Intersecting inequalities and prospects for community development

This Special Issue of the Community Development Journal explores how the concepts of intersectionality and intersecting inequalities can contribute to inclusive community development research and practice, particularly in contexts of acute marginalization. The motivation for our focus follows insight from the Participate research initiative, which showed that marginalization is perpetuated when development interventions do not address the consequences of intersecting inequalities (Howard et al. 2017). The Sustainable Development Goals’ call to ‘leave no one behind’ is unlikely to be realized unless researchers, practitioners, community-based organizations and social movements develop conceptual and methodological approaches for surfacing the diverse perspectives and needs of the most stigmatized, vulnerable and excluded groups, and then incorporate this complex knowledge into appropriate action. This issue includes articles based in our recent collaborations with Participate partners in five countries, which explore how an intersectional lens was applied both to understand how inequalities are differentially experienced and perpetuated and to evolve inclusive methodologies for supporting grassroots groups, in extremely inequitable contexts, to take collective action and seek accountability. This compilation was enriched by an open call, which brought in additional perspectives on applying intersectionality to community development in the Global North and South. The experiences and debates presented here show how intersectionality theories can be applied practically, and this informs a nuanced, iterative and inclusive approach to community development. Whilst each author speaks from a particular contextual perspective – including Egypt, Uganda, India, South Africa, Ghana, Scotland, USA, Hong Kong and Pakistan – some key ideas and themes run through all the articles. Intersectionality provides the conceptual lens for understanding the complex ways that different aspects of identity interact to shape life experiences (Crenshaw 1989), particularly the socially constructed identities that people navigate, such as race, class, caste, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, ability and age (Collins 2015). The articles consider not only how socially constructed identities are differently experienced within excluded groups but also how they are compounded by intersecting inequalities, which are additional layers of disadvantage from, for example, economic, political and spatial factors (Kabeer 2016). The authors (as researchers/practitioners) are concerned both with applying these concepts analytically to sharpen our political awareness but especially to strengthen our practices of inclusion, which is a key contribution to critical praxis in community development. Despite the wide-ranging content and diverse geographical settings, there are overlaps, complementarity and mutual exchange across the articles. Before introducing each article, we next summarize the common themes: First, several authors challenge the tendency to homogenize marginalized communities, which happens through generalized language, for example, with reference to ‘the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual, Queer and Intersex (LGBTQI) community’, or in development discourse about ‘the poorest of the poor’ or the ‘furthest behind’. If we frame communities as homogenous, we neglect within-group inequalities, and as a result, our work can perpetuate marginalization by overlooking or silencing some people (see Kumar; Narayanan et al.). There is a danger of becoming complicit with exclusionary or punitive governmental discourses, when we frame ‘community development’ without taking into account the drivers of exclusion. Intersectionality requires us to consider whose involvement and perspectives we privilege in community organizing and mobilization. Given this emphasis on the complexity of community, a theme running through this special issue is the need for careful, reflexive and iterative navigation to support inclusive community emergence (Wheeler, Shaw and Howard; López Franco, Boham, Elyanu, Howard, Larweh and Quarmyne). Second, authors identify critical-awareness of positionality and power as central to working with marginalized groups. This applies to our positioning as researchers as much as the dynamics within the groups we study or work with. Without reflexivity about our own perspectives and biases, training and relative privilege, we may construct research that maintains intersectional blindness (see Leach and Cricklow, Wheeler et al.; Sawas, Castán Broto, Anwar and Rehman). Several contributors used an intersectional lens to re-analyse research and produce more nuanced analysis by highlighting important missing aspects of intersecting social identities (Hung, Fung and Lau, Leach and Cricklow) or to analyse how research on basic infrastructure and service provision had uncovered situated forms of social discrimination (Sawas et al.). Third, we note the importance of innovative methodologies for understanding intersecting inequalities and successfully navigating the tension between recognizing differences and finding common ground in community development practice and research. The iterative cycles of participatory action research (PAR) enable the progressive combination and layering of exploratory action and reflective practice, needed to acknowledge and navigating difference whilst building solidarity (Wheeler et al.; López Franco et al.; Shaw et al.; Black, Liedeman and Ryklief). Storytelling and visual methodologies, and autoethnography, can counter damaging mainstream narratives, by creating space for counter-narratives to be constructed, which incorporate intersecting experiences and identities across difference (Leach and Cricklow; Wheeler et al.). There is also important learning about the limitations and inherent dilemmas: reflective intersectional PAR showed that sometimes, in practice, consensus is not possible when working across conflicting and adversarial ideological politics, such as around caste and ‘traditional’ or criminalized livelihoods in India (Naryanan et al.). Fourth, there are unavoidable tensions between spatial, place-based and other identities (e.g. cultural, gender), which play out as neoliberalism and globalization shape realities in context. These tensions manifested palpably in the relocation of pavement dwellers and policies towards Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes (DNT), in India (Wheeler et al.; Naryanan et al.); in women’s struggles in Ghana who faced privatization of the natural collective resource they rely on (López Franco et al.); and in co-production of services in disadvantaged urban settings where citizens confront multiple forms of infrastructural violence (Sawas et al.). Austerity and competition for funding drive the lack of solidarity and collaboration between organizations promoting identity-based equalities and those addressing class-based inequalities in the UK, and this undermines their efforts for social justice (Christoffersen). Finally, we highlight the contribution of an intersectional or intersecting inequalities approach to building more accountable policy engagement in inequitable contexts. An ‘inclusive reflex’ (Shaw et al.) must be maintained both whilst building capacities for collective action within and across groups and also whilst navigating the challenges when marginalized groups mobilize to engage with decision-makers to seek justice. Marginalized groups can act to foster accountable relations through connecting with duty-bearers, but other influential actors may manipulate and exploit differences within groups despite community workers’ and facilitators’ best efforts to support collectivity. Moreover, challenging the institutional discrimination and systemic injustices that marginalized groups experience produces constraints and risks which may be overwhelming. For example, challenging duty-bearers’ neglect, corruption and violence in the context of a South African township (Black et al.) or publicly speaking out against stigma towards people living with HIV/AIDS in Egypt (Shaw et al.). In all accounts, we note the importance of grounding intersectionality in context, history and experience, in order to be wary of its absorption into mainstream discourses which co-opt or dilute its power to challenge structural injustices (Salem 2018). Across the articles, a clear message resonates that a critical intersectionality or intersecting inequalities approach to research and practice, which enables hidden and invisible issues, interests and differences within the ‘community’ to be heard, critically examined and addressed, can enhance the transformative potential of community development. In the first article in this special issue, Shaw, Howard and López Franco consider intersecting inequalities as a way of informing inclusive practices to build collective action, through action research processes with highly marginalized groups in Egypt and Uganda. The PAR processes in each setting uncovered differences which created tensions, but the authors highlight some key practical aspects of the iterative group work, which enabled negotiation and re-framing of discriminatory social norms, as the foundation for community activism towards accountability, as well as the barriers to this in some contexts. Black, Liedeman and Ryklief describe the use of hand-mapping to understand how intersecting inequalities affect community safety in Cape Town. The hand-mapping process increased awareness of personal dignity and citizen rights within the group, but escalating contextual violence hampered the possibilities of people enacting agency together. This case highlights the challenges in overcoming social, spatial and economic inequalities for groups facing multiple exclusions. Wheeler, Shaw and Howard examine innovative methodologies for engagement across intersecting inequalities and for navigating the practice tension between recognising differences and building capacities for solidarity and collective action (also noted by Naryanan et al. and Shaw et al.). They identify approaches that can give space to different experiences and iteratively build solidarity by challenging stigmatizing narratives, thus underpinning a more difference-aware politics and practice of inclusion. Narayanan, Dheeraj, Sinha and Bharadwaj discuss challenges of building collective identity with DNT communities in India. This case demonstrates the compounding layers of deprivation created by intersecting inequalities and how innovative ground level panels surfaced divisions between different group ideologies and critical questions about the available livelihood ‘choices’, as well as illustrating how the contradictory positions within the DNT ‘community’ undermined a common political stance. Sawas, Castán Broto, Anwar and Rehman draw attention to project processes in the context of marginality. They use an intersectional lens to analyse the coproduction of safety in urban spaces in Pakistan, in a context of environmental violence. Their contribution identifies the exclusion of women and young refugee men and highlights the importance of considering whose uses are prioritized in research design and the risk of deepening and reinforcing urban inequalities despite efforts to engage multiple stakeholders. Hung, Fung, and Lau reanalyse a women’s empowerment project in Hong Kong using an intersectional lens and thus reveal differences according to intersections of gender, race and class amongst the participants. They observe that rigorous intersectional analysis is rare in the community development field in Hong Kong and argue that a lack of intersectional insight diminishes the effectiveness of community interventions. Leach and Crichlow combine intersectionality and critical race theories to highlight the need for researchers to recognize their own biases to avoid reinforcing exclusionary structures through their research methodologies. Considering non-profit strategies operating in communities of colour in the United States, they discuss how research processes and methodological tools can guide more inclusive non-profit community development practice and scholarship. Christoffersen identifies barriers to operationalizing intersectionality in third-sector community development practice; ‘equalities’ (identity) and ‘inequalities’ (class) organizations struggle to find solidarities, and equalities organizations face barriers to influencing the state due to funding attrition and the difficulty of building alliances. She suggests that intersectionality can help us to rethink the community development field, putting complex intersecting factors at the centre. Kumar problematizes the idea of identity-based community used in both popular and legal discourses, in the context of LGBTQI in India. These discourses privilege certain constituencies, and Kumar proposes that a ‘critical intersectionality’ lens can enable a more inclusive and substantive justice, by recognising different interests and experiences within the wider group, and the historical structures and processes which underpin these power dynamics. Finally, López Franco, Howard, Quarmyne, Boham, Larweh and Elyanu reflect on the use of community radio within participatory engagement processes, through which they articulate the right to communicate as fundamental for inclusion and accountability. They illustrate the progressive use of community radio to challenge discriminatory social norms, through the interweaving of radio broadcasting with participatory performing arts such as poetry, dance, songs and drama. This democratized knowledge and communications processes through amplifying local voices (in their own languages) and opening spaces for dialogue with duty-bearers. Overall, this special issue addresses a gap in knowledge about how intersectional theories can be applied not only as an analytical tool but also as a practical approach to guide social justice work with marginalized groups. The combined articles achieve this through demonstrating a range of methodologies for surfacing diverse experiences of intersecting inequalities and navigating the emergent practice tensions connected with addressing them. This contributes to a more inclusive community development praxis.