critical race theory paradigm for the study of movements and revealed how social movement scholarship has yet to recognize intersectionality as a significant contribution to the field. 

Despite its popularity and recurrent adoption within social movements, intersectionality has been pushed to the margins within the study of social movements (Irvine et al., 2019). Intersectionality’s relegation to the margins of social movement research evidences the critiques raised by intersectionality scholars, pointing to the subjugation of Black feminist political thought (Collins 1990). Similarly, Bracey (2016) and Liu (2017) point to social movement research’s history of using Black liberation struggles as case studies while ignoring Black political theory. As intersectionality is increasingly mainstreamed in social movement research, it has been moved away from the tradition of centering the experience of Black and Mestiza feminists (Beaman and Brown 2019) and building on the intellectual labor of Black critical theorists (Alexander-Floyd 2018). The omission of race and gender as structurally intertwined phenomena for the study of social movements has been to the detriment of the field and the populations studied (Liu 2017). This omission leads to the production of knowledge about social movements that de-centers identities as social structures, avoids situating vulnerable populations in historical, spatial, and temporal context, and devalues the intellectual contributions of minority actors and scholars (Liu 2017). 

Intersectionality scholars, however, have developed insights on transversal forms of enacting solidarity and about the political environment in which movements operate. Feminist scholars refer to the forms of collective agency that intersectionality inspires as political intersectionality (Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall 2013), intersectional conceptual approaches to coalition-building (Collins and Chepp 2013), intersectional praxis (Townsend-Bell 2011), intersectional solidarity (Hancock 2011), and deep political solidarity (Hancock 2011).

This SPSA Conference within a Conference aims to provide a space for the continuation of efforts to promote critical intersectionality perspectives that inform and are informed by movement politics. We do so in an academic setting while also recognizing the intersectional movement politics that are taking place in the geopolitical space in which the conference is hosted—Puerto Rico. This conference-within-a-conference will include three panels and a roundtable that bring scholars and activists together to discuss the state of the field with respect to intersectionality and mobilization, the opportunities for and challenges to adopting intersectional organizing approaches, and the political outcomes of intersectional work.