Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge - Intersectionality

1. Barbara Adam, Time
2. Alan Aldridge, Consumption
3. Alan Aldridge, The Market
4. Jakob Arnoldi, Risk
5. Will Atkinson, Class
6. Colin Barnes and Geof Mercer, Disability
7. Darin Barney, The Network Society
8. Mildred Blaxter, Health 2nd edition
9. Harriet Bradley, Gender 2nd edition
10. Harry Brighouse, Justice
11. Mnica Brito Vieira and David Runciman, Representation
12. Steve Bruce, Fundamentalism 2nd edition
13. Joan Busfield, Mental Illness
14. Margaret Canovan, The People
15. Andrew Jason Cohen, Toleration
16. Alejandro Cols, Empire
17. Mary Daly, Welfare
18. Anthony Elliott, Concepts of the Self 3rd edition
19. Steve Fenton, Ethnicity 2nd edition
20. Katrin Flikschuh, Freedom
21. Michael Freeman, Human Rights 2nd edition
22. Russell Hardin, Trust
23. Geoffrey Ingham, Capitalism
24. Fred Inglis, Culture
25. Robert H. Jackson, Sovereignty
26. Jennifer Jackson Preece, Minority Rights
27. Gill Jones, Youth
28. Paul Kelly, Liberalism
29. Anne Mette Kjr, Governance
30. Ruth Lister, Poverty
31. Jon Mandle, Global Justice
32. Cillian McBride, Recognition
33. Anthony Payne and Nicola Phillips, Development
34. Judith Phillips, Care
35. Chris Phillipson, Ageing
36. Michael Saward, Democracy
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38. Timothy J. Sinclair, Global Governance
39. Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism 2nd edition
40. Deborah Stevenson, The City
41. Leslie Paul Thiele, Sustainability
42. Steven Peter Vallas, Work
43. Stuart White, Equality
44. Michael Wyness, Childhood

Copyright Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge 2016

The right of Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge to be identified as Authors of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2016 by Polity Press

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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

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Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8448-2

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8449-9(pb)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Collins, Patricia Hill, author. | Bilge, Sirma, author.

Title: Intersectionality / Patricia Hill Collins, Sirma Bilge.

Description: Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2016. | Series: Key concepts series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015037051| ISBN 9780745684482 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780745684499 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Critical theory. | Sociology. | Interdisciplinary research.

Classification: LCC HM480.H55 2016 | DDC 301dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015037051

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Because this book was born in conversation and has been written collaboratively, we thought we would share a bit about our process. We first met in 2006 in Durban, South Africa, at the 16th World Congress of Sociology, the first meeting of this international group of delegates from more than 150 countries to be held in continental Africa. Patricia was a keynote speaker early on in the week-long event, and Sirma, a new assistant professor, was a presenter in the intersectionality session organized by Nira Yuval-Davis. By a happy coincidence, we took the same bus on a field trip to the Kwa Muhle Apartheid Museum and to townships that were the legacy of apartheid. We had our first albeit all too brief conversation during that tour. Six years later, we met again at the 6th International Congress of French-Speaking Feminist Research (Congrs international des recherches fministes francophones) in Lausanne, Switzerland. Organized since the mid-1990s in different cities across the French-speaking world, from Paris to Dakar to Rabat to Ottawa, the Lausanne conference, with its theme Interlocking power relations and the discriminations and privileges based on gender, race, class and sexuality, garnered some 610 delegates, feminist scholars, and activists from Europe (Switzerland, France, and Belgium), Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Cameroon, Gabon), the Americas (Canada/Qubec and Brazil), and the Middle East (Turkey). This time, we were both on keynote panels. Afterwards, we struck up a conversation that we continued during a visit to the Muse de l'Art Brut, a small but striking museum that contained art by groups that had been considered outsiders, such as the art of psychiatric inmates. During this visit, we discovered that we shared similar perspectives not just on the conference and our sensibilities concerning intersectionality. We learned that Sirma is a painter, that Patricia is a dancer, and that the arts infuse our intersectional sensibilities. While we didn't know it then, our collaboration for this book had already begun.

Neither one of us could have written this book alone. We felt the need for a book that would introduce the complexities beyond the audiences that were comfortable to each of us. We started our conversation from our different locations within intersectionality and worked our way towards carving out points of connection. Sirma writes about intersectionality in French and English within a francophone academic context of the linguistically restless city of Montreal, on unceded Mohawk territory, where French and English compete. Acutely aware of the problems of translation across her three languages of Turkish, French, and English, Sirma brings a commitment to situating intersectionality within global frameworks and the geopolitics of knowledge. Always mindful of her roots in a working-class, African-American neighborhood in Philadelphia, Patricia writes to academic audiences and general readers in US and UK contexts. Her work is widely recognized, yet the demands of helping to institutionalize intersectionality in the academy has limited her involvement in activist settings. During two years of dialog and conversation, we hammered out the arguments that we felt would be most useful to our readers.