The broader their impact, the less solvent the alt. Perm is key.

It should be noted, however, that not all of the contributors to this special issue are in fact committed to the adoption of a critical realist philosophical framework in this way. Gillman, Smirthwaite and Swahnberg, and Griffiths take something of an outsider’s or newcomer’s perspective with regard to critical realist philosophy. While these authors relate to critical realism as a framework of interest, none wholeheartedly subscribe to it. As editors of this special issue we were very pleased to receive such contributions, as respectful engagements and interested conversations between critical realists and proponents of perspectives that are more commonly adopted by feminist theorists and gender scholars have unfortunately continued to be few and far between. Sue Clegg, Dimitri Mader and Michiel van Ingen, however, clearly write much more from within the parameters of critical realist philosophy, using its meta-theoretical framework as a means of making interventions in important feminist debates. Although Clegg, in her piece on intersectionality, does engage in some (critical) conversation with popular poststructuralist versions of intersectional theorizing, for instance, the main purpose of her article is to use critical realism as a philosophical underlabourer in order to think through various issues currently arising in discussions about intersectional theory, particularly the relationship between structure and agency. Mader’s contribution also centres on the structure/agency problematic and, like Clegg, draws especially on Margaret Archer’s work. However, whereas Clegg explicitly intervenes in intersectionality theory, whose proponents foreground the multiplicity of different forms of positioning and are often suspicious of an exclusive focus on gender, Mader’s contribution implicitly challenges the ‘intersectional imperative’ (Wiegman 1999, 376) by focusing on the gendered power structure in abstraction from other power relations. There is therefore a crucial (if not explicit) philosophical link between Clegg’s and Mader’s contributions, insofar as the former, while being mainly concerned with intersectionality theory, also argues in favour of engaging in exactly the kind of non-intersectional, ‘separatist’ (Gunnarsson 2015, 10) theoretical projects that Mader’s article exemplifies with its in-depth focus on gendered dominance. Such feminist endeavours, which seek to trace the basic causal mechanisms of patriarchy, have been increasingly difficult to carry out in the contemporary theoretical climate, and this is in significant part due to both the aforementioned intersectional imperative and the more general poststructuralist taboo on structural forms of theorizing.

Importantly, however, it is not intersectional forms of theorizing as such that are considered problematic by critical realist authors such as Clegg and Mader. The basic intersectional claim that social situations, identities and practices are conditioned by a range of intersecting power relations is arguably indisputable. Indeed, it is telling that authors and activists who persist in ignoring that this is the case are generally those who are subordinated only in terms of one, or no, social axis of power. However, while analyses of how different power relations and categorizations complexly intersect are pivotal, they do not allow us to do the equally important work of theorizing, in an in-depth and abstracted manner, the basic causal mechanisms that are exercised by the social/cultural structures that are ‘doing’ the intersecting at a concrete level (cf. Walby, Armstrong and Strid 2012; Martinez Dy, Martin and Marlow 2014; Gunnarsson 2015). As Clegg shows, however, the stratified ontology of critical realism provides helpful forms of support for theorists who wish to carry out analyses at different levels of abstraction. That is to say, it facilitates intersectional analysis where it is needed in order to understand the multi-layered fabric of social life, while not closing the door to ‘nonintersectional’ analyses that focus on how one specific categorical and structural dimension of this social life causally affects a situation of interest. What sets Mader’s contribution to theorizing gender-based domination apart from secondwave, single-issue feminist theory, however, is its engagement with contemporary debates, reflected in the explicit incorporation of the implications of his work for intersectional analyses.

Intersectionality thus continues to be a topic of significance for the development of critical realist feminism. In her review of Vivian May’s book Pursuing Intersectionality, Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries (2015), for instance, Angela Martinez Dy contextualizes May’s discussion of the intersectional turn away from structural theory in the history of the philosophy of science and the feminist turn towards poststructuralism. She then points to various possibilities for a realist development of intersectional theory that affirms its key role in social analysis. For example, whereas May sees the critical realist imperative to retain the validity of categories like ‘woman’ (Gunnarsson 2011) as possibly promoting a problematic gender-first logic, Martinez Dy argues that a critical realist approach, informed by the body of knowledge on intersectionality reviewed in detail in May’s book, can be used to develop the meanings of the categories themselves to allow for much greater complexity and nuance. In her review of Susan Hekman’s book The Feminine Subject (2014), Alison Assiter similarly addresses what she sees as the problematic tendency of certain feminist and gender studies approaches to emphasize differences among women over and against those features that they have in common. Whereas poststructuralist scholars have sought to retain ‘women’ as a politically necessary category by means of ‘strategic’ essentialism (Spivak 1987) and the like, Assiter does not shy away from talking about a real ‘universal essence to women’, in the simple sense of ‘characteristics in virtue of which women are described as women’ (p. 549). While Assiter does not specify the precise role of biological as opposed to social/ cultural forms of determination in this respect, Martinez Dy points out that the stratified, emergentist critical realist view can account for the significance of biological factors, while avoiding determinism and reductionism. Her argument thereby engages in an implicit dialogue with Griffith’s contribution, which favours the adoption of a sceptical approach towards the work of critical realist authors (especially New 2005) who have sought to maintain clear distinctions between sex and gender as well as between the (two) sexes, as such distinctions are at odds with prominent queer perspectives that reject the postulation of stable foundations for gendered identities. As Griffith’s article illustrates, queer theorists tend to see the existence of both intersex and trans persons as evidence of the indeterminacy of biological sex. Critical realists, instead, have sought to retain the notion of a structuring biological foundation, interpreting the diversity of gender expressions not as something that undermines structuredness but as something that demonstrates that (relative) structuredness can co-exist with (relative) variety and irregularity (Hull 2006; Gunnarsson 2013, 2014).

In conclusion, feminist theory has long acknowledged the importance of situated knowledges (or, in critical realist terms, epistemic relativism), and has called for the coming together of various different vantage points so that reality may be better understood. We hope that this special issue puts such ideas into practice, and that it illustrates how multiple philosophical perspectives, when placed into conversation with each other, can help us to achieve a synergetic end that is greater than the sum of its parts. Although there are some empirical aspects to the pieces that have been included, the contributions in this volume primarily have a theoretical thrust. This is intentional. One final aim of this special issue is for it to engage in a kind of theoretical ground-clearing that reconciles tensions, points out commonalities, and signposts promising paths, in an attempt to take us just a few steps further through the forest of conflicting feminist perspectives, both extant and emerging. We hope that the pieces that are included here encourage the use of critical realist philosophy, in dialogue with feminist and gender theory, so that new and stimulating forms of theoretical and empirical research may take place.