Intersectionalities: class, race, gender and sexuality
Lectures & texts
Week 1 introduction
What is done in this course? Study social relations of power, and notably inequality,
as social facts and socially constructed, through a set of categories (4) of analysis
And look at the intersecting character of these categories/power relations
Readings linked to theoretical approaches:
Social inequality as a social fact
Durkheim says about social facts: “consist of manners of acting, thinking and feeling
external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of
which they exercise control over him.”
Characteristics of social facts: observable, external to the individual and coercive to
power
Social construction happens on two levels:
1) Social reality is socially constructed e.g. due to the social relations of power
2) The categories we have to grasp social reality are also socially constructed (and
impact that social reality)
Sociological approach to inequality
Inequality and oppression are about the social, about structures and systems (not
about ‘bad people doing bad things’, not about intention
Approaching social relations of power with the concept of Privilege
, McIntosh, Peggy (1989) – White privilege and Male privilege
Knowledge on white privilege via knowledge on male privilege
“whites are carefully taught not to recognized white privilege” (social construction,
difficulty to see power dynamics from position of privilege)
Different kinds of privileges
Critique of concept (“the word ‘privilege’ now seems misleading – entitlement for all
vs. dominance)
- Some are human rights or norms and some positively influence oppression
(confer dominance because of one’s race or sex)
Distinguishes earned strength and unearned power conferred systemically
- Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission
to escape or to dominate
Neutrality of whiteness seen as the norm in society
She provides a list, examples of privileges, by which she wants to show how woven
these privileges are into society
Gordon, Lewis R. (2004) – Critical Reflections on Three Popular Tropes in the Study of
Whiteness
White privilege is conferred upon white through a structural reality of white supremacy
(radical inequality between whites and others), through its institutionalization
Privilege = a law of one’s own, exempt from the law, exception to the law
Notion of white privilege is used for ‘goods’ that are human rights
- Ideal norm of whiteness
- Decrease in value
- What are human rights then?
White privilege creates an imaginary ideal whiteness as norm for all whites
Gordon wants to expose radical inequality we cannot do this when we only look at
privileges, because then it is impossible to look at ‘white supremacy’
Privilege (as concept) takes attention away from structural reality of white supremacy
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