The belief that social differences between groups are a result of biological differences between them.
Defining a group of people by one -- or a small set of -- fixed properties. Gender, religion, race or sexual orientation are the most common properties. It assumes that there is no possibility of variation within the targeted group, or potential for change. See racism, sexism, religism and homophobia.
is now increasingly used in order to explain why anti-essentialism is preferable, though in more purely philosophical discussion the term has greater usefulness. Amongst social and cultural researchers, anti-essentialism involves the rejection of a scientific quest for universal essences, such as the discovery of a universal psychological makeup, or generally applicable sex differences, in preference for a view that human `nature' is a social construction.
a philosophical theory ascribing ultimate reality to essence embodied in a thing perceptible to the senses.
The belief that categories, or individuals and groups of human beings have innate, defining features exclusive to their category (e.g., the belief that different races have inherent characteristics that differentiate them from other races). Essentialism has been challenged by social constructivist theories that point to the ways in which identity and meaning are culturally produced.
In philosophy, essentialism is the view, that, for any specific kind of entity it is at least theoretically possible to specify a finite list of characteristics —all of which any entity must have to belong to the group defined. This view is contrasted with non-essentialism which states that for any given entity there are no specified traits which that entity must have in order to be defined as that entity.