Resumen de Hiromatsu’s Analysis of the Practical World: Role Action and Reification
Hiromatsu Wataru analyzed the structure of the practical world with a focus on the thematic of role action and reification. In Hiromatsu’s view, although roles do not exist prior to “role action,” but are produced and reproduced each time they are played, roles often become fixed and tend to appear as “ready-made” positions or statuses. Characterizing this state of affairs as the “reification” of roles, he further investigated the reification of the norms of action as well as of the whole organization of roles. Examining Hiromatsu’s analysis of reification thus developed in the practical dimension, the present paper seeks to show how this idea of reification diverges from his general synchronic conception of reification and pertains to a dynamic movement through which social relations restructure themselves. Specifically, his notion of reification as the “becoming ready-made” of roles and norms is a temporal notion that paradoxically tends to conceal its own temporality.
