Embracing essentialism: A realist critique of resistance to discursive power

This article argues that, contrary to its detractors, essentialism is a necessary concept in understanding resistance to managerial discourses. The article first suggests that essentialism, under a critical realist framing, need not suffer from the reductionism or determinism found in many 19th and 20th Century essentialized accounts of the self, arguing instead that the concept adds analytical power to explanatory theorizing. Next, taking three...