Intersectionality as a Paradigm for Gender and Diversity Research

DIGEST.01.book Page 33 Thursday, June 12, 2014 11:30 AM

From Happy to Critical Diversity: Intersectionality as a Paradigm for Gender and Diversity Research Chia Longman & Katrien De Graeve Ghent University & Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies In our contribution to the round table of this newly launched journal we aim to present the contours of what we see as the way forward for education and research in ‘diversity and gender’ in our own context of working at a Flemish university (Ghent University) today. According to good old key tenets of feminist epistemology, we must mention that this reflection is a “situated” one (Haraway, 1988) and therefore rooted in our own structural location, positioning, professional genealogy, past and recent experiences and future hopes and envisionings in this particular field. Although the struggle for the institutionalization of gender studies in Flanders has a herstory, which reaches back to the late eighties and nineties, slowly but surely some gains have recently been reached. At a time of global economic crisis, threat of cuts in the humanities and shrinking spaces for critical knowledge production, for gender and diversity in Flanders, somewhat surprisingly, a few things are taking off. For example, a PhD seminar in gender studies, which once started as a reading group, attracts many young researchers, and is now turning into an interuniversity endeavour with international appeal. A new interuniversity Master degree programme in ‘Gender and Diversity’ will start in 2014, and now the Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies is being launched. Equal opportunity policies are also increasingly becoming introduced into the administration; almost every university now has policy units or is promised some funding to tackle the persistent problem of the underrepresentation of women in the academic career path and at governing levels on the one hand, and the underrepresentation of ethnic minorities already at the level of the student body on the other. Yet these steps forward have not come easy and are the result of a long struggle, and must be emphasised, are carried by first, second and more recent generations of feminist and gender studies scholars, who

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FROM HAPPY TO CRITICAL DIVERSITY

often and simultaneously have to carry out their own individual struggles within their mainstream disciplines, departments and faculties. It cannot go unnoticed that at these three levels of research, education and policies, a shift has taken place from a focus on ‘women’ (in the eighties and early nineties) to ‘gender’ and in the past decade or so to ‘diversity’. We fully support this trend. However, we want to argue that gender needs diversity in as much as diversity needs gender.

Gender Cannot Be Studied in Isolation from Other Forms of ‘Diversity’ The first basic point we want to make is about gender. Gender cannot and should not be studied in isolation from other forms of diversity. This is the premise of the newly proposed interuniversity Master programme in ‘Gender and Diversity’ which is being led by faculty of the five Flemish universities, and will be launched in the academic year 2014. Central to the programme is the paradigm of intersectionality, which in the past decades has become commonplace, or some would say even the dominant paradigm and one of the most important theoretical contributions in women’s and gender studies today (McCall, 2005; Geerts & Van der Tuin, 2013). No introductory course in women’s studies or feminist theory, nor more recent fields such as men’s studies, transgender or queer analysis today can bypass the idea of intersecting ‘vectors’ of power, privilege and oppression, that produce gendered, yet also, and simultaneously raced, classed … subjects and identities. Intersectionality is understood and applied in myriad ways, and of course, not without its critics (Nash, 2008; Carbin & Edenheim, 2013; Cho, Crenshaw & McCall, 2013). The debate on intersectionality remains alive and well, as illustrated in the number of special issues devoted to the topic in renowned international journals in recent years. Compared to those countries where gender studies has been more institutionalised and (multicultural) diversity has been a more prominent issue on the political and research agenda, it has taken longer for intersectionality to be recognised in gender analysis in Flanders, both in academia and in policy-making.1 Taking the local context into consideration, the joint application for a new interuniversity Master programme in gender studies very consciously included diversity in its title. This decision initially met with criticism within some of the participating institutions and subsequently the central recognition committee evaluating the proposal.2 Although the application was generally received positively, the tenor of the critique was that the 500+page application strongly emphasised ‘gender’ and to a much lesser extent ‘diversity’, so why include the latter? The rebuttal of this point of

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critique formulated the argument for including diversity in both the name and design of the programme, and again tried to explain more its intersectional philosophy, as follows: The master ‘Gender and Diversity’ is indeed situated in the tradition of gender studies as an internationally recognised autonomous field of scholarship and degree programme. Our proposal is not about bringing different ‘themes’ together that stand in a hierarchal relationship to one another. ‘Diversity’ or ‘Diversity studies’ as such are not fields of scholarship or degree programmes. Following international trends, attention to diversity has become an integral part of gender studies. We wish to emphasise this inclusive view of gender studies explicitly in the title and content of the programme. This is not about a 50/50 situation, but a programme in which gender in relation to other forms of diversity is central. ‘Intersectionality’ is an important methodological paradigm. We aim to equip students with knowledge, theory and analytical instruments and abilities about gender in relation to those other forms of diversity (sexual identity, ethnicity, worldview and religion, ability…). Like in the contemporary societal reality, also in Flanders, forms of diversity do not exist next to nor apart from one another; in the programme we wish to cover the study of those differences in relation to and in interaction with each other. This intersectional approach is systematically applied in the proposed courses. As described in the proposed course content, none of the courses focus exclusively on the category of ‘women’ and ‘men’ without taking other categories of difference and diversity into account. The student depending on her/his interests will be able to specialise further in one or more forms of diversity, in the dissertation, the internship, and the optional courses on offer. (Chia Longman, transl. from the Dutch)

Diversity Cannot Be Studied in Isolation from Questions of Power, Privilege, and Inequality However, it is also important to make the reverse point: diversity research can and should always involve gender analysis. In Flanders and elsewhere, the concept of ‘diversity’, alongside a discourse of ‘interculturalism’, has been increasingly used in public and scholarly debates in the last decades as a reaction to philosophies of immigrant integration that envision a unilateral incorporation of minorities into mainstream society (Martiniello, 2012). In light of prevailing discourses on homogeneity and anxieties about cultural differences, the concept aims to emphasise the positive sides and inevitability of heterogeneity and the constant need of mutual adjustment and adaptation. The moral panic about immigration and ethnic diversity also inspired scholarly discourses that, conversely, celebrated the growing hybridity and

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diversification of cultures and identities (Vasta, 2007). Recently, in Dutch-speaking Belgium and the Netherlands, anthropologist Steven Vertovec’s concept of “superdiversity” is also increasingly being employed by anti-racist civil society organisations and some of the more alternative media and grey literature (Vertovec, 2007; Longman, Arikoglü & Aftab, 2013). The prefix ‘super’ seeks to grasp the contemporary proliferation of new conjunctions and interactions due to globally expanding mobility, yet also the necessity of understanding ethnicity in conjunction with a range of other social variables and with social inequalities (Vertovec, 2007). However, diversity has also become a highly fashionable concept, ranging from the popular calls to protect bio-diversity, to diversity management courses and special training schemes. Many organizations have campaigns for creating a new inclusive image, which include the token woman or ethnic or racial(ised) minority person. Diversity is turned into a commodity in advertising: think of the Benetton ‘two-tone’ marketing campaign which displayed beautiful, smiling people of a variety of ‘races’ in “a sort of pluralistic celebration at the global temple of consumption” (Hoechsmann, 1997, p. 185). Diversity is widely seen as a positive quality and is increasingly being recognised as an important value in a variety of contexts and a goal for all sorts of institutions. Yet, we join more critical voices who warn that the ease of diversity’s adaptation in commercial, institutional and policy language may be a sign of the loss of its critical-emancipatory potential (Ahmed, 2011). Although contemporary anthropological understandings of socio-cultural diversity are far more dynamic than some of its older and more recent essentialist conceptions one might find that in both ethnocentric and multiculturalist discourses today, in recent years, the “turn to diversity” has come under heavy criticism and it does, also in our view, remain problematic in many respects (Pinxten & Longman, 2008). One of the dangers of diversity discourse or what Lentin and Titley (2011, p. 183) call the “politics of diversity”, the “institutional and broadly managerial deployment of diversity as a dimension of integration governance”, is that both individuals and groups (most often minority groups), are reduced to their diversity, such as their culture, ethnicity or religion against an unmarked norm (such as white, western, secular, able-bodied…) that remains unquestioned and out of view. White normativity and implicit assimilationist assumptions in diversity discourse reduce minority groups to “add-ons” of the dominant culture, that can add flavour to a white centre (Bell & Hartmann, 2007). Secondly, “good diversity”, or “happy diversity” talk, even among the most politically engaged individuals, may underplay or even mask the role of power and privilege (Bell & Hartmann, 2007). Feminist theorist Sara Ahmed, for example, in her study of the experiences of diversity practitioners in higher education, shows how there is a paradox between the official language of diversity and the experience of

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those who “embody” diversity (Ahmed, 2012). Racism may be obscured when diversity becomes institutionalised and is used as ‘evidence’ or the ‘solution’ to the problem of racism. Diversity is likely to become “a diversity without oppression”, one that “conflates, confuses and obscures the deeper sociostructural roots and consequences of diversity” (Bell & Hartmann, 2007, p. 910). Yet, it is not only the widespread colour-blind rhetoric and neglect of everyday racism that needs our attention (Essed, 1991). Uncritical postmodern celebrations of cultural hybridity and of immigrants as the cosmopolitan hybrids par excellence in some scholarly work has also been criticised for sidestepping profound global inequalities (Ferguson, 2006; Silverstein, 2005). As Ahmed (2012) notes, feminists of colour have offered some of most cogent critiques of the language of diversity, and there is a whole genealogy of inspiring antiracist, postcolonial, decolonial and transnational feminist thought that can be drawn upon which would be impossible to summarise here (Longman, 2010). A gender critical perspective, and more precisely, a feminist intersectional perspective has proved to be very useful in foregrounding the relationship between power and difference. Yet, Ahmed also warns against a one-sided “happy” understanding of intersectionality, she says: We can ask: what recedes when diversity becomes a view? If diversity is a way of viewing or even picturing an institution, then it might allow only some things to come into view. Diversity is often used as a shorthand for inclusion, as the ‘happy point’ of intersectionality, a point where lines meet. When intersectionality becomes a ‘happy point’, the feminist color of critique is obscured. All differences matter under this view. (Ahmed, 2012, p. 14)

Ahmed’s plea is therefore not to stop doing diversity, but question what we are doing with diversity. She pleads, for instance, for critical evaluation of institutional diversity measures as to their intention to structurally challenge the institutional whiteness of academia, or to merely change perceptions of whiteness. Intersectionality can help to remain sensitive to the “actual power by which the diversity discourse is paradoxically structured and reproduced” as well as to the systematic inequalities and privileges that tend to be obscured by the current managerial focus on diversity (Bell & Hartmann, 2007, p. 910). Critical whiteness studies and critical race studies have similarly contributed to the exposing of the privileged unmarked norm, as have disability studies, deafness studies, and earlier, LGBTIQ studies for other forms of socalled neutrality and privilege. These fields all emerged in the wake of the very first feminist critiques of the academy, its numbers, its knowledges and its institutions,

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and it is our hope we will see some of this emerging work taking place in the Dutch speaking context of this journal soon. In conclusion, adding diversity to gender to us seems a good strategy, as is adding gender to diversity, if alone for reminding us of the importance of the intersectional critique of the relationship between difference and power.

References Ahmed, S. (2011). On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bell, J.M., & Hartmann, D. (2007). Diversity in Everyday Discourse: The Cultural Ambiguities and Consequences of ‘Happy Talk’, American Sociological Review 72, 895-914. Botman, M., Jouwe, N., & Wekker, G. (2001). Caleidoscopische visies. De zwarte, migranten en vluchtelingenvrouwenbeweging in Nederland. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers. Carbin, M., & Edenheim, S. (2013). The Intersectional Turn in Feminist Theory: A Dream of a Common Language? European Journal of Women’s Studies, 20(3), 233-248. Cho, S., Crenshaw, K., & McCall, L. (2013). Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis. Signs, 38(4), 785-810. Essed, P. (1991). Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Theory. Newbury Park (Calif.): Sage. Ferguson. J. (2006). Decomposing Modernity: History and Hierarchy after Development. In A. Loomba (Ed.), Postcolonial Studies and Beyond (pp.166-181). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Silverstein, P. (2005). Immigrant Racialization and the New Savage Slot: Race, Migration, and Immigration in the New Europe. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 363-384. Geerts, E., & Van der Tuin, I. (2013). From Intersectionality to Interference: Feminist OntoEpistemological Reflections on the Politics of Representation. Women’s Studies International Forum, 41(3), 171-178. Haraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14, 575-599. Hoechsmann, M. (1997). Benetton Culture: Marketing Difference to the New Global Consumer. In S. H. Riggins (Ed.), The Language and Politics of Exclusion: Others in Discourse (pp.183-202). London: Sage. Lentin, A., & Titley, G. (2011). The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neo-Liberal Age. London & New York: Zed Books. Longman, C. (2010). Researching Gender: The Challenge of Global Diversity Today. Afrika Focus, 23(2), 25-37. Longman, C., Arikoglü, F., & Aftab S. (2013). Op het kruispunt van gender en etniciteit: omgaan met superdiversiteit in de klas. In J. van Thienen (Ed.), Meisjes zus en jongens zo: hoe omgaan met gender op school (pp.171-183). Leuven: Lannoo Campus.

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Martiniello, M. (2012). Belgium. In C. Joppke, & L. Seidle (Eds.), Immigrant Integration in Federal Countries (pp.58-78). Québec: McGill Queens University Press. McCall, L. (2005). The Complexity of Intersectionality. Signs, 30(3), 1771-1800. Nash, J. C. (2008). Re-thinking Intersectionality. Feminist Review, 89, 1-15. Pinxten R., & Longman, C. (2008). Culturele diversiteit: van een essentialistisch naar een kosmopolitisch perspectief, Volkskunde, 109(3-4), 229-237. Vasta, E. (2007). From Ethnic Minorities to Ethnic Majority Policy: Multiculturalism and the Shift to Assimilation in the Netherlands. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(5), 713-740. Vertovec, S. (2007). Super-Diversity and its Implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29(6), 1024-1054.

Notes 1.

This involves Anglo-American contexts, including North American and the UK, but also in the Netherlands where intersectionality was introduced in women’s studies departments (Botman, Jouwe & Wekker, 2001).

2.

At present there is no BA, MA or PhD in gender studies at all in Belgium. A former interuniversity graduate degree programme in women’s studies was discontinued in 2006. In the current policies of higher education in Flanders (education is a federal matter in Belgium), in order to start any new degree program, a lengthy administrative procedure is required that follows two main steps: (1) application for ‘recognition’, in which the ‘macro-effectiveness’ of the new degree programme is assessed by a special recognition committee appointed by the Flemish government; (2) if positively evaluated, the next phase is the procedure for ‘initial accreditation’ by the NVAO, the Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders, which consists of three consecutive steps: the programme proposal, the external assessment (including an on site visitation) and the initial accreditation.

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