Overcoming Barriers to Intersectional Research on Economic Inequality & Politics

Session Submission Type: Virtual Roundtable

Session Description

The experience, causes, and consequences of economic inequality often differ according to a person’s social characteristics, such as their race, ethnicity, gender, age, or sexual orientation. For example, in a recent article in Daedalus, Michener and Brower (2020) show that social welfare policies have varied implications across different racial groups of women, emphasize that economic inequality is both racialized and gendered, and argue that scholars must begin applying “an intersectional lens to the contemporary landscape of economic inequality.”

Indeed, such investigations into how the economics-policy nexus varies across social groups are few and far between. The study of class stratification and economic inequality within political science often treats individuals as interchangeable, examining descriptive patterns and causal mechanisms on average. This tendency extends to survey research on attitudes about economic inequality and related policy, where differences of opinion often are presented divorced from individuals’ social characteristics and contexts. While such analyses are welcome and useful, we argue that they ought to be considered just one type of perspective on complex phenomena.

In this roundtable, we invite scholars of politics who specialize in the study of racial and ethnic and/or economic inequality to answer the following questions: why is there not more intersectional research on economic inequality in political science, and how might we encourage more such research? We invite participants to consider institutional, intellectual, and other barriers along with underappreciated or emerging opportunities. We also encourage participants to highlight intersectional research on this or other topics that might serve as useful exemplars for scholars interested in linking economic and social inequality.

Aligned with APSA's conference theme of promoting pluralism: (1) our roundtable promotes intersectional work across the study of economic and racial (and other) inequality, and (2) we model cross-subfield conversation in our roundtable by involving people from C&I, REP, behavior, institutions, US politics, and comparative politics. This roundtable is explicitly designed to break away from the silos that have kept scholars across these subfields from engaging with each other's work.

Sub Unit

• Division 55: Class and Inequality

Chair

• Cecilia Hyunjung Mo UC Berkeley

Presenters

• Elizabeth Suhay American University

• Hakeem Jerome Jefferson Stanford University

• Melissa Sands London School of Economics

• Nicholas Carnes Duke University

• Jamila D. Michener Cornell University

• Margaret Teresa Brower Harvard University

• Karthick Ramakrishnan University of California Riverside