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This paper identifies experiential processes through which social structures become taken for granted, termed processes of “structure marginalization”. Passive processes of structure marginalization relegate social structures to the margin of experience without the use of higher-order cognitive acts such as evaluation and reflection. Examples include adapting to social structures via routine and habitual practices (material reification), a lack of conscious awareness of the complexity, historical formation, and other details of social structures (ignorance), and rendering social structures irrelevant when they are unreflectively judged to be of no value for achieving ends (nullification). Active processes of structure marginalization reflectively and discursively relegate social structures to marginal consciousness. Examples include the use of naturalistic and necessitarian explanations for the social order that implicitly justify it as inalterable or “just the way things are” (discursive reification), normative justifications for the status quo (legitimation), and conscious awareness of one’s powerlessness to control social-structural conditions (helplessness). Active processes of structure marginalization originate in passive processes. The goal of the typology is to explain, at the level of experience, why social structures typically remain unproblematic and unnoticed in everyday life, even during periods of social crisis and change or when existing structures produce harmful effects.

Resumen Este artículo vuelve sobre el clásico y complejo concepto de alienación y se propone contribuir a elaborarlo para la filosofía social actual. La idea es ir articulando las propuestas sobre la alienación que han elaborado Rahel Jaeggi y Axel Honneth, desarrolladas a partir de un filósofo presuntamente ajeno a la teoría crítica, a saber, Martín Heidegger, e irnos desligando de estos autores a medida que vamos perfilando el concepto. Pretendemos ofrecer un análisis estructural del concepto que permita identificar ciertos rasgos básicos que después sirvan para elaborar un diagnóstico de las patologías sociales en el mundo contemporáneo. Abstract This article returns to the classic and complex concept of alienation and aims to contribute to its elaboration for today's social philosophy. The idea is to articulate the approaches to alienation developed by Rahel Jaeggi and Axel Honneth, based on a philosopher presumably alien to critical theory, namely Martin Heidegger, and to disassociate ourselves from these authors as we develop the concept. We propose to offer a structural analysis of the concept that will allow us to identify certain basic features that will later serve to elaborate a diagnosis of social pathologies in the contemporary world.

Econometric data are used to produce authoritative facts about the world. Yet, as numbers enjoy a central place in modern reasoning (particularly in government as their presumed objectivity and neutrality assist impartial decision-making), it is important that they receive scrutiny. Using methodological techniques from Western Marxism, with special reference to the work of Lukács, Horkheimer and Adorno, and Marcuse to inform a critique of Acemoglu and Robinson, I argue that the historical emergence of econometrics as a mode of mediated knowledge is a reified practice within the broader technical administration of social life, a practice that is not a transparent representation of social phenomena. This is because when econometrics transforms the thing being measured into a statistical indicator it eclipses political disputes with technical disputes, sidestepping good faith democratic deliberation about what goods are worth pursuing. Effectively, one-dimensional thought cannot perceive the origins of items put into circulation and so ideology is produced – what seems value-free is value-laden.

Leseprobe Leseprobe 2 ----- Zusammenfassung Fruhpadagogische Geschlechterstudien in Deutschland fokussieren oftmals ausschlieslich auf Unterschiede zwischen (zwei) Geschlechtern. Am Beispiel eines ethnographischen Projekts zu doing gender in der Kindertageseinrichtung wird in Abgrenzung zu einer Differenzperspektive der Mehrwert einer Forschungsperspektive auf Geschlechterkonstruktionen zur Diskussion gestellt. In dieser Perspektive wird Geschlechterdifferenz nicht vorab als gegeben gesetzt, sondern der Prozess der Geschlechterdifferenzierung empirisch untersucht. Ethnographische Forschungsperspektiven konnen alternative Sichtweisen auf Bedeutungsdimensionen von Geschlecht in Kindertageseinrichtungen bieten, die die Vielfalt und Komplexitat geschlechtlicher Praktiken im padagogischen Alltag abzubilden vermogen. Schlagworter: doing gender, Geschlechterdifferenzen, Ethnographie, Kindertageseinrichtungen, Reifikation ----- The diversity and variability of gender practices. On the value of ethnographic research in child daycare facilities Abstract Early educational gender studies in Germany often only focus on differences between (two) genders. Using the example of an ethnographic project on doing gender in a child day-care centre, the value of a research perspective on gender constructions is, therefore, discussed in contrast to a perspective on differences. In this perspective, gender differences are not taken for granted in advance, but the process of doing gender is empirically investigated. Ethnographic research can offer alternative perspectives on gender in child day-care facilities, which are able to show the diversity and complexity of gender practices in everyday pedagogical life. Keywords: doing gender, gender differences, ethnography, childcare facilities, reification ----- Bibliographie: Kubandt, Melanie: Die Vielfalt und Varianz geschlechtlicher Praktiken. Zum Mehrwert ethnographischer Forschungszugange in der Kindertageseinrichtung, Diskurs Kindheits- und Jugendforschung / Discourse. Journal of Childhood and Adolescence Research, 1-2020, S. 5-20. https://doi.org/10.3224/diskurs.v15i1.02

The idea of the constructed character of social reality implies human contribution to institutional arrangements and cultural patterns that determine the shape of collective existence. The article examines the specific features of social construction seen and studied in phenomenological approach by A. Schutz, P. Berger, Th. Luckmann. The concept reveals significance of daily cognitive style which enables people to structure and understand the world they share with others, escaping situations fraught with gaps of meanings and anomy. The author of the article analyzes the process of social construction, distinguishing it from imaginary building of reality that goes beyond the existed order. Reality of daily life is compared with fictional society represented in J.L. Borges’ “Lottery in Babylon”. Telling about the social construction as it may be, the story demonstrates the similarities between the mental procedures that underlie real and antiutopian (inhuman) routines. The article also centers on peculiarities of phenomenological beholder’s attitude towards sociality. On the one hand, it tends to be free from any theoretical abstractions, imaginary constructions or critical destruction of reality, on the other - inclines to transcend the reified forms of social being and engenders a certain critical message.

Resumo Busca-se aqui singularizar a teoria do agir comunicativo como uma guinada normativa no enunciado da autonomização das esferas sociais. O argumento é estruturado em três momentos: em um primeiro, apresenta-se a compreensão habermasiana da distinção entre pré-moderno e moderno como passagem do indiferenciado ao diferenciado, mais particularmente da reificação mítica ao desacoplamento sistema e mundo da vida; em um segundo, apresenta-se a sua definição da reificação moderna como colonização sistêmica do mundo da vida; por fim, demonstra-se como a sua teoria da racionalização dual é também a investigação dos fundamentos para uma defesa normativa da descolonização/autonomização do mundo da vida como horizonte emancipatório, o que o levará inclusive a abandonar, no curso da obra, a própria tradição de crítica à reificação. Abstract The aim here is to single out the theory of communicative action as a normative shift in the statement of the autonomization of social spheres. The argument is structured in three stages: in a first, the habermasian understanding of the distinction between pre-modern and modern is presented as a transition from the undifferentiated to the differentiated, more particularly from the mythical reification to the uncoupling of system and lifeworld; in a second, it presents its definition of modern reification as systemic colonization of the lifeworld; finally, it demonstrates how his theory of dual rationalization is also an investigation of the foundations for a normative defense of decolonization/autonomization of the lifeworld as an emancipatory horizon, which will even lead him to abandon, in the course of his work, the very tradition of the critique of reification.

Resumo Este artigo procura investigar a reflexão de Karl Marx sobre a reificação das relações sociais no desenvolvimento econômico e político do sistema capitalista, a partir da noção de reificação - Verdinglichung - estabelecida no Livro III de O Capital. Trata-se de uma tentativa de reinserir o assunto no atual debate sociológico-jurídico, que se desenvolve em muitos lugares do mundo. Consideramos o conceito de reificação como um conceito-diagnóstico, ou pelo menos um elemento indispensável de diagnose de uma época histórica. Isto se deve, na verdade, ao fato de tal debate tratar de um fenômeno ligado às formas de consciência e dos conjuntos de práticas sociais inspirados nela, e que podem singularizar um determinado tempo histórico. Semelhante campo temático foi abandonado por anos, ao menos desde os anos de 1980, pelas ciências sociais e jurídicas. Contudo, deve ser dito que tal temática foi central nos debates na Alemanha, na Áustria e na América Latina nas décadas de 1920 e 1930. Assim, o texto do artigo parte desta necessidade histórica para propor uma atualização do conceito de reificação, o qual pode ser atualizado para os tempos modernos, o que confere ao Direito uma preciosa ferramenta ontológica de explicação de suas formas fenomênicas da modernidade. Abstract This article investigates Karl Marx’ reflection on the reification of social relations in the economic and political development of the capitalist system according to the notion of reification (Verdinglichung) established in Book III of The Capital. This is an attempt to resurge the subject in the current sociological-legal debate which is being developed in many places of the world. We consider the concept of reification as a concept-diagnosis, or at least an indispensable element for the diagnosis of a historical epoch. This is due, in fact, to the fact that such a debate deals with a phenomenon related to the forms of consciousness and the sets of social practices inspired by it, which can make unique a certain historical time. Such a thematic field has been abandoned for years, at least since the 1980s, by the social and legal sciences. It must be said, however, that this topic was central to the German, Austrian and Latin American debate in the 1920s and 1930s. Thus, this paper starts from this historical need to propose an update of the concept of reification, which can be updated for modern times, providing Law a precious ontological tool to explain its phenomenal forms of modernity.

DOI: 10.1590/2179-8966/2020/48205 Resumo O presente artigo tem como objetivo investigar os modos pelos quais o desenvolvimento das cidades contemporâneas, no contexto da producao capitalista do espaco, implica a reificacao da experiencia subjetiva. A investigacao consiste na critica da economia politica das cidades inteligentes, com o horizonte da proposicao de estrategias politicas de reapropriacao coletiva da experiencia alienada. Palavras-chave: Reificacao; Cidades Inteligentes; Sociedade do Controle. Abstract This article aims to investigate the ways in which the development of contemporary cities, in the context of the capitalist production of space, implies the reification of subjective experience. The investigation consists in the critique of the political economy of smart cities, with the horizon of the proposition of political strategies of collective reappropriation of the alienated experience. Keywords: Reification; Smart Cities; Society of Control.

The digital sphere can be studied as one of the most mature materialisations of the process of abstraction that accompanies capitalism. It is also a framework where subjectivity internalises the abstract form of commodities even further. In this sense, the Internet is the home of an abstract nature that is linked to a particular reification process that characterises post-Fordist production and consumption. This process can be named “eidetisation”. My basic assumption is that the process of reification is being intensified with the digitalisation of the capitalist system. I will begin discussing the concept of reification as a specific form of alienation, stressing that the reification of society changes and intensifies in as much as capitalist production and consumption evolve. Then I will consider the process of abstraction as one of the main elements of reification. Finally, I will try to identify some distinctive traits within the process of “eidetisation”.

In the Netherlands, the ‘Local Governments of the Future’ program has been introduced by the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations in 2014, in the context of the ongoing transformation of the Dutch welfare state; more specifically, the transformation of the social care sector. Scenario planning is a major preoccupation in this program and two major reports have been published in this connection. In this article, the authenticity of the scenario planning of the ‘Local Governments of the Future’ program is questioned. It is found that the ‘Local Governments of the Future’ program’s scenario planning is not a real scenario planning but, instead, a continuation of the neoliberal discourse by hegemonic stakeholders that seek to ‘close’ the future. It is concluded in this article that in the ‘Local Governments of the Future’ program the future is colonized and presented as an impersonal trend in which governmental agency for creatively negating and transcending the neoliberal discourse is irrelevant.

This paper addresses the way that social power and domination can be understood in terms of collective intentionality. I argue that the essence of stable forms of rational power and domination must be understood as the functional influence of material resource control and the power to control the norms and collective-intentional, constitutive rules that guide institutions. As a result, the routinization and internalization of these rules by subjects becomes the criterion of success for any system of social power and social domination. I then consider how this relates the phenomenon of reification, which I proceed to show is when consciousness has been shaped by constitutive rules and group collective intentionality that sustain relations of domination and control and accept them as basic social facts, as second nature. I then go on to show parallels between Searle and Lukács before outlining the distinction between descriptive and critical social ontology.

Reification is a concept of critical theory that denotes certain problematic, habitualised forms of objectification. In this article, I examine whether the concept can be applied in environmental philosophy and what value it has for environmental critical theory. I begin by introducing the concept and the two senses in which reification of the non-human world has been discussed in the literature: first, denoting the misrecognition of others' attitudes towards the natural world; and second, denoting a misconceived relationship between humans and their environment. After this, I introduce two potentially new subjects of reification: non-human animals and non-human nature. I also discuss two phenomena that could count as reification: industrial meat production and the commodification of ecological systems.

In the situated learning literature the apprenticeship-model based legitimate peripheral participation process has been widely adopted to explain the entry of novices to existing knowledge practices. To date however, little has been established about the role of legitimizing processes in experienced newcomers' entry transitions to existing knowledge practices. This paper reports two qualitative studies where more arduous and challenging transitions emerged for experienced newcomers than for novices, in legitimizing processes, relations with others and professional identity contextualization. The research finds that experienced newcomers' entry transitions are more complex than the legitimate peripheral participation process suggests, and that while Wenger's (1998) dualities model provides additional explanatory power, more is needed to understand experienced workers' entry transitions. An expanded model is suggested incorporating these complexities. The paper addresses a gap in the literature and establishes the contribution of legitimizing processes for experienced newcomers' progression to full participation in an existing workgroup.

Este trabajo revisa el concepto de dominación en la teoría social de Axel Honneth a lo largo de su trayectoria intelectual. En términos metodológicos, implica una "reconstrucción histórico-racional" en dos fases: las obras realizadas entre 1980 y 1990, y las que produce a partir de 2000. Nuestra hipótesis es que su pensamiento detenta elementos significativos para formular una nueva Teoría Crítica de la dominación, con énfasis en las relaciones "bilaterales" de dominio y no tanto en su carácter instrumental. En los textos de la primera fase hay consideraciones puntuales que permiten repensar dicho concepto. Nuestra principal contribución fue identificarlas y articularlas. Sin embargo, una de nuestras conclusiones más relevantes es que, en la segunda fase muchas de esas ideas se tornan borrosas y se corre el riesgo de desandar el camino., This article refers to the concept of domination in the social theory of Axel Honneth aiming at reconstructing this concept along Honneth's intellectual trajectory. Methodologically, we carry forward a "rational-historical reconstruction" in two stages: the texts of the 1980s and the 1990s, and those from 2000 onwards. We start from the supposition that his thought contains significant elements to formulate a new Critical Theory of domination, which emphasizes the "bilateral" relations of domination rather than its instrumental character. Indeed, in the texts of the first stage there are specific considerations allowing to reconsider the concept. Our main contribution was to identify and articulate them. However, one of our most relevant conclusions is that in the texts of the second stage many of these ideas become blurred and the author risks returning to an already travelled path.

`İhtiyaç`, iktisat biliminin muğlâk kavramlarındandır. Modern kapitalist sistemin kitlesel üretiminin devamlılığı kitlesel tüketime dayanmaktadır. `Tüketim toplumu` olarak nitelendirilen bu yeni toplum yapısında ihtiyaçların manipülasyonu ve `tükettirme` çabası önemli olgular olarak hayatımızda yer almaktadır. Bu çalışmada sosyal yapının unsurları olan ekonomik, sosyal, kültürel ve teknolojik belirleyicilerle tüketimin yönlendirildiği, yeni düzende yabancılaşan ve şeyleşen bireylerin bu manipülasyona ne şekilde açık hale geldiği konusu ele alınmaktadır. Ayrıca kredilendirme ve kredi kartı kullanımı gibi ödeme araçlarıyla tüketimin kolaylaşması ve artması konusu irdelenmektedir. Çalışmada kuramsal temel, bir niteliksel çalışma metodu olan, odak grup görüşmeleriyle derinlemesine ele alınmıştır. Çalışma sonucunda özellikle sosyal ve ekonomik belirleyicilerin tüketimin yönlendirilmesinde oldukça etkili olduğu görülmüştür. Küreselleşmenin etkisiyle kültürel belirleyicilerin tüketim üzerinde etkisinin azaldığı gözlemi çalışmanın diğer bir çıktısıdır. Ekonomik sistemin mübadele aracı olan kredilendirme ve kredi kartıyla ödeme yöntemlerinin, `yalancı alım gücü` oluşturduğu ve tüketimin artışında önemli etkilere sahip olduğu görülmüştür. Netice itibariyle yapısal belirlenimin, kapitalist sistemin gerektirdiği şekilde, ihtiyaçları manipüle ettiği ve tüketimi arttırdığı; diğer bir ifadeyle tüketim konusunda, kişisel karar mekanizmalarını ve özgür seçim yetisini zayıflattığı görülmüştür. `Need` is an ambigious concept of Economics. The continuity of the mass production of the modern capitalist system is based on mass consumption. The manipulation of needs and the effort to make individuals `consume` in this new society, which is described as a `consumer society`, is an important event in our lives. In this study, it is discussed how consumption is guided by economic, social, cultural and technological determinants which are the elements of social structure and how this manipulation becomes more bare to the alienated and reified individuals at the new system. It also discusses the facilitation and enhancement of consumption by means of payment methods such as loaning (credit facilities) and credit card use.The theoretical basis in the study is tackled with in depth by focus group interviews, which is a qualitative study method. It is seen that the social and economic determinants are particularly effective in manipulation of consumption in the result of the study. The observation that the impact of cultural influence on consumption has diminished under the influence of globalization is another output of the study. It is seen that the means of exchange of the economical system, credit facility and credit card payment methods, constitute `delusive purchasing power` and have significant effects on the increase of consumption. As a result, the structural determination has been seen to manipulate the needs and increase consumption as the capitalist system requires; in other words, it has been seen that this result weakens personal decision-making mechanism and the free will of indivuals on consumption. 136

Being a constellation sport, skateboarding is, in present times, at odd with itself because it is engaged in a process of reification. It is being transformed into an organized sport characterized by a single path and participation in ideology’s larger process of rationalization and identification of reality. To become an organized sport, a sport must submit to quantification: skateboarding and skaters are becoming quantifiable commodities. But skateboarding is and always has been a qualitative activity not akin to identification with ideology. Adorno’s negative dialectics provides a useful approach for understanding this contradiction as it exists between skateboarding and ideology and for showing how the reification of skateboarding is taking place in particular by means of the institutionalisation of skateparks and contests, all of which will be examined in the following.

Love has traditionally been understood either as an objective, transcendentforce, or a subjective ability. Through a number of steps,the article argues that both these options have lost their credibility due to changes in the media through which love is performed. First, the article demonstrates how the attempts,in the life sciences, to explain love biologically or physically reproduce a traditional romantic ideology. Then, the implications of the inflation of explicit love declarations, and the consequences of internet dating, are discussed. What these examples amount to is the fact that the medium is brought to the fore. A consequence of this is that the romantic ideology is strengthened, while the premises of romantic love – the autonomous subject and the transcendent objectivity – are weakened or even dissolved.Keywords:idealism, materialism, narcissism, subjectivity, reification,internet dating, controlJennifer Lopez, Haddaway, Howard Jones – yes, virtually every singer, author,or philosopher since Sappho and Platohave raised the same question: What is love? This endless recurrence may be taken as a sign both of the aptness and inaptness of the question. The huge amount of answers makes it impossible to say anything that hasn’t already been said. Every love song is a cliché from the outset. On the other hand, the fact that the question keeps coming up over and over again, points to the endurance of the experience of or longing for love, and hence to the inevitability of the issue.

We mobilize the organizational and practice-based literature to determine the mechanisms enabling a social collective to introduce innovation in public rescue. The case highlights how this collective acquired characteristics of a partial organization by: (1) emergent characteristics reacting to critical incidents, (2) an overarching agenda supporting actors participation, (3) complementarity of exclusion and inclusion membership practices to enforce collective identity and reach a critical mass, (4) recognition of collective actorhood through reification practices, (5) the role of a secretariat through theorizing and developing close but discrete relationships with an external actor with critical expertise and resources., Nous mobilisons la littérature sur l’Organisation et les Pratiques pour analyser les mécanismes permettant à un Collectif social d’introduire une innovation en santé. Le cas montre comment ce Collectif acquiert des caractéristiques d’une Organisation Partielle par : 1) la résolution d’incidents critique; 2) un programme d’action qui transcende la participation des acteurs; 3) des pratiques complémentaires d’inclusion et d’exclusion de membres pour développer l’identité collective et la masse critique; 4) des pratiques de réification pour être reconnu Acteur; 5) un secrétariat qui théorise l’innovation et développe une relation étroite avec un acteur extérieur en raison de son expertise et de ses ressources., Mobilizamos la literatura sobre la Organización y las Prácticas para analizar los mecanismos que permiten a un Colectivo social introducir una innovación en la esfera de la salud. Este caso muestra como este colectivo puede adquirir las características de una organización parcial para: 1) La resolución de incidentes críticos, 2) un programa de acciones que transcenda la participación de actores, 3) prácticas complementarias de inclusión y de exclusión de miembros para desarrollar la identidad colectiva y la masa crítica, 4) prácticas de reificación para que sea reconocida como actor, 5) un secretariado para teorizar la innovación y desarrollar una relación estrecha con un actor exterior debido a su pericia y a sus recursos.

This essay situates Shakespeare’s two most ‘economic’ plays, The Merchant of Venice and Timon of Athens, in the context of contemporary debates on usury and other relevant aspects of the market economy that ushered in the transition from a feudal economy to a capitalist one in sixteenth-century England. The debates resulted in the statute of 1571 that legalised money-lending, provided that it did not exceed a maximum interest rate, fixed by the State, of 10%. This settlement was the result of a cultural as well as ideological compromise between Christian and market values that legitimised a capitalist economy while at the same time defusing its disruptive aspects. The author argues that Shakespeare’s two plays offer a dramatic reflection on the advent of a market-based economy in England and the cultural negotiations underpinning it; a reflection that also involves a critical examination of the social relations, in both the public and private spheres, that emerged alongside the new market economy....

The recent debates about the transformation, or decolonization, of higher education in South Africa have underscored the continuing salience of "identity" in post-apartheid political discourse. Disillusioned with the token equality of liberal politics, student-led movements now demand that their manifestos be granted legitimacy precisely on particularistic grounds. With the aim of understanding what conception of social change these demands entail, this archival study analyzes how political identity and agency have been constructed in contemporary South African academic discourse. More specifically, this study identifies the different kinds of ontological and epistemological presuppositions that particular uses of language are necessarily committed to, and therefore necessarily limited by (both politically and conceptually). Utilizing Scopus, a bibliographic database, the five most relevant and highly cited articles were selected and subsequently analyzed using the logical rules governing both predicate ascription and presupposition. Two main uses of language were isolated based on common sets of presuppositions: 1) A non-human ontology of agents, and 2) Agency as a property of antecedently given identities. Each use of language was found to comprise two further subcategories respectively: 1.1) Psychological agencies, 1.2) External agencies; and 2.1) Realist view of political identity, 2.2) Constructivist view of political identity. The results of the data analysis suggest that the two main uses of language are mutually reinforcing. Taken together, they appear to entail an account of social change that, via the linguistic obfuscation and reification of human agency, is in fact immanent to the existing socio-political order itself. It is suggested that future research on political identity and agency will require a trans-disciplinary approach concerned with explaining manifest social antagonisms (e.g. class oppression; institutional racism; Islamophobia) in terms of the global historical and material conditions within which they are located.

This article centres on the legal recognition of same-sex marriage with a view to exploring the issue of unspeakability; that is, the condition whereby some questions cannot be articulated because of a lack of words. More specifically, the article will explore what happens to those social practices that are not given legal speakability and thereby legal recognition/protection. To this end, I first focus on how words are produced in the sphere of everyday life and their dependence on the existence of a widespread normality. I then discuss how the law sees to the preservation and the reproduction of normality by providing a set of categories which are made available to law-abiders to settle disputes when they arise. In doing so, I elucidate the twofold role played by law as both a selective and a creative device. To cast some light on the particular way law operates, I discuss an important decision by the Italian Constitutional Court in 2010, which provides a telling example of how legal officials are able to seal off the set of legal categories and to leave some issues in the sphere of the unspeakable. I then unearth a paradox: while unspeakability reveals a condition of powerlessness, the acquisition of speakability could bring about even harsher exclusionary effects. I conclude by arguing that the entry into the sphere of official law is always a Janus-faced achievement, but can play as an effective instrument of critique.

Certain strands of cosmopolitanism have been criticized on various occasions for merely mirroring the mental framework of a global elite that stresses positive attitudes to mobility, flexibility, and disinterested objective detachment to the detriment of ‘rooted’, local and national values.1 In this way, it is argued, it presents a one-sided opportunistic or naively affirmative picture of processes of globalization rather than taking seriously the challenges posed by the inherently normative dimension of cosmopolitan thought and practice.2 The present paper will argue for a return to the critical core of the cosmopolitan idea and proposes that the critique of reification, which recently received renewed interest by philosophers of the so-called third generation Frankfurt School, can serve as a vital tool for re-imagining cosmopolitan teacher education as critique. In particular, the discussion around the recent turn towards a standards and competencies oriented teacher education in Germany will be critically examined in this regard. Rather than presenting a mere factual description of our thinking, judgments and actions, a cosmopolitan orientation should be concerned with reminding us of the importance of a continuous critical challenge of their validity. Firstly, the concept of reification will be shown to provide the conceptual resources to describe and select relevant characteristics of contemporary social pathologies that cannot be adequately captured within liberal social philosophies. A closer analysis of reification as a deficient relation to oneself, to others, or to the world will then lead to the second question of how to conceive of non-reifying forms of relatedness, commitment and boundedness as enabling new forms of expressive freedom. Instead of one-sided, narrow and hasty reactions towards a perceived ‘global challenge’*either fetishizing borders or their transgression, an critical educational cosmopolitanism should bring into focus how educational institutions such as teacher education can provide, strengthen, and enhance the conditions for binding ourselves as citizens of the world in non-reifying ways. Keywords: cosmopolitanism; teacher education; reification; Honneth; Frankfurt School; recognition; globalization; standardization; teacher education reform; standards and competencies (Published: 16 January 2013) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 5, No. 4 , 2012, pp. 217-237. http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/egp.v5i4.20296

Abstract: By focusing on the musical styles known as bossa nova and afrobeat, I ask: Given that globalisation/capitalism promotes exchange, borrowing, and imitation, can we make sense of ‘authenticity’? Can we speak of an authentically Brazilian or Nigerian music? If today ‘authenticity’ makes little sense, why is talk about ‘authenticity’ so pervasive? If we expose ‘authenticity’ as reification, do we still need this term? What, then, may ‘authenticity’ mean? How can we restrict powerful musical cultures without limiting localities to replicating the past? How can cultures take up each others’ vitality without losing their particularity? Can we imagine a world stage inviting all music? I explore the astonishing but mostly uncharted flows between and within musical traditions. At the same time, I seek to ground those flows in locales. Moving somewhat against the grain of contemporary social theory, I retrieve the need for ‘reification’ and ‘authenticity’. If we value a diverse world, we may wish to balance capitalism’s dominant flows with the desire to situate music-making in specific locales.

This article critically studies the hegemonic discursive construction of the EU’s current (2012) economic crisis, as it is articulated by political and economic elites and by mass media. The study focuses on the political economy of the particular crisis and through the critical concept of reification, the study emphasizes the hegemonic naturalization of the economic crisis by the “free market” economistic ideology. The article problematizes the positioning of Greece as the “crisis epicentre” in Europe, understanding Greece as a scapegoat and as a laboratory where political strategies of capitalist restructuring of the EU are performed. Through the frame analysis of Bild-zeitung’s headlines on the coverage of crisis-struck Greece, the article discusses a) the “culturalization” of the crisis and the diversion from a structural public debate on the global economic crisis b) the disciplinary function of crisis’ publicity, related to social control and the production of new, neoliberal social subjectivities c) the alienating effect of the culturalist crisis discourses to transnational publics, resulting to the misrecognition of the ideological and structural reasons of the given crisis, the misrecognition of the effects of the crisis and crisis-politics in people’s lives, the misrecognition of popular socio-political struggles in countries worse struck by crisis politics, and the eclipse of transnational solidarity and identification to the common issues that European people in particular are facing.

The paper is devoted to the critical analysis of today’s mainstream approach to the inclusion of the factor of culture in economic research. National culture is treated in this framework as a reified entity measured by societal values and is persistently included as a "culture code" throughout different contexts. The paper presents evidence contradicting this treatment, and an alternative methodology for economic analysis of cultural phenomena is suggested, namely that each mass cultural practice should be analyzed on a "case-by-case" basis, comparing stakeholders’ costs and benefits.

Este articulo propone una reflexion teorico-metodologica sobre una etnografia visual realizada en un entrenamiento deportivo. Planteamos un modelo integrado del conocimiento experto que explique las decisiones de las nadadoras y entrenadora del equipo olimpico espanol de natacion sincronizada. Partimos de una recogida de datos etnografica que integra la observacion analogica, audiovisual y conversaciones con los participantes. El uso de herramientas del analisis cualitativo como el software ELAN muestra que la medicion de la actividad social no debe seguir necesariamente modelos estadisticos. Es posible formalizar la interaccion y la produccion de significado social mediante un trabajo minucioso de trascripcion y de sistematizacion de pautas visuales. Ademas, hacemos explicitos los principios arquitectonicos del software ELAN que configuran nuestra estrategia de codificacion, evitando la reificacion del proceso de entrenamiento en natacion sincronizada. Nuestros resultados muestran la riqueza explicativa de esta metodologia mixta de investigacion en entornos deportivos, hasta ahora dominados por modelos estandar de investigacion que no tienen en cuenta la naturaleza distribuida de las decisiones deportiva. This paper presents a theoretical and methodological discusssion on a visual etnography that took place in a sports training. We propose an integrated model of expert knowledge that explains the swimmers’ and trainers decision-making as part of the Spanish Olympic team. We Stara with an ethnographic data collection that integrates analogical observation, video observation and interviews. The use of analytical tools such as ELAN software puts forward the possibility of measuring social activity not only with statistical models, but also by formalizing the interaction and the production of knowledge. We provide a detailed work of transcription and sistematization of visual patterns. Moreover, we make explicit the arquitectonic principles of ELAN software that build our codification strategy, avoiding the reification of the training process in synchronized swimming. Our results show the rich explanatory power of this mixed research methodology in sport environments, until now dominated by Standard models of research that do not take into account the distributed nature of decision-making in sports.

The author is interested in the phenomena of kitsch that can be found in various dimensions of modern life. The question that can be asked nowadays is: ?Is there any segment of modern life without kitsch?? We could say that there is not only a phenomenon of the kitsch-subject but also of the kitsch-object that entered modern society. Kitsch-subject is often defined as a person who sees the value as in a kitschy way. That person usually thinks that a work of art is of the same value as an expensive car or Persian carpet and buys these objects in order to gain in reputation. So he(she) usually decides to decorate his house and office with a lot of expensive paintings, books and furniture. In that way the kitsch-subject becomes a kitsch-object because he becomes a victim and a ?slave? of all these objects. It is well-known that even the greatest authors sometimes create for the masses of people and add to the works some segments in order to make people buy the objects they made. So, the author is trying to point out that kitsch is a very common phenomenon that can be displayed in many different ways.

This paper makes an attempt to interpret the German debate on social pedagogy as a multifaceted perspective that, whilst diverse in its assumptions about what social pedagogy is, also shows a striking commonality. To exemplify this, we intentionally focus on dominant theories of social pedagogy in Germany, which aim to directly answer the question of what social pedagogy is. However, in attempting to contribute to a clearer understanding of social pedagogy as a theoretical phenomenon, it is not sufficient to describe these theories and the various ideas of social pedagogy they generate. Instead, it is essential to deconstruct how these theories reify their numerous assumptions on social pedagogy. We will therefore argue that it is worthwhile not to focus too narrowly on what is reified as social pedagogy in dominant theories in Germany. Instead, we suggest a careful analysis of how social pedagogy is commonly theorized. Our hypothesis is that, in Germany, prominent theories of social pedagogy reify social pedagogy by means of a distinctively ontological mode of reification. This mode we see as a common pattern of dominant theories of social pedagogy in Germany, regardless of the different objects of social pedagogy produced by these theories. Beyond a mere critique, we intend to also explain this mode at the end of our paper and raise the question whether it might point to a broader concept of how theories of social pedagogy and social work are usually generated in Germany and beyond.

The market, after a long yet undisturbed evolution, has finally become an imposing superstructure that does not simply connote a place of production, exchange and purchase but has transcended the non-economic spheres of human life, even its moral-cultural order. At the core of this evolution is the human person, no more an agent but more like its slave. Everything has become commodified – literally. From goods produced by human labor and ingenuity to selling even the body of the producer him/herself. Worse, the human person in all its integrity and wholeness can now be purchased, bargained and exchanged. Even the sphere of interpersonal relations was limited by the increase of formal and impersonal interactions. The trends of social networking, online selling and marketing, text messaging among others have now become the system of relations, however provisional and short-term. What then is the value of a human life? The reduction of human beings by market capitalism to units of productive power demands therefore a greater need to develop a philosophical position that can challenge all of these dehumanizing elements and structures. Citing Talcott Parsons’ “Social Structure and Personality” espousing the interplay between Sigmund Freud’s theory of internalizing individual and Emile Durkheim’s theory of constraining society, the individual will develop discourse and behavior consistent with the conditions set forth by the social structures. The interaction is not simply a case of society imposing its dominance to the individuals but rather a case of tolerant "subjects" validating its system. This framework, from which the paper is based, believes that the very manner of market oppression can be the same manner towards possibility of liberation – a moral-cultural order.

While concurring with Honneth’s reconstruction of reification as a form of forgetfulness, this article questions the way in which he arrives at that conclusion as well as the conceptual status he ascribes to recognition – the instance with reference to which reification is exhibited as distortion or deformation. It argues, first, that Honneth’s dualistic mode of argumentation falls behind the left-Hegelian tradition which he himself seeks to revitalize, thus causing a serious architectonic problem; and, second, that while polemicizing strongly against the cognitive approach, he at crucial points actually reverts to the very resources made available by that mode of thinking. Being the central concern of the article, this latter aspect is treated as the cognitive problem in his work, especially in his Tanner Lectures.

In this commentary on Jahoda (2012) and Moghaddam (2012), I discuss the problem of the reification of culture from a social representations perspective and argue that social representations as a notion overcomes many of the shortcomings of the notion of culture, the main being reification. Whilst building this argument I show, by making reference to recent developments in the field of social representations and social developmental psychology, how weaknesses in social representations theory identified by Jahoda (1988) were addressed and how insights from this approach can be used for diversity management policies in education. © The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav. 18 3 375 390 Cited By :8; Export Date: 20 July 2017

Organizational form, as an issue, has been the focus of attention since Weber’s formulation of the ideal-type bureaucracy. For organizational scholars, the very concept of form is at the heart of organization studies, such that “[w]here new organizational forms come from is one of the central questions of organizational theory” (Rao, 1998: 912). The Weberian “ideal type,” with its focus on the ontological possibility of identifying form, represents the inaugural moment in organization theory. Since that moment, and based on the need to say what is “organization” as the condition for having “organization theory,” it is a requirement of organization theories that they address “knowledge about organization” based on a boundary-making condition, no matter whether it is through contingencies, legitimization, evolution or cost-reduction. As such, much organizational theorizing views form as something already formed, as an essence, with the attention focused on what constitutes form. Said differently, all that dominant theoretical perspectives are able to do is to address form by way of classification, without accounting for the process of forming, which does nothing but to reiterate that the only way to think about form is through ontological reification privileging classifying schemes. By problematizing the focus on “form” I take issue with the largely ahistorical and aprocessual character of much organizational theorizing. With this as my point of departure, I argue for knowing the organizational as an ongoing process – i.e., “forming” over knowing “organizational form” by way of classification. Considering the above, therefore, a number of questions arise: does history end once we have classified?; does forming continue to happen once we have classified?; what about a way to theorize forming?; how to understand forming over form? More broadly, “can we think any other way” (Calás & Smircich, 2003: 49), such that we do not become enmeshed in, and continue to reproduce, the problems we encounter when engaging with largely aprocessual and ahistorical theoretical lenses? These questions lead me to the more processually and historically sensitive lens of path dependence theory. Through the contributions of path dependence theory, and with Ireland’s Industrial Development Authority as empirical example, my paper seeks to address the concerns in the literature with regard to process, history and new ways of theorizing and studying organizational form(ing), in so doing maintaining an opening toward organizational forming in organizational theorizing and research.

This essay explores an aspect of the fieldwork experience which is often neglected in autobiographic reviews of the research processes: the formation of the ethnographer’s theoretical sensibility, as a consequence of fieldwork practice. Based upon research carried out in a town in Northern Norway, Guovdageaidnu, which is considered to be a kernel of the “saami” culture, this essay presents the process of reconstruction of the author’s analytical sensibility: the transformation of his theoretical prejudices into analytic tools endowed with a greater interpretative strength. The previous theoretical judgement, in this case based on the knowledge of a bibliography relevant for an analysis of the interethnic relation far away from essentialism and reification, is presented here as insufficient. That previous readership does not prevent the author from operating in the field with a sensibility that is still oriented toward comprehending ethnicity as a relation between dichotomous, reified social subjects.En este ensayo se explora un aspecto de la experiencia de campo frecuentemente ignorado en las revisiones autobiográficas de los procesos de investigación: la formación de la sensibilidad teórica del etnógrafo, como consecuencia de la práctica de campo. Basándose en investigación realizada en una localidad del norte de Noruega, Guovdageaidnu, considerada allí núcleo de la cultura “sami”, este ensayo presenta el proceso de reconstrucción de la sensibilidad analítica del autor: la transformación de sus prejuicios teóricos sobre las relaciones interétnicas entre “noruegos” y “samis” en herramientas analíticas dotadas de una mayor potencia interpretativa. El juicio previo de carácter teórico, fundamentado ya en este caso en el conocimiento de un cuerpo de bibliografía pertinente para un análisis de la relación interétnica alejado del esencialismo y la reificación, se presenta aquí como insuficiente, mostrando cómo el autor, con ese bagaje previo de lectura, sigue aún operando en el campo con una sensibilidad orientada a comprender la etnicidad como una relación entre sujetos sociales dicotómicos y reificados.

CNRS 2, FNEGE 2, HCERES A; International audience; This article looks at the Enron affair in terms of what investors and experts fail to take into account to being able to predict Enron collapse. The authors show how analysts could have predicted Enron's difficulties in view of the incoherence observed in its strategic decisions, from the viewpoint of the theory of resource-based and competence-based approaches. Certainly, it was hard to suspect that numbers could lie on account of the financial manipulation doubled by the rhetorical discourses of executive managers who succeeded in imposing a flourish image of their company. The authors’ view takes on a political dimension by illustrating the contradictions of the system that sustain the widespread myopia, where everyone is purely alienating himself.

Discursive accounts of time tend to focus on a deconstruction of taken-for-granted notions of clock time, restricted to linear measurable units. By contrast the present article examines some of the discourses and practices deployed by managers in their attempts to control time; in the final instance, it shows how time can be a mystery that escapes such managerial pursuits and preoccupations. More specifically, we draw on Levinas’s ideas on time and the ‘Other’, and use two managerial discourses to illustrate how reification (through the use of technological and institutional artefacts) as attempts to control time tend to result in a proliferation of participation but, equally, an insistence on participation may invoke an intensification of control through reification. Reified relationships invariably result in a perpetual return to the Other, or what we have called participation. However, to varying degrees, our participatory mode is not possible without reification. Yet ‘relationships’ cannot be completely delegated to rationally calculating devices, formal institutions, or markets. Cooperation has its source not in reified forms of rationality (nor of irrationality), but in the human encounter with the Other. The organizational, social order is based on personal relations and personal responsibilities.