Intersectionality Theory in Sociocultural Anthropology

Accepting the premise that sociocultural anthropology is colonialist and Audre Lorde’s maxim that the master’s tools cannot remake the master’s house, I consider the value of a tool from outside the master’s house to reconstruct sociocultural anthropology. Intersectionality, variously known as a theory, a lens, or a metaphor, is rooted in U.S. Black women’s abolitionism of the mid-nineteenth century, which argued that rights-seeking efforts framed out Black women. The 1970s and 1980s brought increased attention, especially from Black American feminists, to the multiplying effects of the intersections of race, gender, and class. In 1989, the term intersectionality first appeared in print, and a theory was named. Since then, many fields of study and activism have embraced intersectionality. Edward Said posited that radical theories lose their edge when they travel outside their original context. I explore intersectionality’s travels to sociocultural anthropology—its chronology, advocates, and transformations. Although barely visible in much of sociocultural anthropology’s Whitestream, intersectionality has gained not only in numbers but also a stronger voice since its first published appearance in 2001. Nearly two centuries have passed since intersectionality’s origins in U.S. enslavement, but interlocking conditions of inequality pervade the world today, nurturing intersectionality’s radical ethos in sociocultural anthropology.