Co-authors: Dr. Sasha Johfre and Dr. Emily Ruppel

Abstract: 
Categorization is foundational to inequality, yet research on social category essentialism remains muddled. This paper proposes a novel theoretical distinction between essentialism as the perception of a category as cohesive, real, and bounded and determinism as the cultural beliefs about a category’s origins. We empirically explore this distinction through cultural conversations related to autism, age, and gender modality (transgender vs. cisgender), and find it useful for illuminating processes of legitimation and inequality. We observe that essentialism and determinism are not stable individual-level beliefs, but cultural forces that individuals mobilize strategically. Social actors cite multiple deterministic frameworks (e.g.biology, social learning, or choice) to make essentialist or anti-essentialist arguments about social categories. Furthermore, contrary to our initial expectations, no deterministic framework is universally more or less essentialist than any other; their connotations vary by context. We discuss implications of the essentialism-determinism distinction for future research on classification and inequality.