Essentialism

Essentialism involves defining a group of people by a small set of fixed properties, while ignoring the conditions under which such identities emerged. In the process, it discounts any possibility of change or variation within the group.

Common examples of essentialism are racism and sexism.

In more philosophical terms essentialism's roots go back to Plato who placed the idea at the center of each thing.

According to essentialism the idea "behind" (better: contained in ) each thing directs its development.

Critics like modern evolution biologists or german philopsopher Karl Popper strongly dispute the existence of inherent ideas and refer them back to the human mind where they originated. Instead they focus on interaction of an entities' features with features of its environment in order to explain an entities' development.

See: structuralism Constrast with: constructionism, poststructuralism