<html> At 01:45 PM 1/16/99 -0500,   Charles Brown wrote: > >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 ? =-=-=  =-=-=  =-=-=  =-=-=  =-=-= 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 <div>__________________________________________________________</div> <div>Raphael Allen.................................  When making a mousetrap,</div> <div>Sociology Dept. ............................             always</div> <div>Rutgers,  the State Univ, Box 5072...              leave</div> <div>New Brunswick, NJ..08903-5072.......    room for the</div> rcallen@eden.rutgers.edu.....mouse. </html>