Intersectionality represents a dynamic and vibrant theoretical field in academia, particularly among scholars engaged in gender studies. Based on a twelve months long anthropological fieldwork among several feminist groups in Stockholm – including a feminist and vegan safe-space café, a woman and non-binary trans separatist comic book group, and local fractions of the political party Feminist Initiative – this paper will explore the how concept of intersectionality is operationalized by feminist activists belonging to non-academic parts of the Swedish feminist movement. Specifically, how is intersectionality translated from academic discourse into an analytical and/or practical tool by feminist activists? What is locally dubbed “intersectional feminism” has emerged as a self-conscious feminist identity in this context. In turn, this observation encourages an ethnography of how such theoretical constructs actually do travel and are put to use by others than their academic innovators. In this paper, this focus will be concretized against a backdrop consisting of local articulations of the #metoo campaign, as well Sweden’s national elections in 2018. The political context is made explicit because it was particularly in relation to its central discourses that activists formulated their intersectional feminism. Some pertinent questions emerge from this. On the ground, what is the relation of intersectionality to identity politics in general and to anti-racist politics in particular? What are some of the creative political strategies that emerge from a practical engagement with intersectionality? From the anthropological point of view of this paper, it becomes crucial to explore the cultural tenets that condition the practical articulation of intersectionality by feminist activists. In the end, what can this tell us about the limitation and potentiality of intersectionality as a tool for activism?

Kristian Sandbekk Norsted is a PhD Student in Cultural Anthropology at Uppsala University, at which he is also a part of the interdisciplinary research project Engaging Vulnerability. His research focuses on how feminism is conceived of and practiced by self-identified feminists belonging to different non-academic feminist communities in Stockholm, Sweden, where he has conducted one year of ethnographic fieldwork.

No co-authors.