Problematising the Critical Realist Positional Approach to Intersectionality

Concluding Remarks

Contra Bhaskar who suggests that research should start from transcendental questions (1998:18) which are detached from experience, I propose that political awareness of abstraction is needed, so that abstractions respond to experience.

Social researchers must engage with epistemology, discourse, context, and politics, rather than restrict themselves to the CR ontology and dyads, i.e stratification, structure-agency, and emergence. Within intersectionality research, the following should be acknowledged. Firstly, oppressions do not occur in a vacuum, and systems of domination are mutually constituted (Hancock 2015:622).

Everything in the social world is always-already politically, socially, and historically interrelated - there can be no ontological separation between politics and the research process and method, and researchers ought to be informed by political movements (Erel et. al. 2008). Secondly, theory is necessarily gendered, classed, sexualised, and racialised, and the dismantling of hegemonic politics requires commitment to allied struggles sharing common normative politics.

Thirdly, research ought to be an overt, politically strategic manoeuvre offering an open platform for denouncing and enunciating problems in a dialogical and democratic manner, with the research participant being subject, not object of social inquiry, and the researcher declaring their bias and adopting a reflexive positionality (Walsh 2015; Peter 2003:98).

Advertisement

Thereupon, overt political engagement with anyone’s claims can be undertaken, because everyone is particularly situated in relation to domination, but marginalised knowledge must be amplified. In agreement with Martinez et. al., I posit that intersectionality research should not be limited to studying oppression, and overcoming oppression is not the responsibility of the marginalised only. I would also add that intersectionality research has not been employed enough as a critique of states, their foundation and role in (1) shaping identities, ownership, relations, and experiences, and (2) creating and managing divisions between citizens, on the one hand, and aboriginal people, refugees, minorities, and prisoners, on the other (see Yuval-Davis 2013; Erel et. al. 2008).

In this paper I argued that intersectionality represents the signifier for epistemic disobedience and material struggle. Not only does the critical realist positional approach to intersectionality not advance the intersectional project, but it is anti-intersectional, as it dilutes its political grounding and does not allow for a political imaginary of concerted struggle for a wholly new formation of social relations.

In short, Martinez et. al. are more concerned with fitting intersectionality within CR ontology, rather than intersectionalising CR by changing its ontologies. CR scholars can have a particular role to play within intersectionality research, granted that they seek to solve their own inconsistencies, i.e. accept epistemological challenges to both their ontologies (Cruickshank 2004), and dispense with the call for legislating research (Kemp 2005). Unless intersectionality is used as an appeal to solidarity for a social transformation which has equality at its core, to verify the wrong of inequality, it risks becoming ‘ornamental’ (Hancock 2015:621) - yet another reified concept within the critical realist scholar’s toolbox.

---

References

Archer, M., S. (1995) Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Archer, M., S. (1998) ‘Introduction: Realism in the Social Sciences’ in Archer, M., S. et. al. (eds.) Critical Realism: Essential Readings. London: Routledge, pp. 189-205.

Barker, D. (2003) ‘Emancipatory for Whom? A Comment on Critical Realism’ in Feminist Economics, 9(1): 103-108.

Bhaskar, R. (1998) ‘Philosophy and Scientific Realism’ in Archer, M., S. et. al. (eds.) Critical Realism: Essential Readings. London: Routledge, pp. 16-47.

Bhaskar, R. (2013) ‘Prolegomenon: The Consequences of the Revindication of Philosophical Ontology for Philosophy and Social Theory’ in Archer, M., S. and Maccarini, A., M. (eds.) Engaging with the World: Agency, Institutions, Historical Formations. London: Routledge, pp. 11-21.

Bright, L., K. Malinsky, D. and Thompson, M. (2016) ‘Causally Interpreting Intersectionality Theory’ in Philosophy of Science, 83(1): 60-81.

Carbin, M. and Edenheim, S. (2013) ‘The Intersectional Turn in Feminist Theory: A Dream of a Common Language?’ in European Journal of Women’s Studies, 20(3): 233-248.

Advertisement

Clough, P., T. (1994) Feminist Thought: Desire, Power, and Academic Discourse. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers.

Crenshaw, K. (1991) ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Colour’ in Stanford Law Review, 43(6): 1241-1299.

Cruickshank, J. (2004) ‘A Tale of Two Ontologies: An Immanent Critique of Critical Realism’ in The Sociological Review, 52(4): 567-585.

Cruickshank, J. (2006) ‘Postdisciplinarity and the Study of Lay Normativity: Re-theorising Class in Social Science’ in Journal of Critical Realism, 5(1): 110:121.

Cruickshank, J. (2009) ‘The Importance Of Nominal Problems’, paper presented at the European University Institute, 13th March, on European University Institute website. Available at: http://www.eui.eu/Documents/MWP/Conferences/Popper/CruickshankTheImportanceofNominalProblems.pdf Accessed 22/12/2015.

Cruickshank, J. (2010) ‘Knowing Social Reality: A Critique of Bhaskar and Archer’s Attempt to Derive a Social Ontology from Lay Knowledge’ in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 40(4):579-602.

Davis, K. (2008) ‘Intersectionality as Buzzword: A Sociology of Science Perspective on What Makes a Feminist Theory Successful’ in Feminist Theory, 9(1): 67-85.

Edgley, R. (1998) ‘Reason as Dialectic: Science, Social Science and Socialist Science’ in Archer, M., S. et. al. (eds.) Critical Realism: Essential Readings. London: Routledge, pp. 395-408.

Erel, U., Haritaworn, J., Rodríguez, E., G. and Klesse, C. (2008) ‘On the Depoliticisation of Intersectionality Talk: Conceptualising Multiple Oppressions in Critical Sexuality Studies’ in Kuntsman, A. and Esperanza, M. (eds.) Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/ Raciality. New York: Raw Nerve Book, pp. 265–292.

Geerts, E. and van der Tuin, I. (2013) ‘From Intersectionality to Interference: Feminist Onto-Epistemological Reflections on the Politics of Representation’ in Women’s Studies International Forum, 41(3): 171-178.

Hampsher-Monk, I. and Hindmoor, A. (2010) ‘Rational Choice and Interpretive Evidence: Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place?’ in Political Studies, 58(1): 47-65.

Hancock, A-M. (2015) ‘Intersectionality’s Will Toward Social Transformation’ in New Political Science, 37(4):620-627.

Harding, S. (1991) Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Harding, S. (1992) ‘The Instability of the Analytical Categories of Feminist Theory’ in Signs Journal, 11(4): 338-354.

Harding, S. (2003) ‘Representing Reality: The Critical Realism Project’ in Feminist Economics, 9(1): 151-159.

Hirsh, E. and Olson, G., A. (1995) ‘Starting from Marginalised Lives: A Conversation with Sandra Harding’ in Olson, G., A. and Hirsh, E. (eds.) Women Writing Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 3-44.

Holmwood, J. (2001) ‘Gender and Critical Realism: A Critique of Sayer’ in Sociology Journal, 35(4): 947-965.

Holmwood, J. (2014) ‘Reflexivity as Situated Problem-Solving: A Pragmatist Alternative to General Theory’ in Sociologica, 8(1): 1-26.

Hood-Williams, J. (1997) ‘Real sex/fake gender: a reply to Robert Willmott’ in The Sociological Review, 45(1):42-58.

hooks, b. (1984) Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Boston: South End Press.

Kemp, S. (2005) ‘Critical Realism and the Limits of Philosophy’ in European Journal of Social Theory, 8(2): 171-191.

Kivinen, O. and Piiroinen, T. (2006) ‘On the Limits of a Realist Conception of Knowledge: A Pragmatist Critique of Archerian Realism’ in The Sociological Review, 54(2): 224-241.

Lawson, T. (1999) ‘Feminism, Realism, and Universalism’ in Feminist Economics, 5(2): 25-59.

Lawson, T. (2003) ‘Ontology and Feminist Theorizing’ in Feminist Economics, 9(1): 119-150.

Martinez, A., Martin, L. and Marlow, S. (2014) ‘Developing a Critical Realist Positional Approach to Intersectionality’, Journal of Critical Realism, 13(5): 447-466.

May, V., M. (2015) Pursuing Intersectionality, Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries. Oxon: Routledge.

Mohanty, C., T. (1986) ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’ in Boundary 2, 12(3): 333-358.

Murib, Z. and Soss, J. (2015) ‘Intersectionality as an Assembly of Analytic Practices: Subjects, Relations, and Situated Comparisons’ in New Political Science, 37(4): 649-656.

Nelson, J. (2003) ‘Once More, With Feeling: Feminist Economics and the Ontological Question’ in Feminist Economics, 9(1): 109-118.

Peter, F. (2003) ‘Critical Realism, Feminist Epistemology, and the Emancipatory Potential of Science: A Comment on Lawson and Harding’ in Feminist Economics, 9(1): 93-101.

Peterson, V, S. (2014) ‘Sex Matters’ in International Feminist Journal of Politics, 16(3): 389-409.

Sayer, A. (2000) ‘System, Lifeworld and Gender: Associational Versus Counterfactual Thinking’ in Sociology, 34(4): 707-725.

D’Souza, R. (2010) ‘Postcolonialism, Realism and Critical Realism’ in Journal of Critical Realism, 9(3):263-275.

Tsilipakos, L. (2015) ‘Realist Social Theory and Its Losing Battle With Concepts’ in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 45(1): 26-52.

Walsh, R., J. (2015) ‘”Objectivity” and Intersectionality: How Intersectional Feminism Could Utilise Identity and Experience as a Dialectical Weapon of Liberation within Academia’ in Feminism & Psychology, 25(1): 61-66.

Willmott, R., (1996), ‘Resisting Sex/Gender Conflation: A Rejoinder to John Hood-Williams’, in The Sociological Review, 44(4): 728-745.

Willmott, R. (2007) ‘Realism and Feminism: End Time for Patriarchy?’ in Journal of Critical Realism, 1(1):4-8.

Yuval-Davis, N. (2013) ‘A Situated Intersectional Everyday Approach to the Study of Bordering’, Working Paper 2, on EU Border Scapes website, August. Available at: http://www.euborderscapes.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/Working_Papers/EUBORDERSCAPES_Working_Paper_2_Yuval-Davis.pdf [Accessed 26/12/2015].

---

Endnotes

1. Intersectionality has even been coupled with ‘graphical causal modelling’ – see Bright et. al. (2016).
2. Despite the authors’ claim that this approach is ‘new’ (461), Lawson developed a similar thesis when discussing feminist economics (1999; 2003).
3. The epistemic fallacy is of primary concern to CR as this fallacy hides structures, is ideological and false in terms of explanations because it looks at what is manifest (Bhaskar 1998:28-30).
4. For the purpose of this review and due to lack of space, my engagement with the authors’ sections on positivism and hermeneutics is limited.
5. The qualifier ‘at least’ is surprising insofar as Bhaskar mentioned strictly three domains (1998:41).