When in December 2021 the Gender Studies Section of the Italian Association of Sociology dedicated its end-of-term conference, held at the University of Naples Federico II, to the theme of intersectionality, the time was ripe in our country to make it the subject of a conference, the focus of the social sciences - and of sociology in particular - on its definition and application and also the term of comparison with scientific communities such as the American and British ones that had baptised it and were developing it for decades. Yes, because in Italy its initial manifestations in the first decade of the 2000s were too few to attract the attention of the scientific and public community and, in any case, too late compared to the affirmation, a few decades earlier overseas, of an approach, theoretical framework, method and vision of society that only recently has progressively taken on an Italian, and more broadly European, character. For those who know intersectionality from having encountered it in the headquarters of North American movements and colleges where, as early as the end of the 1960s, so-called black feminism claimed its own dimension with respect to the feminism of white women and the protests of black men, its arrival in European universities, and then in Italian universities, seems to have altered it. There are too many cultural differences between European societies and that of the United States, which owes the affirmation of an approach such as the intersectional one to some of its specificities, including multiraciality, links with the colonies and deep social inequalities, especially of an economic nature. Yet, especially in recent years, that gradual diffusion of the concept of intersectionality, to the point of becoming common to many human and social disciplines developed in the other West, has drawn its most recent configurations to be read, not only with the incredulity, if not the scepticism, of some purists, but with all the strengths and weaknesses it proposes as any vision of society.
Intersectionality and Sociology: Theories and Methodologies Applied to Studies of Gender and Sexuality in Italy. Dilemmas and Perspectives
Silvia Fornari
Writing – Review & Editing
;
2023
Abstract
When in December 2021 the Gender Studies Section of the Italian Association of Sociology dedicated its end-of-term conference, held at the University of Naples Federico II, to the theme of intersectionality, the time was ripe in our country to make it the subject of a conference, the focus of the social sciences - and of sociology in particular - on its definition and application and also the term of comparison with scientific communities such as the American and British ones that had baptised it and were developing it for decades. Yes, because in Italy its initial manifestations in the first decade of the 2000s were too few to attract the attention of the scientific and public community and, in any case, too late compared to the affirmation, a few decades earlier overseas, of an approach, theoretical framework, method and vision of society that only recently has progressively taken on an Italian, and more broadly European, character. For those who know intersectionality from having encountered it in the headquarters of North American movements and colleges where, as early as the end of the 1960s, so-called black feminism claimed its own dimension with respect to the feminism of white women and the protests of black men, its arrival in European universities, and then in Italian universities, seems to have altered it. There are too many cultural differences between European societies and that of the United States, which owes the affirmation of an approach such as the intersectional one to some of its specificities, including multiraciality, links with the colonies and deep social inequalities, especially of an economic nature. Yet, especially in recent years, that gradual diffusion of the concept of intersectionality, to the point of becoming common to many human and social disciplines developed in the other West, has drawn its most recent configurations to be read, not only with the incredulity, if not the scepticism, of some purists, but with all the strengths and weaknesses it proposes as any vision of society.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
