Regarding Matthew Muspratt’s column “Working where ‘field’ defines ‘the other,’” [Gazette, June 5], I appreciated this thoughtful and non-recriminating commentary that sheds light on the thought processes and experience of development professionals working in Africa (it could just as easily have been Central/South America or South Asia).

Does the author imagine, however, that the consecration and adoption of a new word(s) to replace “field” somehow upends the power relationships of developed/undeveloped; aid giver/receiver; patron/dependent; occupier/occupied? Well, he does say that nixing the word “field” was not due to the damage the word itself inflicted but “for the story it told.”

Unsurprisingly, the word field originates, pre-Smith College/U.S. social work, pre-U.S/American enslavement of Africans, even pre-European conquest of Africa. It is thought to come from the feudal era English and German designation for cropland or pastureland. I’d argue that the word “field” does not tell or embody a story all by itself. Rather, the “story” the author rejects is rooted in and a product of the history of European/North American (add Chinese, over the last 20-30 years?) economic and governmental institutions, policies and programs directed at controlling and exploiting Africa for their benefit.

Whatever it is that development workers seek to support, build or “fix” in Africa (normally, if not always, altruistically or from a commitment to righting injustices), we have to ask the question how Africa arrived at today’s difficult condition and which parties have and continue to benefit most from its exploitation.

This is the canvas on which the development worker paints. In my view, aid and development workers are swimming upstream (not all, some swim with it for sure) against a powerful current: the designs and objectives of the non-democratic, non-humanist international corporate elite and their allies in the various national and international government institutions.

So yes, by all means, be humble, be conscious of your privilege, disdainful of habits and attitudes (and language) that dehumanize/otherize those for and among whom you labor. This applies equally to Smith College and other social work practitioners in the U.S. as well — serving up patchwork fixes for an economic and political system that is rotten at its very core and which has never been free and fair. But what are you/we going to do about it other than sanitize and soften language, condemn the past, issue mea culpas and generally live lives hyper-focused about our personal posture and reception? 

Why not also examine the structural relationships and institutions that maintain these power and resource inequities and set the stage for and reinforce the cultural arrogance and ignorance of some development workers (or social workers)?

Teach your fellow workers and fellow citizens about the historical and modern iterations of the global north’s domination and parasitical exploitation of Africa. Why not describe and unpack the workings of: the World Bank; the U. S. military and the CIA; the State Department and its taskmaster — U.S.-based multinational corporations. Why not fight back?

Finally, if one is going to “unpack” words for their symbolism and the underlying power relationships they obscure, while you’re looking at “field,” why not also the values and ideology imbued in the term “development” or even Africa — a place name invented not by the inhabitants of that continent but by its invaders and colonizers.

John Pepi of Easthampton studied social thought and political economy at UMass Amherst and urban and environmental policy at Tufts University. He lives and converses with a longtime international development teacher and practitioner. 

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