Bringing Intersectionality to the Core of Social and Cultural Anthropology: Scaling Holistic Intersectionality

Abstract

ABSTRACT Social and cultural anthropology is a descriptive, theorising and comparative social science. It has a holistic orientation, i.e. it directs its gaze to complex interrelationships between different subfields of cultural dynamics. However, this understanding is not a stand-alone feature of the anthropological approach, but is also valid for the intersectionality framework. This article seeks to explore the relationship between both approaches, as they both capture entangled identifications, power structures and social dynamics, yet, from different angles. It, furthermore, carves out the benefit of bringing both approaches into dialogue: Intersectionality makes sense of holistic intersections in a way that carries hierarchical relationships to the core of research. By contrast, the anthropological angle gives special meaning to mutually constitutive identity formations and their related power systems through thick ethnographic data. By conflating the two, I suggest a heuristic framework in this article – Scaling Holistic Intersectionality – for doing ethnography with a power-critical perspective in a transnational and globalised world.