CentreLGS Conference: Theorising Intersectionality
Saturday 21 - Sunday 22 May 2005 @ Keele University
Abstracts:
To view participants abstracts, please click on the alphabetical
links below (abstracts are listed by surname), or download
the full list of abstracts in Microsoft Word format.
A - B
| C - D
| E - G
| H - J
| K | L
- P | Q
- R | S
| T - V
| W - Z
Ruth Fletcher
Keele University, UK
Paper Title: 'Cultural Contradictions: Race,
Gender and Irish Reproductive Politics'
Abstract: This paper draws on Balibar’s
theory of race and nationalism and on Yuval Davis’
theory of gender and nation to critique the concept of
intersectionality and analyse the shifting relationship
between reproduction and race in the Republic of Ireland.
It argues that the 2004 citizenship referendum, and the
stigmatisation of childbearing migrant women which informed
it, does not represent the first signs of racism in reproductive
politics. Rather it represents a change in the way in
which race has been mobilised to stigmatise women’s
reproductive decisions. Although race is now being signified
more in terms of colour and used to exclude certain migrants
from Irishness, race had been mobilised as a supplement
to nationalism in the abortion politics of the 80s and
90s. Irishness has been gendered and racialised in different
ways as it has shifted from an opposition with Britishness
to an opposition with Blackness. Such shifts in the articulation
of race and gender demonstrate the limits of the concept
of intersectionality as it cannot explain why and how
intersections change over time and space, and show the
need for a theoretical framework which can explain the
interactions of systemic processes.
*******************
Andrew Francis
Keele University, UK
Paper Title: 'Women and legal executives - Intersections
of class, gender and professional power within a subordinate
legal profession.'
Abstract: Legal executives form a distinct branch of
the legal profession within England and Wales; they are
specialist lawyers with fee-earning responsibilities and
yet remain institutionally subordinated to the Law Society,
and in the workplace to their solicitor employers. Moreover,
legal executives are increasingly (numerically at least)
a feminised profession, with 2/3rds of the fully qualified
Fellows being women and with 72% of all members being
women. This is particularly striking among the student
members (the next generation) with women accounting for
78.2% of all students and 84% of all students in the 17-25
year old category.
Drawing on archival research and interviews with legal
executives within the national association and in the
workplace, this paper considers the professional project
of legal executives and explores the intersections of
gender, class and professional power within this subordinated
occupational group. Research has consistently identified
the subordination and marginalisation experienced by women
lawyers in practice. In simple terms, the intersections
of gender and professional power might lead us to anticipate
that women legal executives experience something, roughly
described as ‘double marginalisation.’; as
legal executives within law and as women within law. However
the realities are (perhaps inevitably) much more complicated
and further intersections of class, educational histories,
career expectations, firm rather than professional loyalties
etc, reveal a much more complicated (and at times) contradictory
picture. At the same time, many of the difficulties that
women solicitors have reported experiencing within the
male environment of a law firm are also felt by women
legal executives. Conversely male legal executives appear
to occupy quite an ambiguous position within the professional
hierarchies.
In seeking to apply an intersectional framework to the
analysis of a subordinated legal professional project,
this paper highlights the problems implicit in such an
approach, while also recognising that the multiple intersections
of potential disadvantage (and advantage) contribute to
the complex construction of professional identities within
legal practice.
*******************
Natalia Gerodetti
University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Paper Title: 'Enduring Legacies - Intersecting
Discourses in the Context of Eugenics'
Abstract: Eugenics has been approached
from various perspectives, both in terms of histories
of disciplines or in terms of identity such as disability,
sexuality or gender. What seems to be neglected so far,
however, is how eugenic practices can provide a platform
to consider intersectionalities. Systems of classification
and typologies devised and used by eugenicists have more
often led to the presentation of particular histories
than to a theorisation of intersections. What this paper
proposes to do then is to juxtapose discourses on sexuality,
gender, “mental deficiency” and “physical
deformity” to examine commonalties and differences
and the ways in which these categories intersect to contribute
to constructions of normality and “worthiness”.
Taking this perspective allows to conceptualise mechanisms
of enforcing normalcy which transcend the immediate context
of eugenics to expose the hegemony of the rule of norms
as well as the imperative of fragmentation still pertinent
to contemporary socio-political thinking.
*******************
Mike Gill
University of Illinois, USA
Paper Title: 'My So Called Life: Secrets Teenagers
Hold About Identity'
Abstract: One of the perennial experiences
in high school education is the ability for students to
“reinvent” themselves continually. Within
the location of the school, at any given moment students
self identify as ‘jocks’, ‘geeks’,
‘popular’ and ‘disabled’ among
other identities. These labels are in direct dialogue
with notions of the ‘normals’. Along with
this self-identification process, the dynamics of high
school culture is such that their peers often label subjects
within. This interaction between identity labels that
are often fluid, creates a transitory environment in which
multiple, identities can co-exist at the same time within
an individual. Disability Studies offers a unique framework
that can allow for strategic and temporal identification.
Given the apparent fluidity of identification- is the
notion of intersectionality helpful in theorizing identity
development? Rather, what do high school students in general
have to teach us about the fluidity of identification
process when there is an additional identity of disability
being offered? Using my research done with high school
students in the United States about disability counter-narratives,
I will begin theorizing how the identification process
is not rigid and politically fixed but rather how identity
is fostered through creating situations that trouble dominant
cultural norms.
*******************
Suzanne Goldberg
Rutgers University, USA
Paper Title: 'Parallel Lives: A Critical Comparison
of Women's Rights and Lesbian Rights Jurisprudence'
Abstract: The project focuses specifically on the relationship
between cases involving women’s rights and lgbt
rights, analyses the connections and disconnections among
the cases and draws conclusions from that relationship
about conceptualising equality across paradigms.
*******************
Jon Goldberg-Hiller
Paper Title: Of Sex and Citizenship: Reading
the Iconography of Same-sex Marriage
Abstract: In this paper I explore the
political iconography of same-sex marriage deployed in
the 2004 American campaigns. That year, eleven states
voted on constitutional amendments or statutory limitations
on marriage rights, the Congress busied itself with a
federal amendment to eliminate or restrain state courts
contemplating same-sex marriage, and the presidential
campaign hinted at the relevance of gay rights for understanding
the character of the Democratic challenger. Through an
analysis of television and newspaper ads, and the rhetoric
of masculinity that infused the presidential contest,
this paper will develop a cultural iconography of “special
rights” and assess this iconography for its meanings
about citizenship, and the contested place of law in American
democracy today.
*******************
Emily Grabham
University of Kent, UK
Paper Title: ‘Lawyers and the ‘Hybrid’
Legal Subject’
Abstract: The concept of intersectionality
challenges not only the structure of equality law, but
also the techniques that lawyers employ in assessing and
arguing discrimination cases. In this paper, I will focus
on those techniques, which include filling in client questionnaires
and drafting chronologies of events. My argument is that
these procedures underpin the legal fetishism of 'grounds',
and restrict any possible intersectional analysis. For
example, through chronologies, each discriminatory event
is defined by reference to only one 'ground'. Discrimination
law therefore links the passing of time itself to the
categories it has produced.
The next question is how people feel when they interact,
as clients, with lawyers in discrimination cases. In this
context, Homi Bhabha's concept of hybridity provides a
useful way of describing how intersectional subjects relate
to their categorisation through law. It shows how legal
subjects simultaneously adopt and resist the grounds that
lawyers use to describe their experiences. If discrimination
law is based on enabling legal subjects to speak for themselves,
then we should investigate these possibilities for resistance.
*******************
Ruby Greene
Keele University, UK
Paper Title: 'A Man for all reasons: Poverty,
Power, the Commodification of Sex and HIV/AIDS among Guyanese
Women'
Abstract: "Because of the economic
situation in the country today women have to depend on
three/four men. One to pay her light bill, one to pay
her telephone bill, one to pay her rent. One to provide
food… for God’s sake what about cooking? What
if she has children? Women are working for $25,000 per
month (approx £70)… and their rent is $35,000.
So that is what is making them not have the power to bargain
with their partners for safe sex." National AIDS
committee member.
Commercial and transactional sex are strategies used
by many women to cope with the consequences of poverty
endemic in many developing countries. Guyana has been
categorised as a Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) and
the scripts that govern women’s sexuality in that
culture perpetuate a dependency on men. In ethnographic
type research conducted in Guyana from November 2003 to
January 2004, this researcher found widespread prevalence
of transactional sex, an issue excluded from HIV/AIDS
interventions in that country. This paper examines the
relationship of poverty, power asymmetries in sexual liaisons,
cultural sexual scripts and HIV/AIDS interventions in
Guyana.
