Essentialism

From Geography

The essentialism is an approach in the Human Geography that means that every entity has his own characterics. These characterics makes the entity to what it in essence means. All objects like a car, a house, a human being, a spoon or an train have characterisics that make the objects to what they are. Without these essential characterics the object has not the definition that makes the object to what is should be.

In human geography there are characteristics that make the difference between different people, spaces and time. The difference between people is determined by biology. All bodies are different, this means that each body has different characteristics. But some things are essential to everybody, like organs for a human being, without organs there is no human being. There are also essentials for objects, for a car an engine is essential, without this engine there is no car.

So, essentialism is the philosophy that for every entity there is a bundle of characteristiscs for him. These characteristics are given to an entity by nature, it is not that this entity adopted some characteristics, they are given to him. This vision is exactly the opposite from existentialism, which says entities only can become by adopting.

Essentialism says that everything an object needs must be present. If this isn't, it loses its identity, like a heart in the human body. Without a heart you can't call yourself human being.

Critique

Essentialism came under scrutiny and criticism in the mid to late 20th century by Richard Rorty. Since then the viewpoint that human nature is eternal and unchangeable has been critized by Karl Marx and Martin Heidegger. Who both were known for their existentialistic thinking, which opposes essentialism.

Essentialism is also criticized by post-structuralists (Johnsten, Gregory, Pratt, & Watts, 2000, p. 230). According to them, essentialism doesn’t recognize the definitions and explanatory theories of social practices that reflect contingent conditions and complicated relations of social interest and power.

Essentialism has three main points of critique:

1. Epistemological essentialism tries to discover the true nature or essence of things. The underlying assumption is that all things have a single essence and that it is possible to gain knowledge of all these essences. Richard Rorty "repudiates this sense of essentialism, arguing that it depends on a correspondence theory of truth that offsets reality and representation" (Gregory et al., 2009, p. 210)

2. Social sciences are fallibilistic, and should not try to claim absolute truth (I did not fully understand the first part of the point that Gregory et al. (p. 210) make here. Maybe someone else can improve this part)

3. Essentialism assumes that identities, whether it be sexual, national, political or otherwise, are premised on unifying, shared dimensions of experience, embodiment or social position. The critique is that these identities are constructed socially and spatially and are relational and historically contingent.

References

Gregory, D., Johnston, R., Pratt, G., Watts, M., & Whatmore, S. (2009). The dictionary of human geography. Wiley-Blackwell

Johnsten, R.J., Gregory, D., Pratt, G., & Watts, M. (2000). The dictionary of human geography. Blackwell Publishing. Founded at 31 October, 2011 at [1]

Pollmann, T. (1999). De letteren als wetenschap. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. [2]

Zierhofer, W. (2002). Speech acts and space(s): Language pragmatics and the discursive constitution of the social. Environment and Planning, 34, 1355-1372.

Contributors

Published by Sonny Joziasse & Benny Jansen & Robbert Vossers

Edited by:--SamanthaHazlett 14:41, 20 October 2011 (CEST)

Also edited by Fenki Evers & Anton de Hoogh

Page (outline) edited by Aafke Brus --AafkeBrus 14:30, 31 October 2011 (CET)