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This study concentrates on the analysis of social structure of medieval society and accordingly on the acquisition of knowledge (1) about their orderliness, (2) inner processes (3) and least partially their influence on the process of formation of West civilization. In the next sequence article deals with development medieval structure in the context Elias civilization's theory as well as and closely knots on the inquiry of distinguished contemporary medievalists, mainly G. Duby, J. le Goff, A. Gurevič, F. Cardini, M. Bloch, etc. In addition, submitted study focuses on deeply understanding specific structure of medieval society through application binary and dichotomous approaches, theory of three orders, also theory of feudalization. In the end the research is attending on the phenomena of knighthood and the process of formation of the courtly society.

The aim of this article is to explore the various ways in which people represent social groups. The author shows that a prominent role in such processes is played by psychological essentialism. People represent some of their social identities as inherent qualities that are based on the sharing of a presumed 'essence': something unobservable, diffi cult to remove, irreversible, and causally responsible for overt behaviours. Empirical evidence suggests that no particular causal process of essence acquisition is constitutive for essentialism in folk models of society. Some authors believe that folk essentialism is necessarily connected with the presumed innateness of an essence (its biological transmission across generations). Innate potential and biological inheritance, however powerful they may be for the human cognitive mind in the domain of folk models for biology, are far from necessary in essentialist folksociological classifications. Essentialism in folk sociology is not defined by any particular causal process of essence acquisition. Even when it is possible to detect that a given group of people claim the innate essence of a particular folk sociology, it is always necessary to look for other features of essentialism (inherence, sharp boundaries, the immutability of identity, etc.). The article reviews some influential cognitive proposals concerning folk models of society (Astuti, Gil-White, Hirschfeld) and ethnicity, and provides arguments and empirical evidence collected in Western Ukraine in support of the claim that presumed innateness is not the constitutive part of folk models of society, let alone of psychological essentialism.