reification

the interpretation of an abstract general concept (e.g. the STATE) as ‘real’, especially when this is considered to be done illegitimately or misleadingly Thus METHODOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISTS may take the view that others, e.g. functionalists, reify general concepts such as 'society’ or 'structure. Use of the term originated within MARXISM to refer to the tendency of many non-Marxists, as well as some Marxists, to attribute a rigid ‘thinglike’ status to what should more properly be seen as a complex and changing set of social relationships (see CAPITAL, COMMODITY FETISHISM). However, one sociologist's unacceptable reification may be perfectly acceptable to another. If all general concepts are considered abstract but with a potentially ‘real’ reference, any hard and fast distinction between legitimate and illegitimate reification collapses. Thus there is no standard line in sociology on what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable forms of reification.

Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Reification

a philosophical and sociological concept introduced by K. Marx, referring to a historically transitional form of social relations in which relations between people assume the appearance of relations between things.

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References in periodicals archive

Reification also enhances security of property rights from competing claims.

The paper chase: securitization, foreclosure, and the uncertainty of mortgage title

La reification du lien contractuel en droit des assurances A.

Le contrat d'assurance contemporain et la reification des parties

Reification therefore seems to be, at least to me, the film's fundamental sense and its most important theme.

Enzo Paci and his students: a debate on Antonioni's L'eclisse

According to Lambert Zuidervaart, mimesis in Aesthetic Theory refers to "an archaic openness to the other, to the disparate and diffuse and contrary;" mimetic openness, which, because of the condition of total reification in capitalist society, has been driven away from everyday experience as well as from rational knowledge production, "lives on in artworks whose form accommodates the conflicting impulses of their content".

Mimesis in Adorno's Aaesthetic Theory

Another example of how narrative inquiry disrupts reification can be seen in the complementary and conflicting representations that multiple stories from the project create.

The potential and perils of expanding the space of the writing center: the identity work of online student narratives

Wenger (1998) describes the process of reification as central to every practice.

E-training to communities of practice as a new key toward globalization strategies within Venezuelan companies

After reification comes conflation: given the definition of tafsir above and the gloss of this word as "commentary" or "explanation" (exegesis), the two became ever identified with one another in a syzygy that had the effect of chastening the scriptural culture of Islam even as it marginalized competing approaches to the Book.

Sufi Commentaries on the Qur'an in Classical Islam

Another characteristic of reification is an increased tendency to live vicariously, creating a gap between the individual and reality increasingly bridged only through vision.

Multiple perspectivism in James Welch's Winter in the Blood and The Death of Jim Loney

Readers enlightened by such formulations as 'a paradigmatic site for fetishistic reification' (p.

Philosophical Chaucer: Love, Sex, and Agency in the 'Canterbury Tales'

Thus, for me, the unity that underlies the physical universe results from the reification of God's grand idea for an evolving universe that combines fixed rules, trial and error and human agency.

God's grand idea