 The second of these adjacent ideas is objectification. The concept in question is not the idea of objectification—familiar from certain feminist and Kantian traditions—which concerns the moral impropriety of systematically treating a human being as if she were an object, thing, or commodity (Nussbaum 1995). That is a distinct and important phenomenon, but it is not the one that is relevant here. In the present context, objectification refers rather to the role of productive activity in mediating the evolving relationship between humankind and the natural world. This association is most familiar from certain Hegelian and Marxist traditions, with Marx often using the German term ‘Vergegenständlichung’ to capture what is here called ‘objectification’ (e.g., 1975: 272).