Reification

Quick meaning: Reification is a noun meaning The consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living.

Meaning

The consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living.

More Meanings

1. The consideration of a human being as an impersonal object.
2. (linguistics) The transformation of a natural-language statement into a form in which its actions and events are quantifiable variables.
3. (programming) A process that makes a computable/addressable object out of a non-computable/addressable one; or a concrete class out of a generic one.

Example Sentences

Computer scientists found out how functional reification is in programming languages: they call it ‘object-oriented programming’ […].

Contrary to Java, C++ and C# implement generics via reification, meaning that each specific version of a generic class, like List is converted into a concrete class, either at compile time (C++) or at runtime (C#).

The reification of art and religion, a symptom of their historical obsolescence, takes the form of their instrumentalization, their reduction to a mere use value. At this point they become ‘cultural goods’, writes Adorno, and ‘are no longer taken quite seriously by anybody.’

Reification swaps out a political problem for a scientific or technical one; it’s how, for example, the effects of unregulated tech oligopolies become “social media addiction,” how climate catastrophe caused by corporate greed becomes a “heat wave” — and, by the way, how the effect of struggles between labor and corporations combines with high energy prices to become “inflation.”

Word Forms

• reifications

Synonyms for reification

Depending on context, synonyms include hypostatization, materialization, objectification, thingification, hypostatisation.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include hypostatization, hypostatisation, reism, externalization, concretum, embodiment.

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