Layperson Linguistics
At least in the circles I frequent, there’s been a whole lot of focus on the local recently: talk of eating local produce, of supporting local businesses, of the value of local knowledge and the joy of understanding local history. The Oxford American Dictionary generated all sorts of press for itself last November when it announced ‘locavore’ as its Word of the Year, about the same time that environmentalist and author Bill McKibben published his latest manifesto, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.
All of this, of course, stands in conscious opposition to the globalization juggernaut that seems a hallmark of our age. But while I’m no etymologist or linguist, I do think the appearance of this (relatively) newfound local-loving lingo is an interesting departure from the usual, and indicative of what seems to be a changing spatial ethic. I’ve especially been thinking about the following: ‘Provincial’ as a descriptor today suggests backwardness and simplemindedness in an individual. ‘Worldly,’ by contrast, denotes some level of sophistication, wisdom, and cause for respect. So how have we arrived at an ethic that preferences knowledge of the physically distant over knowledge of the immediate?
I’d conjecture that it’s a result of the complicated fabric of technology and society — just the sort of unsatisfying philosophical answer that you’d expect from the type of person wondering at these questions to begin with. According to the OED, ‘worldly’ as a term first appeared sometime around 1000 A.D., at the height of the theist-dominated Dark Ages; the term then was used to describe the earthly and mundane. Conversely, the Age of Sail gave good reason, and ability, to know the geography of the earth instead; hence the positive redefinition of the term. Today we’re faced with a new context: the Information Age has empowered us with access to knowledge of the far off at the expense of the proximate.
So the local phenomenon? Perhaps one small step towards recognizing and reclaiming this important consciousness. A product of a very proud town with a whole lot of local character, I hope so.
2 responses so far
I read in Foreign Policy magazine that of the petroleum consumed in the manufacturing and distribution of food, 88% of it is sunk before the food is transported. Their analysis claimed that one is better off skipping one short drive per week rather than sourcing all of one’s food locally. My guess though is that “local” food, being organic, sustainable and what not, uses less petroleum than the industrial counterpart. Regardless, an interesting statistic.
Regarding your layperson etymological analysis, I think you could make the argument that the definition of provincial will shift in the coming years.
Well put. Seems almost as if the nature of social revolution is to take our culture in opposite directions at once — outward, inward, toward techno-utopia, back to the earth. Like the words “organic” and “green,” though, “local” can also get a little complicated. We can only hope that the agro-biz marketing departments are less aware than you of the word’s power.