Intersectionality

An analysis of its theoretical-methodological instrumentalization in urban studies

Abstract

In recent years, discussions involving issues of gender, race and class have gained new momentum, giving visibility to a powerful concept: intersectionality. More than a unified theory, it is today a domain of transdisciplinary investigation marked since its origins by political activism and heuristic ambitions. This article proposes a narrative review of the production of knowledge generated by intersectionality in the field of urban studies based on an appreciation of three dimensions: epistemological questions, their analytical scope of socio-spatial relations in the city and the place of methodology in the intersectional approach. In this field, intersectional research is characterized by a collective and diffuse effort to identify and analyze how urban space is a reflection and conditioning of people affected by a complex combination of forms of oppression and discrimination. The reception and mobilization of this concept in the Brazilian context is evident in the diversity of the themes explored, even though it encounters methodological difficulties in examining how social, political and economic structures operate in an interconnected way and unequally affect groups of people in places and territories of the city.