Construction and Deconstruction of Essence in Representating Social Groups: Identity Projects, Stereotyping, and Racism

Abstract

Projecting essence onto a social category means to think, talk, and act as if the category were a discrete natural kind and as if its members were all endowed with the same immutable attributes determined by the category's essence. Essentializing may happen implicitly or on purpose in representing ingroups and outgroups. We argue that essentializing is a versatile representational tool (a) that is used to create identity in groups with chosen membership in order to make the group appear as a unitary entity, (b) that outsiders often draw on a group's essentialist self‐construal in their judgements about the groups, (c) that judgements about members of forced social categories are often informed by essentialist thinking that easily switches to discrimination and racism, and (d) that under certain historical and political conditions members of social categories and groups may contest their essentialized identity, such as parts of the feminist movement, or that they may attempt to reconstruct an essentialized identity, such as parts of the homosexual movement or the largely defunct European nobility. Besides explicit political and power interests, we see communication processes and language use as a tacit force driving essentialization of social categories.

Editorial Political Cartoons in Australia: Social Representations & and the Visual Depiction of Essentialism

“…The idea that things and creatures may have an underlying essence is not new; found in the writings of Plato, it refers to the concept of natural kinds-naturally occurring things that are perceived to have a sharp boundary, of which there is a perpetual and characterising feature that cannot be changed (Sachs 2006;Wagner et al 2009). The attribution of essence onto a social category such as a religious group is to attribute members of that social category with a natural-kindness that unequivocally determines their belonging, fundamental alikeness and behaviour in the same way that all exemplars of a biological species are more or less the same (Gelman 2003;Medin and Ortony 1989).…”

“…However, essentialist rhetoric can also be applied towards the own ingroup. Here, essentializing one's own identity can, for example, foster claims of superiority and separation towards other groups Wagner et al 2009;Wagner et al 2012).…”

“…Media communications are underpinned by representational systems and because the producers and the readers reside within the same historicity, these communications are, arguably, bi-directional co-constructions (Rouquette 1996;Wagner et al 2009). …”

A representação binária do cérebro “feminino” e “masculino” na ciência e nos meios de comunicação

“…(2005) cunhou o termo "neuroessencialismo" para se referir a tudo aquilo que tenta levantar uma correspondên-cia inequívoca entre cérebro e identidade. Concepções essencialistas aplicadas a grupos de pessoas promovem a visão de que essas categorias são naturais, inevitáveis, homogêneas e imutáveis (Wagner et al, 2009).…”

Religion in Meaning Making and Boundary Work: Theoretical Explorations

“…The most prominent example might be Islam which, in the general discourse, appears alternately as a problem for security and linked to terrorism (Bhatia, 2007), or as an obtacle for migrant integration and a peril for gender equality through practices stereotypically perceived as forced marriages and the subordination of Muslim women (Behloul 2009;Casanova 2004;Cesari 2010). Unequal gender relations among Muslims are in European countries often identified as the core problem of diversified societies; yet a large number of social scientists responded critically towards such essentializing -reducing people to some imaginary cultural or ethnical "essence" (e. g. Wagner et al 2009) -and stereotyping discourse (Razack 2004;Moira and Phillips 2008;Roggeband and Verloo 2007;Baghdadi 2010;Dahinden et al 2012). As will be shown, essentializing Muslim features and linking them to the idea of a culturally induced gender inequality can be considered as a kind of transnationalization of religion.…”