Essentialist View Research Articles

The core of division: Examining how essentialist views of the U.S. underlie right‐wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and nationalism

AbstractWe propose that political polarization stems in part from differing conceptions of one's nation. Four studies tested the hypothesis that national essentialism – conceiving one's nation as possessing an inherent, unchanging essence – underlies three political ideologies: right‐wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and nationalism. Study 1 (n = 263) provides correlational evidence that essentialist thinking about the U.S. positively predicted all three ideological variables, as well as support for conservative policies regarding religion, taxes, the environment, and immigration. Converging experiments show that prompting participants to think about the U.S.’s essence increased support for RWA and nationalism, but not SDO. Study 2 (n = 164) compared an essentialist to a non‐essentialist framing of the U.S., while Study 3 (n = 150) compared essentialist framings of the U.S. to an unrelated concept (music). Parallel mediation analyses show that support for RWA and nationalism mediated the relationship between primed national essentialism and support for conservative policy positions. Study 4 (n = 174) directly replicated Study 2 and went further to test mediators, showing that perceptions of intergroup threat mediated the effect of national essentialism on RWA, while national identification mediated the effect of national essentialism on nationalism. Data and materials are publicly available at: (https://osf.io/srvxk/?view_only=d803fbf4c59c4b7e912f5a345ddb09b9)

‘Home is just a feeling’: Essentialist and anti-essentialist views on home among Ukrainian war refugees

The notion of home, understood as a distinct and meaningful place is frequently explored in migration studies. It emerges as an especially significant point of reference, though it is often marked by ambiguity and ambivalence, especially in the narratives of war refugees. This article examines how Ukrainian refugees in Poland define and experience home, exploring the evolving meanings of home in the context of displacement and resettlement. We conducted semi-structured interviews with thirteen refugees and forced migrants who left Ukraine after Russia's full-scale invasion on February 24th, 2022. Using a theoretical framework of essentialist and constructivist (anti-essentialist) notions of place, we identified three major themes in the way refugees perceive home. The first theme highlights attachment to home, where refugees express feelings of security, stability, and rootedness. The second reveals a profound sense of ‘non-home’, where home is lost or unattainable. The third theme explores how refugees attempt to reconcile a fixed sense of home with their experiences of mobility, reshaping home through multiple, meaningful sites. By integrating these theoretical perspectives this study offers a nuanced understanding of how displacement and migration reshape the concept of home for refugees.

Beyond the Dichotomy: Toward Decolonial Eco-Queer Theories, Imaginaries, and Praxes in Clinical Social Work Education and Practice

ABSTRACT At this pressing historical juncture, where escalating violence against queer and racialized bodies runs concurrently with the specter of wide-scale planetary collapse, social work is in dire need of reconceptualizing the moral parameters of its imagination. Recognizing that changes in thought both precede and extend from changes in behavior, this article advocates for a profound unlearning of supremacist modes of thinking wedded to hierarchical orderings, dichotomous and essentialist views, and categorical oppositions. By engaging de/coloniality and eco-queer feminisms, this article draws connections between the discursive violences targeting queer and racialized bodies and the parallel destruction of the animate Earth—bodies circumscribed, exploited, and rendered disposable by the power-logics of coloniality/heteropatriarchy/modernity and the untenable demands of global capitalism. With the interest of re-situating clinical social work within the broader context of planetary health, this article considers the criticality of decolonial eco-queer thought, praxis, and imaginaries as vital responses to the multidimensional power structures constraining our transformative potential. Ultimately, this paper discusses four tenets vital for a more holistic and revolutionary social work education and practice.

‘I have gained insight, direction, affirmation, and a network’. Examining the impact of the UK's first LGBTQ+ specific leadership development programme in higher education

This article explores the UK's first specific lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning (LGBTQ+) leadership development programme in higher education. It assesses the programme's value for the participants, who comprised of 12 colleagues in academic and professional services roles in one English Post 92 University. The year-long programme offered leadership training, mentoring and networking to LGBTQ+ staff in aspiring to leadership roles. It adopted Whitmore's GROW coaching model and promoted authenticity in the workplace and authentic leadership. The article contends that leadership development initiatives for those with protected characteristics are important in an evolving higher education landscape which is ever more complex. Despite tensions with the concept of authenticity, the article is rooted in a post-structuralist theoretical framework that rejects essentialist views of gender and sexuality. Instead, it aligns with a Butlerian paradigm, where gender and sexual identities are diverse, fragmented and perpetually evolving in relation to others and within systems of power and knowledge. The leadership programme did not assume that LGBTQ+ individuals are intrinsically different from their heterosexual and cisgender peers. However, it developed in its participants, the insight to see that their distinct life experiences as an LGBTQ+ person in a hetero- and cisnormative society had given them a distinct set of attributes conducive to effective and authentic leadership.

Comparing comparison: Smith and Davidson

Comparison, as a method in the study of religion, has received considerable criticism in recent years. Much of the discussion addresses what we call the dilemma of religious comparison: either similarities between the cases compared are real and the differences accidental, or the differences are real and the similarities merely apparent. The first path is held to artificially impose similarity by wrongly privileging one of the things being compared, which imposes an essentialist view, taking its characteristic as the measure of all comparable cases. The other path exaggerates differences between comparands, undermining the very premise of comparison. We argue that this apparent dilemma presupposes a representational conception of meaning, namely that the task of comparison is to discover what kind of thing is represented by the cases being compared. However, there are other conceptions of meaning that might can potentially avoid or resolve the dilemma, by reorientating the basic conception of comparison, as opposed to entering into details of recent critical debates. This article argues that interpretationism, an approach to meaning associated with philosopher Donald Davidson does just this. JZ Smith did not explicitly adopt any semantic theory. But we demonstrate that he implicitly endorsed all of its main elements in his work on comparison. Smith’s writings represent a rich and detailed model of how comparison can be carried out under an interpretationist semantics. This article has two important implications for the study of religion. First, it dissolves the dilemma of religious comparison, suggesting a firmer theoretical and methodological basis for comparative studies. Second, it underlines that Smith’s work serves as a powerful and practical model of comparative method, as constructed on this basis. As a corollary, an interdisciplinary side-benefit, reading Smith in light of Davidson also makes important contributions to philosophy of language.

“Quickening Life”

Joseph Phelan, “‘Quickening Life’: Motherhood and the ‘Unborn Child’ in Aurora Leigh and The Ring and the Book” (pp. 1–31) Both Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh (1856) and Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book (1868–69) have at their centers women who become mothers as the result of acts of sexual violence, but who are nevertheless moved to feats of self-sacrifice and even heroism in defense of what the Pope, in The Ring and the Book, calls the “unborn child.” This article examines the representation of attitudes towards the “unborn child” in these poems in the context of changing legal, medical, and social attitudes to abortion and infanticide in the mid-nineteenth century, and argues that their emphasis on the importance of motherhood and what Pompilia in The Ring and the Book refers to as the child’s “right of life” should not, as the dominant critical tradition suggests, be read as an endorsement of patriarchal ideology but as the product of an essentialist view of gender identity that represents gestation and motherhood as radical challenges to the prevailing social order rather than acts of acquiescence in it.

A qualitative study on Chinese primary school EFL teachers’ beliefs about incorporating intercultural competence into foreign language teaching

Intercultural competence has become one of the important goals of foreign language education. The potential and value of foreign language education on students' intercultural competence (IC) has been widely recognized by academia. Currently, most of the research on intercultural foreign language teachers in China focuses on university teachers, with little attention paid to primary school EFL teachers. However, the cultivation of IC is a staged and continuous process which cannot be achieved in one stroke. Therefore, it is necessary to include primary school EFL teachers in the study of IC cultivation. This paper presents data on Chinese primary school EFL teachers' beliefs about incorporating IC into foreign language teaching. Specifically, their understanding of culture, IC, and intercultural teaching practices are investigated through interviews. The interview transcriptions were analyzed using thematic analysis. The research found: 1. Chinese primary school EFL teachers generally hold an essentialist view of culture; 2. Teachers emphasize the attitudinal dimension of IC; however, they also exhibit a tendency to oversimplify IC or perceive it as a higher-order skill than language proficiency, hence deeming it unsuitable for cultivation at the primary school level; 3. Most cultural teaching practices are teacher-centered, focusing on background knowledge-style introduction. In general, teachers’ intercultural teaching practices align with their cultural outlook. At last, the study explores two suggestions for promoting intercultural foreign language teaching: 1. Supporting primary school EFL teachers in updating their language and culture concepts system; 2. Encouraging teachers to reflect on their daily teaching practices as a major opportunity to promote the development of intercultural foreign language teaching.

Communicating male sexual dysfunction: The medicalization and psychologization of sexual experiences in Chinese online medical consultations

Previous research shows that men who experience erectile or sexual dysfunction may feel uncomfortable discussing their sexual experiences in face-to-face clinical encounters. Part of the reason is the stigma and embarrassment associated with discussing private sexual matters. This study examines how e-patients, or more precisely advice-seekers, and doctors communicate about sexual dysfunction in online medical consultations (OMCs). We conducted a Theme-Oriented Discourse Analysis of relevant OMCs on CH Doctor, a Chinese medical consultation website, to understand how individuals with perceived sexual dysfunction articulate their conditions and how doctors on the platform respond and provide recommendations to these individuals. Our analysis reveals that OMCs afford advice-seekers a place to openly discuss their sexual health issues and gain empowerment from doctors who assist in mitigating the associated social stigma. Upon detailed discourse analysis, however, we find that individuals seeking advice often interpret their sexual experiences as symptoms of illness that requires medical intervention. In response, doctors tend to validate these advice-seekers’ preliminary self-diagnoses by treating their conditions as medical issues and characterizing them as psychosocial problems caused by stress and anxiety. Aligning with a critical sociological perspective that views sexual dysfunction as socially constructed problems referenced against dominant norms of sexual functioning, we argue that the medicalization and psychologization of certain sexual behaviors by doctors and advice-seekers discursively reinforce and legitimize essentialist views of hetero-coital sexual interaction. Such views reify penile-vaginal intercourse and ejaculation as the only standard, successful, and desirable form of sexual activity. This may further induce fear and anxiety among adult men whose sexual behaviors do not realistically align with these norms.

Culture in Russian as a foreign language (RFL) textbooks in Italian universities: Critically analyzing concepts of culture and intercultural competence

This paper examined the representation of culture in Russian as a foreign language (RFL) textbooks to understand the problem of creating a theory of intercultural textbooks, with Italy as a case study. The four most popular RFL textbooks used by first-year students in Italian universities were studied: Poyekhali, Molodets, Mir tesen, and Davayte. A comparative content analysis of the chosen sample was performed to test how Russian culture is represented in RFL textbooks. The results reveal that such textbooks reflect only a partial and sometimes stereotypical image of Russian culture, with a strong correlation between ideologies and bias derived from RFL theories and textbook creation. In other words, these textbooks convey essentialist and/or reductionist views of the culture of Russia (e.g., poor attention paid to the Russophone dimension, stereotypes, and lack of opportunities for intercultural dialogue). The cultural topics contained in the textbooks evaluated do not quite contribute but rather hinder the formation of students' intercultural communicative competence. Therefore, it is argued that the content of an RFL textbook should help students create complex, multilayered notions of Russian and Russophone cultures for themselves.

Fictional faces of female suicide: Qualitative analysis of selected Russian-language texts of the school reader

IntroductionIsaiah Berlin’s (1948) exploration of the self-searching of Russian thinkers includes studies of the writers – Tolstoy and others (now – Russian-language texts of the school reader). These studies refute a widespread misconception about the relations between Russian writers and thinkers: namely, that in Russia literature and radical thought form two distinct traditions related only by mutual hostility. The works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Karamzin, Leskov, Ostrovsky, and of minor novelists too, are penetrated with a sense of their own time, of this or that particular social and historical milieu and its ideological content, to an even higher degree than the ‘social’ novels of the west. The personal characteristics of suicide victims, heroines of Russian literature, along with the gender aspects, deserve attention in suicidal behavior (SP) focus.ObjectivesTo study personal characteristics of suicide victims, heroines of fiction.MethodsQualitative analysis of selected Russian-language texts of the school reader.ResultsAt the dawn of literature, we have seen fiery heroines and tremulous victims in the arms of death. Аs psychology approach was developed, and we get acquainted with the tragiс backstory. Psychotypes of suicides are exaggerated and overlapped. «Hysterical»: manipulative, frigid nymphomaniac (e.g., Anna Karenina). «Freedom-loving rebel» (i.e., Katerina reincarnations from A. Ostrovsky) in conditions of excessive regulation. «She-Devil, or Rebel Without a Cause». The obsession with death turns into a criminal and a victim (e.g., «Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk» by N. Leskov, Turgenev’s Susanna or Klara Milich). The image of a vindictively furious («velvet and tiger claws») woman descends to the Victorian view of female self-will. «Mimosa» is a sensitive, dreamy person, unable to resist the hardships of life, dependent (dies with her beloved, objection). In suicide, the strength of weakness is the outcome of a humiliating life (e.g., Karamzin’s «Poor Liza», «A Gentle Creature» by F. Dostoevsky. The meaning of suicides is the following: a call (to compassion, salvation), a «cry for help», atonement for one’s (imaginary) – someone else’s (by proxy) guilt, and release from encumbrance.ConclusionsFiction and life are united by emotionally unstable characters and/or depression as markers of unsatisfactory resilience. The cultural diversity of gender patterns and interpretations of SP challenges the essentialist view that «femininity» and marriage are protective factors. SP patterns illustrate and complement the explanatory concepts of SP. The inner world of suicidal people is fascinating and contributes to the evidence-based optimism in the «patient-centric» crisis care model.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared

East Asian American cultural essentialism

East Asian American cultural essentialism

Humane genomics education can reduce racism.

Moving instruction "beyond Mendel" can counter inaccurate, essentialist views.

The sociopolitical in human genetics education.

Education must go beyond only countering essentialist and deterministic views of genetics.

The association between parents' ethnic socialization and positive and negative interethnic contact among majority and minority groups in China and the moderating role of essentialism

AbstractIn a multiethnic country like China, ethnic membership is an important dimension of social construction, and interethnic contact is a necessary component of social interactions. Family is the context where ethnic socialization takes place and where parents play a relevant role. The present study focused on the Hui‐Han interethnic context. Measures of perceived parent's ethnic socialization, interethnic contact, and essentialism were administrated to Hui minority (N = 560) and Han majority (N = 954) secondary students. Results indicated that parents' positive ethnic socialization (cultural socialization/pluralism, promotion of harmony) was associated with greater positive and lower negative contact, while negative ethnic socialization (preparation for bias, promotion of mistrust) had opposite effects. Essentialist views of ethnicity moderated the associations of perceived parents' positive ethnic socialization with positive contact: the association between positive ethnic socialization and positive contact was stronger among individuals with lower (vs. higher) essentialist views. Results did not differ across the majority and the minority group. Implications for prompting positive interethnic interactions and preventing negative contact are discussed.

Addressing cultural diversity in literature education through culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP)

With large-scale migration, nations, communities, and schools find themselves urgently needing to address issues of diversity. For literature education to be culturally responsive, which entails assisting students in navigating diversity and ambiguity, teachers and students need to recognise, utilise and respectfully query the diverse cultures they identify with, encounter or may encounter. To enable such education, I argue that inspiration can be taken from culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP). However, to recontextualise this American pedagogy in a Swedish setting, local contexts must be recognised, with three aspects in particular to be considered. Firstly, CRP focuses in part on race, and Sweden as a society likes to think of itself as ‘colorblind’, which can contribute to teachers feeling uncomfortable with dealing with issues related to race and diversity. Secondly, essentialist views of race and cultures must be avoided. Thirdly, teachers need to offer literature education which acknowledges how aesthetic aspects of literature can result in readers empathising with some people while distancing themselves from others. Literary features such as estrangement can also help us see what we take for granted and open our eyes to what we are blind to.

Historical maps as a neglected issue in history education. Students and textbooks representations of territorial changes of Spain and Argentina

In the last years, history education has become a highly developed field, which is receiving considerable attention not only from educators but also from historians, philosophers of history, and social scientists in general. In this vein, seminal empirical and theoretical papers have focused on how history is taught to students and what are the different abilities that should be developed with the end to critically understand historical processes. These abilities are related to key concepts in the field such as historical thinking, historical consciousness, and historical culture. The aim of this paper is to focus on a matter not much considered in any of these approaches. This is to say, “where” the historical processes occurred. Usually the “where” implies a specific territory that is under dispute. In this vein, territories and their transformation through different time periods are represented by historical maps reproduced in atlas and textbooks. But these representations could have several bias and also tend to provide a number of incomplete ideas among the students and citizens in general. In relation to this, it is necessary study not only the features of historical maps but, also, how students appropriate them. This appropriation could be influenced by an essentialist view of the nation through historical master narratives. This is what we have found in our initial empirical studies in Spain and Argentina. Additional empirical studies are needed to improve history education studies from the point of view of the development of historical thinking and historical consciousness taking into account how historical maps and territorial changes are represented by both students and textbooks.

‘They are doing it because they love it’: U.S. and English fan perceptions of women footballers as ‘role models’

We draw from 102 interviews with American and English adults who attended the 2019 Women’s World Cup to examine how fans perceive women footballers as ‘role models’, with attention to the operations of gender ideology. Despite the recent professionalization and commercialization of women’s football, there is a dearth of research on fan perspectives of players as role models. Our findings show that most fans perceive role modelling as women’s accessibility and authenticity in interaction. Fans naturalize women’s often uncompensated labor as role models through a supposed love for their sport and desire to see its future growth, endorsing a gender essentialist view of women as notably caring and giving in comparison to men. However, a minority of fans embrace a more critical view by identifying role modelling as an expectation placed disproportionately on women within an already unequal resource environment. We conclude that role modelling is a gendered expectation for elite women footballers and that fans can be a source of pressure towards its enactment.

Meanings of indigenous autonomy: Between identity, authority, and integration

State-recognized indigenous autonomy regimes have been one of the main avenues by which various Latin American countries, including Bolivia, have recently advanced indigenous rights. However, implementation of pluralistic political organization is slow and challenging. As States engage in supporting the increase of extractive activities, including in indigenous territories, tensions between local and national interests crystallize in struggles for territorial control which unavoidably focus on who gets to decide what autonomy or territory mean. Centering on the case of the Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS), this paper aims to contribute to the understanding of autonomy conceptions among indigenous people, particularly in relation to natural resource governance. Through semi-structured interviews and a Q-sorting test, I investigated preferences allocated to multiple and sometimes conflicting autonomy meanings by residents of the TIPNIS – a site of contention that has fueled debates around development pathways and indigeneity in Bolivia. Findings highlight the foreign nature of the term “indigenous autonomy”, the relevance of natural resource governance within autonomy conceptions, and the heterogeneity of priorities in understanding indigenous autonomy depending on socio-spatial and generational factors. Building on debates in political geography, these findings illustrate both sensible pragmatism and tensions in approaching indigenous autonomy, as well as implications for fostering dialogues across communities and generations. This study supports the argument that indigenous autonomy should be understood as multidimensional, territorially-specific, relational, and dynamic. It also contributes to complexifying relations between indigenous autonomy and environmental conservation, which appear as heterogenous and fluid, challenging essentialist views.

THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE RECOVERY PROCESS OF INTERNATIONAL PEACE AND SECURITY IN BURUNDI, CENTRAL AFRICA

Women can play a role in peacemaking and peacebuilding in real terms such as taking many actions, both in the political, social, and economic fields, including being involved in peace talks (negotiators), assisting the rehabilitation of child victims of armed conflict, bridging conflicting parties to discuss issues. However, the issue of peace and all efforts to make it happen are considered part of men's work. Thus, the role of women, in this case, is less significant. Women and children are the most victims when a conflict occurs. There are two characteristics of different views to be able to understand gender and conflict. The essentialist view is based on an ontology that states that the world is rule-governed, a construction view that is based on an ontology that states that an ever-changing world. The research method used in this study is a qualitative-descriptive approach. Data comes from various sources, such as obtaining the desired data through documentation studies and digital traces. This is an important force in peace, so women deserve to be called the agents of peace in its essence towards world security and peace. In the post-conflict recovery process in Burundi, women have an important and central role, namely as peacekeepers.

Contributions of a “Brazilianized” Radical Behaviorist Theory of Subjectivity to the Feminist Debate on Women

An essentialist view of gender and an individualistic concept of subjectivity have distanced psychological theories from emancipatory feminist projects. In Brazil, similar to some other psychological orientations, the behavior-analytic field has sought an interface with feminism. The anti-essentialist vein of radical behaviorism underpins the early movement toward feminism. This essay aims to expand the area of contact with feminism through a theoretical proposal for understanding women’s subjectivity inspired by Brazilian behavior-analytic literature. From a contextualized, multidimensional, pluralized, and politicized view of subjectivity, women’s subjectivation is forged in a tripartite complex of body, person, and “self”, whose relative unity is susceptible to changes and conflicts. In a patriarchal, racist, and cis-heteronormative society, such as the Brazilian one, subjectivation is also an oppressive process. Nevertheless, the essay demonstrates that women’s subjectivation can be a process of emancipatory liberation. This possibility is glimpsed within a virtuous dialectical circuit between disruptive verbal communities (uncommitted to institutional, hierarchical, and oppressive social control) and subversive subjectivities. Thus, behavior-analytic psychology has theoretical tools to situate the process of women’s subjectivation not as a locus of depoliticization but as a crucial ally in constructing a more equitable and just society, as envisioned by feminism.