>
>Her analysis of subjection seems to
>be an analysis of subjagation. However,
>because the semanitic root
>"subject" is a self contradictory
>double meaning in English, the
>discussion needs some clarification
>for those new to her terminology.
>What she calls "subjection" seems
>to be what I would call "objectification"
>or "reification" . Is she talking about
>something other than that ?
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Charles,
Butler uses "subjection" to refer to the process by which people submit, and/or are made to submit, to a socially defined category. Reification is a process that (when successful) obscures your understanding of how things got to seem matter-of-fact. For more significant, or at least highly consensual, kinds of subjection you get the reification added in for free.
There's two related points in Berger & Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality, that are useful here, because they speak to both the subjection part and the reification part. First, B&L argue that groups become groups partly by developing shared typifications, or categories--typings of people (e.g, soccer player), typings of interactions (e.g, soccer match), typings of situational contexts (e.g, playoffs/ rainy day). Without typifications, each and every person/thing/context would strike us as one-of-a-kind.
Second, B&L suggest that the strength of groupness depends on "objectivation", where objectivation refers to both a positively- and a negatively inflected process of reification. It's like a laminate which makes the typing seem to be a done deal or tacit-knowledge or a social fact. In the positive sense, it's necessary and enabling if people are going to make sense to each other--like showing up for the same soccer match. And it's negative in the senses that Lukacs discussed: we get alienated from the human authorship of the situations we're living through. Without objectivation/reification, the meaning of everything would seem subjective & ngotiable.
Discussions of subjection get at some of the fine-grained details of what happens to the people-subset of typifications. In other wowrds, what happens to people when they're encountering (I keep wanting to say "internalizing", but the point is that it's not always voluntary) person-categories, and esp when they encounter socially *important* categories like employee, woman, immigrant, you name it. Folks in not only the subjugated category but also in the dominant category might be required to somehow symbolically repudiate their contrast-group in order to win/hold their place.... And doingso comes at a psychic cost.
I hope this helps!
raphael __________________________________________________________ Raphael Allen................................. When making a mousetrap, Sociology Dept. ............................ always Rutgers, the State Univ, Box 5072... leave New Brunswick, NJ..08903-5072....... room for the
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