Ontologization is the process of treating something contingent — a social arrangement, a conceptual distinction, a historical product — as if it were a fixed feature of reality. To ontologize is to convert what is made into what simply is, removing it from the domain of question and critique.
The concept appears across critical theory, postcolonial thought, and philosophy of science. When a social category (race, gender, disability) is ontologized, the category is treated as naming a natural kind rather than a product of specific historical practices. This matters because ontologized categories resist change: if something just is the way it is, there is nothing to contest.
Ontologization is distinct from reification (treating an abstraction as concrete) and naturalization (presenting the cultural as natural), though the three often work together. The relational critique of ontologization holds that entities do not have fixed natures prior to the relations that constitute them — ontologization is the operation that denies this relational constitution by positing independent essences.