Representing a human being as a physical thing deprived of personal qualities or individuality.
Reification would seem to be an opposite of sorts to anthropromorphization, in which human attributes are assigned to inanimate objects, or to animals or other non-human lifeforms.
I have never quite understood why humans anthropromorphosize ships, and why this particular practice of assigning human qualities to an object seems limited to feminine traits. A ship is usually a "she" and by most accounts the ship sails itself without aid of human guidance. In an October 17, 2008, article, The New York Times said:
In November, the Queen Elizabeth 2 sails to a final resting place in Dubai, the oil-rich Persian Gulf sheikdom.
This, I think, is a fairly typical description of a ship: a self-sustaining organism that sails across the oceans on its own. Even the captains of these great boats talk as if they (the seamen) are simply there as a formality.
Reification is when human beings or activities are treated as objects devoid of personal qualities. Think of it as Human Capital (or, as it has been lawyerly watered down for our times: Human Resources).
Reification is often cited in discussions of capitalism and gross domestic product.
I think it could be extended to include the development of human life. Sperm donations and techniques related to in-vitro or artificial fertilization are often pursued in the same manner as a product development cycle for a cell phone or a camera. The process matches desired features with price, ROI, and cost of ownership implications. With a desired feature-set in mind this product is a reification of the people who produced it, and maybe as grandiose as a living example of humanity’s quest for identity.
