Essentialism

Essentialism is the view that members of a group share fixed, inherent characteristics that define what the group is. It treats those characteristics as stable rather than produced by history or social relations.

Social categorization: The process of sorting people into groups using perceived similarities and differences. Essentialist explanations turn categories into claims about shared underlying traits.
Plato: An ancient Greek philosopher whose dialogues explore enduring Forms underlying particular things. His account of Forms is a major philosophical precedent for stable essences.
Gender: Social identities, roles, and relations associated with masculinity, femininity, and other gender positions. Essentialist claims often assign supposedly innate traits and roles to gender groups.
Anti-essentialism: The rejection of the claim that groups or kinds possess fixed defining essences. It directly denies the central premise that group membership entails inherent shared traits.
Stereotype: A generalized belief about the characteristics of members of a social group. Stereotypes often express the traits essentialism treats as inherent and shared.
Aristotle: An ancient Greek philosopher who analyzed substances, kinds, and the properties that define them. His theories of substance and definition shaped later accounts of what makes a kind what it is.
Race: A social classification of people associated with perceived ancestry and physical traits. Essentialist interpretations treat racial categories as natural divisions with inherited characteristics.
Nominalism: The philosophical view that universals are names or concepts rather than independently existing entities. It disputes the existence of real shared essences behind general categories.
Psychological essentialism: The cognitive tendency to assume that categories have hidden, defining properties that cause their members’ observable traits. This psychological account explains how people intuitively treat social categories as having essences.
Biological essentialism: The claim that biological differences determine fixed traits shared by members of a group. It supplies biological explanations for group essences, especially in debates about sex and race.

Linked from 35 pages