This article contributes to the growing debate on intersectionality by proposing a theoretical framing which attends to different levels of analysis in terms of what is being referred to (social categories or concrete social relations); societal arenas of investigation; and historicity (processes and outcomes). It discusses questions of social ontology, categories, groupings and more concrete social relations relating to boundaries and hierarchies in social life. The article presents a particular analytical sensitivity which attends to the dialogical nature of social relations, the centrality of power and social hierarchy, and the importance of locating these within spatial and temporal contexts.

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This paper reflects on the concept of social capital through a discussion of the differential uses of ethnic ties for minority ethnic groups.It is argued that we should confine the notion of social capital to mobilisable social ties and networks. Resources such as those found in ethnic networks and bonds will only be social capital if they are mobilisable and usable in pursuing social advantage. This will only happen in the presence of a number of factors including the social valuation of the ethnic ties both within and outside the ethnic category, the social location of the actor (for example their gender) and the social context. The paper elaborates a concept of social capital which recognises the need to embed it within social hierarchies.

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This article evaluates the potential found within two approaches that recognize the complexity of social hierarchy in different ways. First, it looks at the revival of class analysis within culturally inflected approaches to class. These have incorporated a number of societal relations, broadly referred to as the symbolic, the social and the cultural, into the analysis. Second, the article assesses attempts to theorize the intersections of gender, ethnicity and class through the intersectionality framework. It considers the potential for developing more integrated analytical frameworks for understanding social hierarchy through cross-referencing these debates. It proposes an intersectional framing which centres on social location and translocation.