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
Matthew Waites
Paper Title: "Theorising Childhood Vulnerability:
An argument for a lower age of consent and age-span provisions
in the UK"
Abstract: This paper will present an
argument made in a forthcoming book The Age of Consent:
Young People, Sexuality and Citizenship (Palgrave, October
2005), for a lowering of the age of consent to 14 for
sexual activity between young people within a two year
age-span. The paper will focus on the concepts of vulnerability,
and consent to make an argument for the legitimacy of
the criminal law prohibiting sexual activity that is legally
recognised as consensual, in order to serve the interests
of young people collectively as a social group. The focus
on individual competence and consent in existing debates
over age of consent laws will be criticised, together
with the effects of the cultural turn in some critical
legal studies work on childhood which places excessive
emphasis on the role of the law in constituting childhood,
and inadequately conceptualises both the embodied vulnerability
and social structural vulnerability of children, and the
interplay between these. Nevertheless a lower age of consent
for sex between under-18s is appropriate.
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Bronwen Walter
Anglia Polytechnic University, UK
Paper Title: Filling diaspora space: cartographies
of intersectionality and entangled genealogies of the
Irish in Britain
Abstract: This paper elaborates on Avtar
Brah’s (1996) notion of diaspora space, which she
describes as a ‘cartography of the politics of intersectionality’
(p.16). A key contribution of this notion is the decentring
of those who are conventionally regarded as the mainstream
‘indigenous’ population and a recognition
of their inextricable involvement in the process of diaspora.
It therefore replaces the language of ethnic majority/minority
by including all inhabitants equally and indissolubly
within the same project. Loosening rigid representations
of hierarchies of belonging enables more fluid and intersecting
axes of differentiation and of power relations to be envisioned,
including those of gender, class and regeneration.
Despite widespread recognition of its theoretical value,
much work still needs to be done to ground the notion
of diaspora space, especially if it is to gain the political
purchase which it promises. Three areas which repay more
extensive theoretical and empirical investigation are
(1) a rethinking of natives as diasporians, which in many
ways is a much larger task than the grounding of specific
diasporas which is urged by many writers and (2) paying
attention to geographical unevenness within a particular
diaspora space at many scales - national, regional, urban,
down to the household level, which may be in many senses
the cutting edge where differences can be maintained or
close entanglements performed and the body itself which
his often a crucial site of identification. This can be
illustrated (3) by detailed analysis of mixed race crossings
identified as indigenous or diasporic.
The paper uses evidence from the ESRC-funded Irish 2
Project to explore the specificity of positionings of
the multi-generational Irish population, which is often
forcibly linked by shared ‘whiteness’ to the
indigenous population in ways which mask its cultural
distinctiveness and histories of racialisation. Highlighting
difference/commonality across a much larger range of identifications
provides a point of entry to the grounding of the notion
of diaspora space in Britain.
*******************
Matthew Weait
Keele University, UK
Paper Title: In the Public Interest? Black African
men and the criminalisation of HIV transmission
Abstract: There have so far been three
convictions in England and Wales of people for transmitting
HIV. All of those convicted have been men of black African
origin who have transmitted the virus to female sexual
partners. The Code for Crown Prosecutors requires prosecutions
to meet both an evidential sufficiency and a public interest
test. The latter test is, like the substantive criminal
law applied in this area, objectively neutral and takes
no account of the race, ethnicity, or gender of those
who alleged to have committed an offence. In this paper
I consider the way in which issues of race, ethnicity,
gender and power are played out through these cases, drawing
on media reports of the cases, empirical socio-legal research,
the approach of the CPS and the criminal law itself. The
cases raise important questions about the extent to which
the law is, and should be responsive to, the identity
of offenders and victims, and the wider implications of
criminalisation for the stigmatisation of minority ethnic
groups
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Sally Wheeler
Queens University, Belfast
Paper Title: Work Life Balance and the Role Given
to Care
Abstract: This paper takes as its focus
the recently enacted amendments to the Employment Act
1996 allowing unpaid time off for dependants and the right
to request flexible working, namely section 57A and 80F.
These amendments purport to create a "family-friendly"
firm for those that fall within the statutory definitions.
The paper argues that what is created instead is a two
tier approach to the accommodation of family life within
work life. Particular notions of "family" and
"dependant" for example are employed. The legislation
stages the right to request flexible working as a request
that is made by an individual employee to an individual
manager. The paper posits that the most effective way
of introducing an ethical dimension to this dialogue is
to use the ideas of Levinas. What then becomes clear is
that recognition of the needs of one employee may do violence
to the life of another; exclusion from the statutorily
defined list of those who may have dependants etc may
result in double disadvantage as the accommodation of
those who are within the list changes the work life balance
of the excluded. There is no duty on a manager to consider
the effects of changes for the benefit of those included
on those who are excluded. This sets up a challenge to
Levinasian ethics from utilitarianism.
*******************
Fiona Williams
University of Leeds, UK
Paper Title: How and why intersectionality matters
in a political ethic of care
Abstract: Care has moved centre Stage
in the policy agendas of Western European welfare states.
The decline of the male breadwinner model, women’s
involvement in the labour market, the diversification
of family lives and personal relationships and an ageing
society have all contributed to that. Yet policies for
care have been dominated by the work ethic as a basis
of male and female citizenship. By contrast, proponents
of an ethic of care invoke the universal character of
care as something we all need and have the potential to
give, and of its centrality to citizenship and justice,
particularly gender justice. However, care is underpinned
by complex relations of power and interdependence: its
practices are embedded in the power of adult over child,
able-bodied over disabled and younger over older; choices
of care are influenced by cultural differences of class,
gender, ethnicity, locality and national legacies; paid
care work is underpinned by unequal class, gender, ethnic
and geo-political relations. Taking account of these in
developing a political ethic of care is a difficult but
necessary process.
*******************
Toni Williams
York University, Canada
Paper Title: Intersectionality in the criminalisation
of women and girls in the Canadian criminal justice system
Abstract: This paper is about the role
of intersectionality claims in decisions about and analyses
of the penalisation of girls and adult women in Canada.
It traces and interrogates how penal instruments are invoked
against female persons whose relationships to the criminal
law and its enforcement instruments are organised in part
by social relations of gender, age and race/racialisation.
The paper draws on three case studies in which penal practice
explicitly references social relations of difference:
the separate procedures for "youth" criminal
justice; the special restraint provisions that govern
the sentencing of Aboriginal offenders in Canada; and
judicial attempts to mitigate sentences of black women
drug couriers by reference to their "social context"
of systemic racism, poverty and gender inequality. The
paper explores how these regimes constitute intersectionalised
conceptions of identity and agency that in turn shape
how penalisation performs in relation to women and girls.
*******************
Alison E. Woodward
Vesalius College, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Paper Title: Translating Diversity: The diffusion
of the concept diversity to European Union Equality Policy
and the potential for an intersectional approach
Abstract: The concept ‘diversity’
has been used in the United States to help make the business
case for equal opportunities for many different target
groups. In the last five years, ‘diversity’
has begun to make inroads in equality policy in the northern-most
states of the European Union as well as in European Union
equality policy itself. These developments have been heavily
influenced by consultants and thinkers from the United
States. However, ‘diversity thinking’ seldom
makes reference to the important theoretical work in legal
and feminist scholarship on intersectionality. This contribution
is based on qualitative interviews with policy actors
in Brussels. The interviewees include actors from the
European Social Platform and from the European Commissoin.
The focus is on the transitions in thinking about equality
policy and the impact of theory on intersectionality as
opposed to the impact of the American diversity approach.
What forces are behind the introduction of a ‘diversity’
frame in European policy? To what extent can the new insights
of intersectionality be translated into the policy sphere?
*******************
Iris Marion Young (Plenary Speaker)
University of Chicago, USA
Paper Title: 'Structural inequality and the Politics
of Difference'
Abstract: Despite decades of discussion
and debate, interest in political issues and conflicts
involving social group difference has not abated, either
among political theorists or in general public discourse.
Over the decades of such discussion, however, there have
emerged two approaches to a political of difference, which
I call a politics of positional difference and a politics
of cultural difference. The politics of positional difference
understands social groups and group differences as constituted
by the way individuals are positioned by privileging and
disadvantaging structural social processes. In my treatment
of the politics of positional difference here I focus
on normalization as one important form of such structural
social process, and I conceptualize the oppression of
people with disabilities, gender oppression, and racism
in terms of these normalization processes. A politics
of cultural difference, on the other hand, understands
social groups as constituted by perceived differences
in cultural practices, beliefs, or ways of life. Political
theory and public discourse under this model tends to
think of ethnicity, nationality, and religion as paradigmatic
modes of defining group difference.
Recent political theory and public discussion of group
difference and political conflict, in my observation,
tends to focus on the politics of cultural difference,
and to have shifted discussion away from issues of structural
inequality and group difference. While I believe that
both approaches to a politics of difference have important
insights, I argue in this paper that the ascendancy of
the politics of cultural difference is problematic for
at least three reasons. It tends to deflect attention
from important issues of justice that concern structural
positioning, such as gender and race. Operating largely
within a liberal paradigm, it is unable to see civil society
as a site of political contestation and change. Because
the politics of cultural difference often frames issues
in terms of toleration, finally, it can contribute to
some processes of normalization that the politics of position
difference criticizes.
*******************
Dubravka Zarkov
Institute of Social Studies, The Netherlands
Paper Title: Intersectional and interdisciplinary
analyses of rape: on fears and possibilities
Abstract: Within the last decade feminist
analyses of sexual violence in the context of war and
violent conflict have - inevitably - intersected gender
with ethnicity (in studies of ex-Yugoslav and Rwandan
wars), religion (in studies of communal violence in South
Asia), as well as with the issues of (hetero)sexuality
(in studies of rape of men). One could argue that the
studies of war rapes have been following into the footsteps
of (post-)colonial and black feminist studies within which
sexual violence was never theorized only as a matter of
gender relations (as in some of
the classical feminists studies of rape in times of peace).
Furthermore, studies of war rapes have emerged within
many different disciplines - from international law and
human rights to ethnography and cultural studies. Finally,
insights of these studies have also been implicated in
workings of some of the international legal institutions,
such as Yugoslav and Rwandan Tribunals, (ITCY and ICTR)
and International Criminal Court.
But have feminists been too eager and too hopeful regarding
the new legal institutions that address the war rapes,
thus forgetting feminist criticism of limits of the legal
remedies for the peace rapes? Have the studies of war
rape within different disciplines learned from each other,
and from the studies of peace rape, and vice versa - can
studies of war rapes teach anything studies of peace time
rapes? Finally, is intersectional analysis of rape (be
it in peace or war) still operating within feminist ideological
frameworks that resist methodological implications of
intersectionality - its inevitable contextualization,
diversification and thus relativization of the meanings
of rape - because of fears of consequences this may have
on political, strategic and policy level?
While the attempts have already been made to re-think
feminist theorizing of peace rape (with Marcus and Heberle
being the most outstanding examples) can intersectional
and interdisciplinary analyses of war rape pick this up,
and offer a step further into theoretical and political
possibilities that will sooth feminist fears?
