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Abstract:
A key role of sociology is to examine the interplay of history, individual biography and the broad patterns of social relations. An intersectional perspective developed by women of color, especially African-American women, to account for the complexity of people's social locations is an integral component of the sociological imagination. Introduced to mainstream sociology in the 1990s, intersectionality perspective focuses on the interaction of class, race, gender, and age inequalities in shaping people's experiences. In this paper, we examine whether a paradigm shift has occurred in mainstream sociology to incorporate an intersectional perspective. To address this question, we conducted a case study analyzing discussions of U.S. poverty in 15 most popular introductory sociology textbooks published between 2000 and 2007. We found that poverty is discussed in the context of racial/ethnic, gender, and age inequalities. Importantly, with a few exceptions, these inequalities are discussed separately, impeding the realization of the sociological imagination. We conclude by proposing a dialog between intersectionality perspective and mainstream sociology.
Keywords: intersectionality; inequalities; sociology; poverty
Increasingly, social scientists have raised the questions concerning an intellectual transformation of various disciplines. In sociology, studies exploring whether the field has undergone the paradigm shift to reflect the tremendous advances made in feminist, and race, gender and class research examined introductory sociology textbooks (see, for instance, Alway, 1995; Ferree, 1990; Ferree & Hall, 1996; Manza & Van Schyndel, 2000). These studies suggest that sociology has undergone some notable changes with regard to the emergence of new interpretive frameworks, sensitivity to diversity of human experiences, and the integration of heretofore marginalized voices. However, the extent to which such a transformation has occurred with regard to including an intersectionality perspective into sociological studies of inequality has not been studied. Gaining a better understanding of the extent to which such a transformation has occurred is vital as it holds implications for how sociology approaches the topic of social inequalities.
Intersectionality is a perspective that explores the interactions of social markers such as race, class, gender, age, and sexual orientation that shape an individual's or group's experience (Collins, 2000; King, 1988). Although the idea of intersectionality dates back to the late 1800s (see, Cooper, 1995 [1892]; Harper, 1995 [ 1893]) and is far from being a new perspective, the...