Term sometimes applied to Althusser's method of describing human individuals not as having some essential characteristics (see essentialism) but as the product of social determinants taking the form of some sort of social structure, as in class consciousness, for example. See Althusserian.

Taken from Words of Art. http://www.ouc.bc.ca/fina/glossary/s_list.html
Robert J. Belton, Okanagan University College