Contemporary Sociological Theory. Группа авторов
or claim identity on several dimensions at once.
Being Black, female, and disabled multiplies disadvantages in many areas of life. But not all intersectionalities multiply disadvantages, though they have been the primary focus of intersectionality research. One may be disable or gay (or both) but also white and rich. Intersectionality may limit rather than multiply a potential disadvantage.
Moreover, intersectionality is a challenge to movement organization. It can undermine the solidarity of all Blacks with each other, of all women in feminist struggle, or of workers in class struggle. Immigrant status may divide Hispanic Americans or disabled Britons after Brexit. Not all “people of color” identify with each other or with that category. Every category of identity and potential solidarity also divides into various dimensions. There is no automatic rule as to which identity will dominate – either in explaining discrimination or in forging collective struggles. This is why intersectionality is always an issue and also a challenge for contemporary sociological theory and contemporary struggles for justice and social transformation alike.
Modernity, Crisis, and Change
Since its origins, sociology has always been engaged with the idea of modernity. Its focus was the societies that emerged out of long processes of social change. In Western Europe, there was a Renaissance in culture, Reformation (and resistance) in religion, political revolutions seeking greater representation and rule of law, industrial revolution transforming work and economies. Where there had been a shifting mosaic of kingdoms and empires, nation states tried to enforce clear borders and pursued projects of national integration. Family life and local community changed as cities grew; transportation and communication knit people together across long distances; and advances science and medicine meant that for the first time almost all children lived into adulthood and adults lived long enough and had enough resources or social support to retire. Societies grew more complex with a range of new institutions: universities, business corporations, and government agencies. Individuals gained more capacity to choose aspects of their futures, from different careers to different places to live. Women gradually gained full recognition as individuals and citizens.
Changes spread through countries Europeans colonized, building new societies and transforming old. Both slavery and empire brought struggles for liberation and self-determination in response. Spanish, French, and English became global languages. Markets extended ever-more widely and organized more and more lives. The world’s population multiplied, and life became overwhelmingly urban. Migrations were ubiquitous.
As many classical sociological theorists argued, modernity was always a contradictory reality pulled in different directions by state power, capitalism, rising individualism, and new kinds of inequality. During the 20th century, tensions turned into devastating world wars. Total wars depended on industry as well as armies. Battles were not confined to fields of clear engagement; civilians were attacked; cities were bombed. And at an extreme, millions of civilians were murdered in gas chambers. Some suggested that the Holocaust was somehow a throwback to premodern, but as Zygmunt Bauman argued persuasively, it was, sadly and centrally, a product of modernity.29
Social transformations continued. Capitalism and states both expanded. New technologies transformed work, communication, and everyday life. Prosperity returned after the devastation of war – though the new Cold War between capitalist and communist alliances kept alive the fear of even more total war with nuclear weapons.
There was also optimism that the benefits of modernization could be shared throughout the world. Modernization theory drew on the actual social conditions of the richer Western European countries and the United States to construct a broadly functionalist model of modernity. They imagined former colonies following the paths of “successful modernizers” such as Britain and the United States. Modernization theory guided a range of important research projects that did indeed produce useful knowledge. However, especially in and after the 1960s, it was challenged on several fronts. Among the most important was the unilinear concept of social change widespread within it. Modernization was understood as a process moving in one predetermined direction. Closely related was the criticism that modernization theory neglected power, including the power by that some societies dominated others and also the power by which elites within societies shaped the course of their growth and change. The third was the argument that modernization theory lumped all manners of very different cultural and social formations together into the category of “traditional” or premodernity. Fourth came the argument that modernity could take different forms. Chinese, Indian, or Islamic modernity might not resemble that of the West.
Domination by the US and global capitalism was central to political economy throughout Latin America and movements to change it. Again, transnational linkages were central, symbolized by Che Guevara, a hero of the Cuban Revolution, who was killed in Bolivia in 1967 with CIA assistance. And again, the struggle was intellectual as well as material. Sociological theorists like Fernando Henrique Cardoso, influenced by Max Weber and Alain Touraine, played a leading role questioning dominant theories of modernization and showing how capitalist development was a path to dependence, not autonomous flourishing, for the postcolonial countries of the Global South.
Four thinkers who worked together in Africa expanded this perspective into a theory of the “modern world system.” Walter Rodney, from Guyana, showed how the underdevelopment of Africa was produced by Europe’s growth, domination, and exploitation, not merely a matter of lagging behind.30 The Egyptian Samir Amin coined the term “Eurocentric” to describe the perspective that world-system theory sought to replace.31 An American student of C. Wright Mills, Immanuel Wallerstein (excerpted here), developed the most complete theorization of the “modern world system” as a product of capitalist globalization organized through a hierarchy of nation states – a richer and more powerful core, a semiperiphery trying to move up, and a periphery left nearly without power and capital. Wallerstein argued that transformations of the modern world system were inevitable. The Italian fourth founder of world-system theory, Giovanni Arrighi, analyzed the rise of China and the decline of US hegemony as just such a transformation of the modern world system.
By the 1960s and 1970s, there were widespread movements questioning whether modernity had taken a wrong turn. None fully succeeded in its attempt to correct course, though they had major impacts nonetheless. World peace was not established, but human rights and humanitarian action became prominent projects to mitigate suffering. Social justice was not established, but there was new recognition of the rights of women and racial minorities.
The 1970s saw an almost perfect storm to mark the end of one era and the launch of a new set of debates. The 1973–75 economic crisis was the biggest between the Great Depression and the still unresolved financial crisis of 2009–11. The rise of neoliberalism changed ideology. The rise of OPEC changed global power structures and, creating great reserves of investable cash in some countries, helped to launch an era of dramatic financialization. This supported growth in Asia though China’s transformative entry into global capitalist trade was still a decade away.
In the West, deindustrialization decimated old industrial heartlands and the working class organized through trade unions. “Postindustrial society” was shaped by new technologies for both the production and distribution of things and for communications and cultural creation. This transformation came with more jobs in the service sector, often filled throughout the previously industrialized countries by women, minorities, and immigrants – but mostly at lower wages than the industrial jobs that were lost. Inequality grew to levels not seen in a century.
For many people, the changes that came in the 1980s and after brought more disruption than progress. Deindustrialization is a prime example. Factory closings led to wider unraveling of towns through America’s “rust belt” or England’s once industrial Midlands. This was a demonstration that functional integration matters, even if it is not all that matters. It was proof that intentional action has unintended consequences, as the functionalist Robert Merton had argued.32 And it was a reminder that while the ability to guide change is part of the idea of agency, it is hard to achieve at large scale and in relation to social structure.
A growing range