Beyond mutual constitution: the property framework for intersectionality studies

Abstract

Within feminist theory and a wide range of social sciences, intersectionality has emerged as a key analytic framework, challenging paradigms that consider gender, race, class, sexuality, and other categories as separate and instead conceptualizing them as interconnected. This has led most authors to assume mutual constitution as the pertinent model, often without much scrutiny. In this essay we critically review the main senses of mutual constitution in the literature and challenge what we take to be a problematic assumption: the problem of reification, here understood as the conceptualization of social categories as entities or objects. We then present the properties framework, together with the emergent experience view, which conceptualizes categories and social systems in a way that maintains their ontological specificity while allowing for their being deeply affected by each other.

Financial support for this work was provided by MINECO, Spanish Government, research projects FFI2013-47948-P, FFI2014-52196-P and FFI2016-80588-R (M. J.) and postdoctoral fellowships FJCI-2015-23620, IJCI-2017-34112 (M. J.) and FJCI-2014-19743, IJCI-2016-27422 (M. R. Z).