The allure of essentialism and extremist ideologies

Jonatan Kurzwelly; Hamid Fernana; Muhammad Elvis Ngum

DOI:10.1080/23323256.2020.1759435

Corpus ID: 221063773

The allure of essentialism and extremist ideologies

@article{Kurzwelly2020TheAO,
  title={The allure of essentialism and extremist ideologies},
  author={Jonatan Kurzwelly and Hamid Fernana and Muhammad Elvis Ngum},
  journal={Anthropology Southern Africa},
  year={2020},
  volume={43},
  pages={107 - 118}
}

Jonatan Kurzwelly, Hamid Fernana, Muhammad Elvis Ngum
Published 2020
Sociology
Anthropology Southern Africa

This paper examines different reasons that make essentialist thinking, and by extension extremist ideologies based on such logic, attractive to individuals. Drawing from theories of personal and social identities, we examine the benefits derived from adopting an essentialist and reductionist ideology: an increased sense of clarity and agency, ease of moral judgements and a simple interpretative framework and prescriptions for social life. We also show the consequences of being on the receiving… Expand

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