In 2021 — Why Are We Still Saying ‘The Field’?

Another aid word that has seen its day.

Field: (noun) An area of open land, especially one planted with crops or pasture, typically bounded by hedges or fences.

It is not a controversial assertion that language matters.

In a few short illuminating weeks many people, and I include myself, managed to grasp the importance of capitalising B in Black — so why then despite it being the subject of discussion for some years does the term ‘field’ still enjoy so much air-time in the aid community?

Here in 2016, a secret aid worker writing for the Guardian sums up the definition of ‘the field’ as:

“a fabrication, a social construct to separate us (those writing policies in comfortable offices in supposedly superior, civilised western capitals) from them (our more virtuous colleagues testing our policies out in some dark, underdeveloped expanse).”

Anthropologists, to whom we can credit the origin of the term, have been examining the construct of ‘the field’ within their discipline for decades. Here, in 1997, Gupta and Furguson discuss the centrality of ‘otherness’ to ‘field’ and ‘fieldwork.’ Other being defined as the exotic, as different from the white, western self (15). They go on to observe that:

“The notion of going to “the field” from which one returns “home” becomes problematic for those minorities, post colonials, and “halfies” for…