REIFICATION


Berger and Luckmann (1966) define this as:

"the apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, in non-human or possibly supra-human terms"

or,

"the apprehension of the products of human activity as if they were something else than human products - such as facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will".

The most significant case of this concerns the masking of human relations in the form of the commodity:

"The essence of commodity-structure has often been pointed out. Its basis is that a relation between people takes on the character of a thing and thus acquires a 'phantom objectivity', an autonomy that seems so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of its fundamental nature: the relation between people." Lukács, (1923, p.83.)

Abduction is the mechanism of reification.



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© Paul Taylor 2001