Subsumption relies on the idea that the very process of explanation is exterior to the explanation itself, an assumption which we have sought to undermine. From a postructuralist point of view, therefore, we can reconceptualize laws, mechanisms, and empirical generalizations, as a function of reification, or what we called in Chapter 3, abstract essences. The term reification simply signals the effect of bypasssing the contextualized self-interpretations of actors. By contrast, reactivation involves a process of de-reification, in which abstract essences are linked to the contexts and self-interpretations relevant to the problem at hand. Understanding such theoretical concepts and empirical generalizations as a function of degrees of reification or sedimentation, of course, differs substantially from the way mechanisms and laws are usually understood in the literature, namely, as representing differences in subsumptive scope (188).