I appreciate the thoughtful responses to my somewhat naive query. I think
(?) that I see better how to understand this concept/definition. Like most
important concepts - reification seems to lead fairly quickly into very
murky waters touching on the BIG questions. Situating this discussion within
the broader talk of cross-cultural discussions is good. It requires of me,
however, a fairly strong reliance on some fundamental beliefs about human
perception and behavior. I guess to really simplify things..I am thinking of
reification as a universal psychological process; as an adaptive mechanism
that allows us to build memory, mental representations, and social
structures. But I see it as a process that is constituted in both the
environment and the human mind (consequently the obvious feedback of social
structures on the developing mind). Perhaps that is where the
commodification aspect intrudes.
Have I turned this idea "on its head"? Does this mean I am mistaking cause
for effect? Figure for ground? I asked in my original post if reification
was how we turn experience into artifacts (by the reverse logic implicit in
the idea that to "know" experience is inevitably to concretize it and then
to act on the idealized concretization (e.g., a noun) as if it were an
actual object or artifact constituting an original experience). I am still
puzzled. Trobrianders used artifacts; made things and remembered things. Do
I use, make, and remember things in the same way?
For example, I am trying to relate Engstrom's interpretations (activity
system) of the expanded Vygotskian unit of analysis to Wenger's use of the
word reification as a constitutive function in communities of practice. I
would be happy to know that most in this field thought that the two
perspectives shared essential components.
Again, thanks for the discussion. This is great!
Chris