When words have more than one meaning…
Yes, language can be powerful, but it can also be complicated. For instance the word “field” can mean something other than a piece of land where a crop is planted. I have a feeling that migrant workers and descendants of slaves aren’t really all that bothered by anthropologists who talk about their field work.
And speaking of words being powerful, I think it’s something of an abuse of power for academics to claim that talking about field work equals “white supremacy, anti-immigrant and anti-blackness ideologies.” Also they’ll need to get the Field Museum to change its name.
“Words are powerful, but even more so is action.” Clarity is useful, but even more so is pretentious opaque bafflegab. When you want to sound deep, reverse your word order for no reason; it impresses the peasants I mean the people in the field I mean the people of pastoral identity.
I think the label “virtue signalling” is applied too broadly, but this little item strikes me as absolutely textbook virtue signal. Round of applause for USC Social Work.
Comments
16 responses to “Identifying as field work”
From my venerable 1984 Webster’s New World Dictionary:
So USC’s proposed substitution of “practicum” for “field work” doesn’t work. I’m a stickler for using the right words to describe something and find this verrrry interesting, er, stoopid. /Arte Johnson /Laugh-In
If ‘field’ is offensive language then I suppose my response, “Oh, for fucks sake!”, may also be problematic.
Field work is not the same as a practicum. I have done a practicum, when I studied Medical Assisting. I have done field work, and still do field work. They are not even close to being the same thing.
It begins to look like people are searching for words to ban so they can be seen as inclusive, anti-racist, anti-transphobic, anti-whatever the going thing is today. If a department at an institution hasn’t yet identified a word or set of words that are “imperialist” “colonialist” “white” or whatever, they are going to find one or more; it seems to be how they maintain their cred, by being the first to ban a word NO ONE was complaining was racist or anythingist.
I plan to continue doing field work; I have no intention of doing any more practicums. I have no more need of practicums, but Ecology does call for a lot of field work.
Definitely silly overreach.
My mother was a social worker for decades, at multiple ranks in her organization, overseeing a considerable staff by the time of her retirement. I could absolutely get behind some effort to change “field worker” to something else, not because of racist/colonialist connotations, but because there’s definitely a line drawn between “field” and “office” that seems to exalt the latter over the former. This is a subtle class distinction that I would be willing to hear an argument for disrupting, especially within non-profit and government agencies.
Good grief, this is ridiculous. In my job, field work is just collecting data, usually on a boat somewhere on the Chesapeake Bay or its tributaries. It’s not an actual field (although in agricultural sciences, it will be a literal field). But field could also refer to “area of expertise”, like botany or marine biology or social work, even. They are just looking for something somebody might be offended by, for no good reason.
Woah! Woah! Woah! Bach up the truck!
Wrong word. Nothing wrong with field, but as a retiree and a previously unemployed person I find the word “work” discriminatory and exclusive. There are many who would like to work, but cannot. There are those who feel trapped by work. We need a better word.
Labour input units of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your dictionaries and sanity.
Leaving aside the terrible writing – I can see how one might be the descendent of slaves, but not of slavery – I’m willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that there was no such connotation until now, when it was magicked into being by a dolt.
Also, Enzyme, à propos the writing — “immigrant workers that are not benign” according to whom? I’d like to know! And has anybody asked the benign immigrant workers how they feel about that? Shouldn’t they be included too? I’m offended, I tell you!
Any word on whether they will continue to use the word “house?”
I think that the phrase “could be” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
Let’s ignore the fact that farming involving field work has been done by *every ethnicity under the sun* for many untold millenia, including white people! Yes, strange but true.
What about magnetic fields? There’s an attractive target for woketards.
Let’s see them try to get the word “field” dropped from Major League Baseball.
Practicum of Dreams, anyone?
Practicum of Dreams? How about: Ebbets Practicum?
The entire thing is just so zogborst.
I was thinking also of outpracticumers, the Inpracticum Fly Rule, Practicumer’s Choice, and practicuming error, in addition to the names of stadiums. “Field” is a verb as well as a noun.
Sackbut, you win the internet.