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This seems like a newbish question, but the last time I worked with Java, the language didn't have generics. I have a class hierarchy (names changed to be as generalized as possible): public abstract class AbstractBase { .... } public class ConcreateSubA extends AbstractBase { .... } public class ConcreateSubB extends AbstractBase { .... } ... public class ConcreateSubZZ9PluralZAlpha extends AbstractBase { .... } ... I'm trying to clean up some legacy code, and there's one place where a ton of repetitive duplication can all be factored out into a single routine via generics. (I'm thinking generics because when this routine is called, it needs to operate on only one of the concrete classes.) The routine looks like public <Thing extends AbstractBase> void someFunc() { another_function_call (Thing.concreteSpecialToken); // could also be // another_function_call (Thing.concreteSpecialToken()); // if methods are more feasible than fields // Cannot use // another_function_call (Thing().concreteSpecialToken()); // because creating instances of these types is a Major Operation[tm] } I'm leaving out about a zillion lines, but that's the important part: someFunc() is type parametric (it actually takes arguments but none of them are Things so no inference). Eventually I need to fetch a special token and this is where I'm getting fuzzy. The tokens are huge-ass unique strings for each concrete class. They're class-based, not instance-based. The actual token value is declared as a private static final field in each subclass. So I need to use the public methods/fields of a base class to (eventually) get to the private static field of a subclass. Obviously I can't declare an abstract static method in the base, because that makes no sense. If the data were instance-based, then this would be trivial, with

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