Category Archives: Essentialism

Show Me How It Travels

Stephen P. Turner (b. 1951) spent a career taking apart a single habit of mind. Social theory keeps reaching for hidden collective things to explain what men do. Tacit knowledge. Shared practices. Norms. Culture. Social imaginaries. Group minds. A scholar … Continue reading

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Centering Marginalized Voices

Picture a weekly desk that takes the prestige press, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, lifts out their house phrases, and renders them into plain speech. The desk … Continue reading

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Left, Right & Essentialism

Start with the folk map. The left builds on social construction. The right builds on nature. On sex, race, crime, intelligence, the right reaches for biology and a fixed human nature while the left reaches for structure and environment. By … Continue reading

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