Privilege and stigma. Well-being through intersectionality lens

American Sociological Review, 2020

We are doing sociology at a time when authoritarian heads of states have been elected around the world; empires are arising, borders are hardening; people are torn from their homes to become stateless refugees; and racism and xenophobia are all over social media. We have a U.S. president who refers to Abstract This article expands on my presidential address to further bolster the case that sociology has, from its inception, been engaged in social justice. I argue that a critical review of our discipline and our Association's vaunted empiricist tradition of objectivity, in which sociologists are detached from their research, was accomplished by a false history and sociology of sociology that ignored, isolated, and marginalized some of the founders. In the past half-century, scholar-activists, working-class sociologists, sociologists of color, women sociologists, indigenous sociologists, and LGBTQ sociologists have similarly been marginalized and discouraged from pursuing social justice issues and applied research within our discipline. Being ignored by academic sociology departments has led them to create or join homes in interdisciplinary programs and other associations that embrace applied and scholar-activist scholarship. I offer thoughts about practices that the discipline and Association should use to reclaim sociology's social justice tradition.

This book explores how intersectionality theory can be applied to social work practice with children and families, older people and mental health service users, and used to engage with diversity and difference in social work education and research. With case-study examples and practice questions throughout, the book provides a model for integrating intersectionality theory into social work practice. It highlights the ways intersectional theory helps us to understand the complexities of working with the interlocking nature of problematised elements such as gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, and other axes of structural inequalities experienced by groups in subjugated social locations. Intersectionality is used to examine multiple forms of inequalities and the complexities and questions they give rise to in social work practice. The emphasis throughout is that intersectional approaches can open up social work practice to new understandings of the complex linkages of multiple and intersecting systems of oppression that shape the lived experiences of diverse groups of service users. Providing an introduction to an intersectional theoretical framework for understanding the lives and experiences of socially disadvantaged service users, Intersectionality for Social Workers will be required reading on all modules on anti-oppressive and anti-discriminatory practice, sociology, and ethics and values in social work.

Social Work, 2008

Historicity, International Research Journal, 2018

'Education is what breaks down cycles of poverty and oppression'. Sinead Burke 2. Abstract Social science has been a matter of continuous debate and reflection with specific reference to power distributions and decisions, social welfare and social justice, law and environment etc. But social science often invites a repetitive question i.e. whether social science is science? In prima-face it seems a simple question to answer but it includes enormous amount of doubts and issues of needed discourse. It is found in many parts the world that social science is unloved and sidelined subject for that matter when it comes to the visibility and accountability of it. Present reflective article attempts to reveal the questions posed before social science and what social science can offer to the world.

Social Dialogue, 2019

Social work practice deals with the oppressed and marginalized and has caught the attention of social workers. The write-up is a piece on an occupational group which has caught the attention of the masses in the country. Also enumerated is the strategy to address the problem and the rehabilitation of the persons involved in the work. It is necessary that social workers are sensitive to their narratives and experiences and collaborate with the other stakeholders and policy makers for appropriate interventionist strategies based on grassroot realities.

Engaging in intersectional reflexivity requires one to acknowledge one's intersecting identities, both marginalized and privileged, and then employ self-reflexivity, which moves one beyond self-reflection to the often uncomfortable level of self-implication. This complex process may move critically minded people, both scholars and citizens, beyond individualized politics and expand our accountability from self to others and self creating possibilities for coali-tional activism targeted toward broad-based social change. Further, privileged scholars should advocate for coalition building in cautious and reflexive ways that complement rather than appropriate the intellectual labor of scholars of color, who have long called for more intersectionality and critical self-reflexivity within the academy.

American Journal of Public Health

Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 2020

Intersectionality is an analytic tool for studying and challenging complex social inequalities at the nexus of multiple systems of oppression and privilege, including race, gender, sexuality, social class, nation, age, religion, and ability. Although the term has become widely used in psychology, debates continue and confusion persists about what intersectionality actually is and how best to take an intersectional approach to psychological science. This special issue of Translational Issues in Psychological Science on intersectionality includes a range of methodological tools and theoretical perspectives that advance psychological research on intersectionality. In particular, these projects constitute psychological research that takes intersectionality's political aspirations seriously and envisions psychology as a tool for social justice. The articles model responsible use of intersectionality through citation practices that reflect intersectionality's origins in Black feminist thought and women of color scholar-activism, as well as through analyses that reflect intersectionality's commitment to reflexivity, structural critique, and complexity. In this introduction, the editors reflect on intersectionality's challenge to psychology and consider the place of translational science amid global crises and what critical psychologist Michelle Fine calls "revolting times." What is the significance of this article for the general public? This paper introduces a special issue on the topic of intersectionality and situates this social justiceoriented scholarship in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the racial justice uprisings of 2020, and ongoing debates about psychologists' role in addressing social problems.

Jurnal Ilmu Sosial dan Humaniora (JISH), 2023

This study aims to identify various research studies on multiple dimensions of social life that employ an intersectionality approach. The approach is a framework that recognizes the multiple dimensions of social identity and how they intersect and influence experiences of discrimination, privilege, and marginalization. Using literature studies from various research databases and employing specific keywords, four dimensions of social life have been identified as dominant themes in research applying the intersectionality approach, namely education, healthcare, politics, and workplace. In the domain of education, the article discusses how an intersectionality approach can help to understand how multiple identities, such as race, gender, and class, intersect to influence educational experiences and outcomes. The article also examines the impact of intersectionality on access to healthcare, highlighting how multiple identities can affect access to care, treatment outcomes, and experiences of discrimination. In politics, the article discusses how an intersectionality approach can help understand marginalized groups' experiences in political processes and systems. The article also examines how intersectionality can influence workplace experiences and opportunities for advancement. The article argues that an intersectionality approach can help to identify and address systemic inequalities and promote greater equality and diversity in multiple dimensions of social life. The article highlights the importance of applying an intersectionality approach in understanding the complex ways social identities intersect and shape experiences of discrimination, privilege, and marginalization.

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews

Everybody is talking about intersectionality these days. Whether one is out of the loop and wondering what all the fuss is about or in the inner circle and trying to decide whether and how to use it most effectively as a tool, either of the two books reviewed here-Intersectionality: Origins, Contestations, Horizons, by Anna Carastathis, and Intersectionality, by Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge-will prove an invaluable guide. Before considering the arguments the authors advance for why the approach they take is particularly useful, it may help to step back and consider what NON-intersectional sociology looked like. In the 1980s, Elaine Hall and I surveyed all the most widely used textbooks in introductory sociology; and, among other things, we found that race, class, and gender didn't, and in some ways couldn't, intersect to inform a basic sociological understanding of inequality. These books captured the prevailing wisdom of their time: class was a macro-structural arrangement organizing societies; race was a group membership defining cultural identities, institutionalized barriers, and political mobilization; and gender was a biosocial characteristic cultivated through childhood socialization and maintained by deep-seated ''traditional'' attitudes (Ferree and Hall 1996). Operating at different levels of social organization, gender, class, and race were understood then as social processes independent of each other and ranked by the priority given them in the ''classics'' of social theory: class was definitely structurally significant, but race and gender were ''identities'' and ''epiphenomenal.'' Since then, this consensus has largely been replaced, not without struggle, by a commitment to understanding these processes as all working at all three levels, as being far from Contemporary Sociology 47, 2