Intersectionality incarnate: A case study of civil society, social capital, and its metamorphosis

ABSTRACT This paper investigates civil society’s metamorphosis through the lens of intersectional risk theory. While numerous studies interrogate civil society’s spatiotemporal evolution, there has yet to be an analysis of how and why the Intersectional Activist has gained such prominence. The interdisciplinary nexus between intersectionality, social capital, and civil society to that of the risk discipline requires a multi-tiered methodology to map the contours of this metamorphosis. Therefore, the choice of a hermeneutically-framed, exploratory case study, supplemented by semi-structured interviews, structures the research. The results support that the Intersectional Activist is a byproduct of capitalistic, multiply-burdening institutions of oppression. However, these overlapping institutions form a pressurized moulding onto the individuals’ tabula rasa, whereby a transversal, paradigm-defiant coalition insurrects against hegemonic systems. Reactivating the five capacities of the self, knowledge, processes, agency, and power to bridge cross-sectorial mobilization, the Intersectional Activist is a direct riposte to the Precarious Risk Society. The collective has now become the connective–manifesting in the intersectional plight against systemic injustice, the Matrix of Power reactivates the capacities through an association of difference, reconstituting the nature of social capital. Within this reconstitution, the transversal activist realizes themselves in a new connective frontier, for they are intersectionality incarnate.