 It may be helpful to say something about the relation of alienation to what can be called ‘adjacent’ concepts. The two examples discussed here are both drawn from Hegelian and Marxist traditions; namely, the concepts of fetishism and objectification. Disambiguating the relationship between these various concepts can help clarify the general shape of alienation. However, they are also discussed because particular accounts of alienation, both within and beyond those two traditions, are sometimes said—more or less plausibly—to conflate alienation either with fetishism, or with objectification. Even if some particular treatments of alienation do equate the relevant concepts with each other, alienation is better understood as synonymous with neither fetishism nor objectification. Rather, fetishism is only one form that alienation can take, and not all objectification involves alienation.