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Reification: History of the Concept

Chapter · March 2015

DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.03109-3

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 Reification: History of the Concept

Lipsey M W, Wilson D B 1998 Effective intervention for serious stract, indeterminate things (aliquid ). As a synonym of
juvenile offenders. In: Loeber R, Farrington D P (eds.) Serious ‘thingification,’ the inverse of personification, reifica-
and Violent Ju!enile Offenders. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA tion metaphorically refers to the transformation of
Lipton D, Martinson R, Wilks J 1975 The Effecti!eness of
human properties, relations, processes, actions, con-
Correctional Treatment. Praeger, New York
Lo! sel F 1995 The efficacy of correctional treatment: A review cepts, etc. into res, into things that act as pseudo-
and synthesis of meta-evaluations. In: McGuire J (ed.) What persons, endowed with a life of their own. This
Works: Reducing Reoffending. Wiley, Chichester, UK material transmogrification of persons, relations, pro-
Lo! sel F 1998 Treatment and management of psychopaths. In: cesses, concepts, etc. into thing-like entities that act
Cooke D J, Forth A E, Hare R D (eds.) Psychopathy: Theory, like pseudopersons can operate both on a metho-
Research and Implications for Society. Kluwer, Dordrecht, NL dological and a social level. In both cases, however,
Marshall W L, Fernandez Y M, Hudson S M, Ward T (eds.) the concept is usually used as a Kampfwort to denounce
1998 Sourcebook of Treatment Programs for Sexual Offenders. the ‘violence of abstractions,’ either of conceptual
Plenum Press, New York
abstractions (Sohn-Rethel’s Denkabstraktionen) that
McGuire J (ed.) 1995 What Works: Reducing Reoffending.
Guidelines From Research and Practice. Wiley, Chichester, suppress the reflexive embeddedness of concepts into
UK their social context, treat social facts as things, and
Palmer T 1992 The Re-emergence of Correctional Inter!ention. transform metasubjects into megasubjects, or of real
Sage, Newbury Park, CA abstractions (Marx’s Realabstraktionen) that strip
Quinsey V L, Harris G T, Rice M E, Cormier C A 1998 Violent individuals of their autonomy and reduce them to cogs
Offenders: Appraising and Managing Risk. American Psycho- of an abstract social machinery. This reference to the
logical Association, Washington, DC Kantian notion of autonomy is important. Outside of
Redondo S, Sa" nchez-Meca J, Garrido V 1999 The influence of the normative context of an ‘enlightened critique of
treatment programmes on the recidivism of juvenile and adult
the Enlightenment,’ the notion of reification hardly
offenders: An European meta-analytic review. Psychology,
Crime and Law 5: 251–278 makes sense, as can be gathered from the fact that
Ross R R, Ross B (eds.) 1995 Thinking Straight. Cognitive conservative, skeptical, and ultraliberal theorists such
Centre, Ottawa, Canada as Gehlen, Luhmann, and Hayek have a theory of the
Sherman L, Gottfredson D, MacKenzie D, Eck J, Reuter P, autonomization of social structures but no theory of
Bushway S 1997 Pre!enting Crime: What Works, What reification to connect it to the alienation of individuals
Doesn’t, What’s Promising. Report to the United States in modern capitalist industrial societies.
Congress: University of Maryland, US Department of Justice,
Washington, DC
Spencer A P 1999 Working With Sex Offenders in Prisons and
Through Release to the Community. Jessica Kingsley, London
Tonry M (ed.) 1998 The Handbook of Crime and Punishment.
1. Methodological Reification—or the Critique of
Oxford University Press, New York Conceptual Abstractions
In the philosophy of the social sciences, the concept of
F. Lo! sel reification is used (a) to denounce the hypostasis or
substantialization of concepts (nominalist critique of
reism), (b) the naturalization of the subject and the
life-world (humanist critique of naturalism), and (c)
the ideological justification of the status quo (dia-
Reification: History of the Concept lectical critique of fetishism).

Notwithstanding its esoteric overtones and philoso-

phical intricacies, reification (Verdinglichung) is a
1.1 Nominalist Critique of Reism
central concept of social theory in general and of
critical theory in particular. Although reification has In the case of the critique of reism (or naive conceptual
received the greatest attention in Western Marxism, realism), the notion of reification of concepts is used to
and above all in Luka" cs’ History and Class Con- denounce, from a nominalist, vitalist, or criticist
sciousness (1923), it is important not to restrict the use perspective, the categorical error of transforming
of the concept to that tradition but to see that it can abstractions (notions, representations, concepts) into
also and already be found in the work of Kant, Hegel, a material reality, in a concrete object ‘out there.’
Nietzsche, Dilthey, Husserl, Heidegger, Simmel, and Reification is here understood as a synonym of the
Max Weber to criticize the dehumanizing, rationaliz- ‘fallacy of misplaced concreteness’ (Whitehead). What
ing, and alienating tendencies of modernity. is criticized is the hypostasis of concepts, analytical
As a technical term, the term reification emerged in constructs, and ideal types, the sliding from the sub-
the English language in the 1860s out of the con- stantive to the substance, which involves a subreption
traction of the verb facere (to make) and the sub- of the categorical thing with the ‘thing in itself.’ This is,
stantive res (thing), which can refer both to concrete for instance, the case with macrosociologists who
and empirically observable things (ens) and to ab- transform their own conceptual constructs or those of

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Reification: History of the Concept

the actors (‘the State,’ the Bourgeoisie, the ‘Prolet- ‘second nature’ and social subsystems follow their own
ariat’) into historical subjects capable of agency and of pseudonatural laws, ‘dehumanizing’ theories (e.g.,
determining their own ends (‘the State decides,’ ‘the functionalism, structuralism, systems theory) and
Anglican Church resists,’ ‘the glorious Proletariat methods (e.g., linear modeling, statistical regression)
triumphs,’ etc.). It should, however, be noted that due can and have to be applied. But if one does not want to
to the absence of a consensus on the ultimate referents fall prey to a ‘reification of the second order’ and give
of reality and the fact that one can always submit the a ‘reified perception of the reifying’ (Adorno) that
concepts of the scientist to a neo-Kantian critique of willy-nilly endorses the reality it registers, the observed
ontology, the charge of reification is almost inevitable. facts have to be ‘mediated by the totality’ (Luka" cs
Given that one’s typification is another’s reification, 1923) and defetishized in such a way that the tension
the critique of ‘false conceptual realism’ (Weber) is between the real and the possible, between what is and
endemic in sociology. what could or should be, becomes perceptible within
the facts themselves.

1.2 Humanist Critique of Naturalism

2. Social Reification—or the Critique of Real
The critique of positivist naturalism in terms of Abstractions
reification of the subject and the life-world is linked to
the series of methodological disputes (Methodenstreit) In the tradition of Western Marxism, Marx’s theories
which, since the double foundation of sociology by of alienation and the fetishism of commodities are
Comte and Dilthey in the nineteenth century, have combined with Hegel’s dialectical phenomenology of
opposed the partisans of the method of causal ex- spirit, Simmel’s theory of the tragedy of culture, and
planation (Erkla# ren) to the partisans of the inter- Max Weber’s theory of formal rationalization to form
pretative methods (Verstehen). Drawing on Vico’s a critical theory of society. The concept of reification is
principle of the !erum factum (!erum et factum con!er- used to refer to the relatively autonomous, alienating
tuntur), according to which we can understand the and alienated functioning of the social and cultural
sociohistorical reality because it is a human product, (sub-) systems of modern capitalist societies that
but not nature which is a divine product, humanists impose their constraints from without on individuals,
claim that the appropriate method of sociology is limit their freedom and tend to reduce them to
interpretative in that it aims to understand, by means powerless ‘carriers’ or passive ‘executioners’ of the
of a phenomenological and hermeneutic reconstitu- system. As products of praxis, institutions and organi-
tion of the meaning of action, the social-historical zations are human objectivations, but in the course of
world (Hegel’s objective spirit) as an objectivation of their development, the cultural and social (sub)systems
subjective actions. Social facts thus have a meaning have been complexified, formalized, rationalized, and
and cannot be treated ‘as if they were things’ (Durk- depersonalized to such an extent that eventually they
heim). The naturalistic elimination of the meaningful- have been transmuted into self-referentially closed
ness of action through statistical observation is systems that function independently of the will and the
reifying in that it transforms psychic acts into pseu- consciousness of individuals, thwart their plans,
dophysical facts and reduces culture to (second) threaten their autonomy, and perhaps even their
nature. Against Durkheim and his fellow ‘factists’ who existence. The critique of reification is dialectical and
‘change the subject’ of the human sciences by sub- thus somewhat paradoxical: the insistence on the
stituting factors for actors, humanists thus argue that alienating autonomy of the system, which is an
social facts are not things but that things are social objectivation of action, aims to reactivate the auton-
facts whose meaning can be understood and which can omy of the individuals and to overcome their
be interpreted as an ‘ongoing accomplishment of the alienation.
concerted activities of daily life’ (Garfinkel). Although the concept of reification (Verdinglichung)
can already be found in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,
the real history of the concept begins with Marx and
with Luka" cs’s Hegelian interpretation of Marx. The
origins of the theory of reification are usually found
1.3 Dialectical Critique of Fetishism
just where the word itself is absent, namely in the
The dialectical critique of fetishism offers a meta- famous section on the fetishism of commodities (Marx
theoretical critique of the ideological implications of 1869, Chap. 1, Sect. 4). Analyzing capitalism as a
bourgeois theories and methodologies of the social system of generalized exchange, Marx notes that the
that, due to a lack of reflexivity on their context of commodity has become the universal form of the
genesis and application, legitimize the status quo. product of labor, with the result that the exchange
Dialecticians accept the limits of ‘hermeneutic ideal- value of the commodity supplants the use value.
ism.’ When social relations have crystallized into a Consequently, the exchange value appears to those

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 Reification: History of the Concept

who exchange goods as a property of the commodity expectations. Eliminating the Hegelian-Marxist dia-
itself, whereas in reality it is the result of the labor that lectic of consciousness, which they replace by a
is incorporated in the commodity and that expresses Freudian account of sublimation and repression,
itself as a quantitative relationship between the ex- Horkheimer, Marcuse, and especially Adorno, who
changed goods. ‘It is nothing but the definite social also gave a Nietzschean twist to the concept of
relation between men themselves which assumes here, reification, radicalize the Weberian-Marxist strand in
for them, the phantasmagoric form of a relation Luka" cs’ theory. Universalizing and totalizing reifica-
between things’ (Marx 1869, pp. 23, 86). This inversion tion to the point that it appears as an ontological
of humans and things is not simply an illusion, feature of human civilisation, they almost end up
however, but an expression of the real nature of social indicting Reason as such. Indeed, to explain totali-
relations in a competitive market environment. In the tarianism, Horkheimer and Adorno develop a nega-
absence of a central organism that regulates both the tive philosophy of history which uncovers in the first
production and the distribution of the products of protohistorical attempts to dominate nature the origin
labor, the social integration of humans is imposed of the fatal unfolding of a diabolic logic of increasing
from without by the systemic interconnection of reification that will find its culmination (but not its
things. endpoint) in the death camps. In his Theory of
In ‘Reification and the Consciousness of the Pro- Communicati!e Action, Ju! rgen Habermas (1981), the
letariat,’ the central chapter of History and Class main representative of the second generation of critical
Consciousness, Luka" cs, a Hegelian Marxist who was theory, reformulates the theory of reification in terms
once a student of Simmel and Max Weber, presents of the paradigm of language. In this perspective,
the classic formulation of the theory of reification. reification is no longer associated with rationalization
Synthesizing Weber’s theory of formal rationalization as such, as was the case with Max Weber and the
with Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism, Luka" cs Frankfurt School, but reconceptualized in terms of the
generalizes the theory of commodity fetishism beyond ‘colonization of the life-world’ by the subsystems of
the sphere of circulation. In the problem of fetishism, the economy and the administration. When the mech-
which he immediately identifies with the phenomenon anisms of systemic integration (money and power)
of reification, he discovers the ‘central, structural force back the forms of social integration from those
problem of capitalist societies in all its aspects’ (Luka" cs domains that can only be integrated through language,
1923!1968, p. 257). The universality of the commodity a reification ensues that leads to a pathological
form, conceived as the prototype of all the forms of deformation of the life-world.
objectivity that follow their own laws and dissimulate
the traces of human relations that subtend them,
affects the life of everybody, both in its objective and
subjective manifestations. Objectively, individuals are
confronted with a second nature of pseudo-things Bibliography
against which they are powerless; subjectively, they are
Arato A 1974 The neo-idealist defense of subjectivity. Telos 21:
estranged from their own activity, apprehending the 108–61
products of their own activity in an alienated mode— Arato A, Breines P 1979 The Young Luka$ cs and the Origins of
‘as if they were something else than human products’ Western Marxism. Seabury Press, New York
(Berger and Luckmann ). Moving from the sphere of Berger P, Pullberg S 1965 Reification and the sociological
circulation to the sphere of production, Luka" cs redis- critique of consciousness. History and Theory 4(2): 196–211
covers the theory of the alienation of labor which the Gabel J 1962 La fausse conscience. Essai sur la re$ ification.
young Marx had developed but not published in the Editions de Minuit, Paris
Parisian Manuscripts of 1844 (see Alienation, Socio- Habermas J 1981 Theorie des kommunikati!en Handelns, Vols. 1
logy of). In the sphere of material production, and 2. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, Germany (1984 Theory of
reification expresses itself most clearly in the reduction Communicati!e Action, Vol. 1. Heinemann, London, 1987,
of labor power to a commodity and of the laborer to Vol. 2. Polity Press, Cambridge, UK)
an appendix of the machine. In capitalism, reification Luka" cs G 1923!1968 Geschichte und klassenbewusstsein. In:
is generalized and the fate of the worker becomes (eds.) Werke, Band 2. Neuwied, Luchterhand (1971 History
and Class Consciousness. Merlin, London)
paradigmatic of the fate of everyone. Expressing
Marx K 1869!1972 Das Kapital, Vol. I. In: (eds.) Marx Engels
the Messianism of the oppressed, Luka" cs even- Werke, Vol. 23. Dietz Verlag, Berlin (1974 Capital, Vol. 1,
tually reintroduces the Proletariat as the ‘identical Lawrence & Wishart, London)
subject–object’ of history whose revolutionary actions Pitkin H 1987 Rethinking reification. Theory and Society 16(2):
overcome alienation and reification and thus realize 263–93
the Hegelian dream of the restoration of the ‘beautiful Rose G 1978 The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the
totality.’ Thought of Theodor W. Adorno. Macmillan, London
The development of the so-called Critical Theory of Thomason B C 1982 Making Sense of Reification: Alfred Schutz
the Frankfurt School can best be understood as the and Constructionist Theory. Humanities Press, Atlantic High-
result of a progressive disillusion with revolutionary lands, NJ

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 Reification: History of the Concept

Vandenberghe F 1997–1998 Une histoire critique de la sociologie strate to the target substrate. Here we briefly sum-
allemande. Alie$ nation et re$ ification. 2 vols. Editions la De" cou- marize the substantial published literature that has
verte, Paris (2001 Critique of Reification. University of been devoted to the identification of the reinforcing
Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN)
substrate. Until very recently, little consideration has
been given to the question of the target substrate, but
F. Vandenberghe
it may be useful to review some initial findings and to
consider the directions that research on this problem
may take.

Reinforcement: Neurochemical Substrates

2.1 Neurochemical Specialization
1. The Operant–Respondent Distinction The idea that reinforcing functions are specialized
The neurochemical mechanisms that mediate re- neurochemically has guided research in this field for
inforced or operant behavior may differ in a fun- more than 30 years. The hypothesis that certain
damental way from those underlying reflexes or dopamine and opioid peptide brain cells may serve as
respondent behavior. This is because environmental reinforcing neurons is supported most directly by
stimuli appear to control the two classes of behavior in evidence from brain self-stimulation and drug self-
fundamentally different ways. In reflexes, whether administration experiments.
conditioned or unconditioned, the controlling stimu-
lus precedes the response and elicits it. In operant
conditioning, the controlling stimulus follows the 2.2 Electrical Self-stimulation of the Brain
response and elevates its subsequent probability.
When the controlling stimulus precedes the response, In self-stimulation experiments, animals work to
information flow in the brain is afferent to efferent, as deliver electrical stimulation to their own brains
in the conventional reflex arc. On the other hand, through permanently indwelling electrodes. In the
when the controlling stimulus follows the response, as absence of other sources of reward, the reinforcement
in reinforced behavior, the underlying brain organ- for self-stimulation behavior must arise from the
ization seems to require an unconventional circuitry in neuronal activity that is excited by the electrical
which efferents are activated before afferents. How- stimulus. If so, it would be logical to assume that some
ever, the mechanisms for reinforced behavior do not of the neurons under the electrode tip actually are the
require circuits that directly link efferent to afferent reinforcing neurons that mediate the effects of natural
elements. This is because operant behaviors do not reinforcers or at least are neurons that directly excite
directly activate the goal-detecting afferent systems. them.
Rather, the correct response operates on the environ- High self-stimulation rates are observed when
ment to produce the goal object and it is this electrodes are implanted in regions containing dopa-
environmental change that activates the goal-detecting mine (or opioid peptide) cell bodies or pathways. In
systems. Thus, although the reinforcement mechanism particular, self-stimulation tightly overlaps the dis-
does not require efferent-to-afferent circuitry, it must tribution of dopamine cells in the ventral tegmentum
recognize efferent–afferent contingencies and must and substantia nigra. Self-stimulation closely follows
be operated selectively by them, i.e., it must cause the anteriorly projecting dopamine fibers through the
behavioral reinforcement only when the neuronal hypothalamus, but it correlates somewhat less closely
substrates of the correct response and goal object, in with the dopamine terminal fields in the forebrain. The
that order, are activated sequentially. involvement of norepinephrine neurons in self-
stimulation is more controversial. Although many
laboratories report self-stimulation from sites in the
2. Characterizing the Brain Reinforcement vicinity of the locus coeruleus, it has not been possible
Mechanism to establish convincingly that the noradrenergic neur-
ons that make up this nucleus are responsible for the
The problem of characterizing the brain reinforcement reinforcing effect. Mapping of opioid peptide sites for
mechanism has two main parts: the first is to identify self-stimulation is consistent with the idea that certain
the neuronal substrate that performs the reinforcing beta-endorphin and dynorphin neurons are involved
function (reinforcing substrate) and the second is to in self-stimulation, but these studies are still in an early
identify the neuronal substrate that is modified by the stage. The dopamine-opioid peptide reinforcement
reinforcement process (target substrate). Since any hypothesis also is supported by pharmacologic ex-
goal object can reinforce any behavior in an animal’s periments. Antagonists of dopamine and opioid pep-
repertoire, it seems likely that there is (a) convergence tides, such as haloperidol and naloxone respectively,
of goal-object input to the reinforcing substrate, and should block chemical transmission of reinforcement
(b) divergence of reinforcing output from this sub- messages. In support of the model, there are many

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