Why Study Afield?

A professor returning from a conference in England recently lamented to one of her colleagues that when she sought souvenirs to bring home to her children she found only items that she could have purchased in any city in the world. As this anecdote demonstrates, we have lost much of the distinctness of place that used to pervade the world. Crossing even a local river in the Middle Ages could bring with it a change of language (or dialect) and cuisine, but even when crossing an ocean today one hardly need prepare for confusions of speech or difficulties of diet (especially if one speaks English). Even in the early 2000s one could enjoy Tex-Mex in Beijing or be tricked into buying in Mexico a deceitfully native-looking collectors knife with a hidden “Made in China” stamp in the blade. And today, when “buying local” has a certain cachet, craft fairs and farmer’s markets often feature booths with digitally-produced items or even the reselling of items purchased from international producers.

In such a global economy, local economies have generally been gutted and their remains consumed by the corporate monstrosities that populate the global economy. Consequently, one now has to look quite closely to see the distinct characters of a place, and distinctions of place may be more readily apparent in some places than others. Indeed, though cities remain more distinct than suburbs (which are generally interchangeable, a photo from one in Arizona hardly distinguishable from one in Virginia or Texas or Minnesota), small towns may be the most distinctive places that remain in the world largely subsumed into a global economy. Rural regions, for instance, are more likely to boast native plants than are the professionally-landscaped yards and parks commonly found in cities and suburbs.

So one reason a student might want to “study afield” rather than study abroad is that, ironically, a person (especially from a suburb or city) might find more foreignness in a small town in the United States than a big city in Europe. But there are other reasons too. Study abroad programs can be expensive and complicated (involving passports and visas and vaccinations and complex travel plans). For certain health reasons, some students are unable (or at least unwilling) to study abroad. For religious or ethnic reasons, some students may not feel safe in (at least some) study abroad programs. For students who are already international students, study abroad programs are usually not a viable option because they are already dealing with some of the aforementioned issues in the course of their regular, full-time studies. Therefore, students who want a change of pace, a new perspective, to experience a certain degree of foreignness, etc., but who worry about the potentially high costs and complexities associated with study abroad programs may do well to “study afield” instead.

The pace of our “study afield” program is also much more relaxed than the pace of (at least most) study abroad programs, in which students and faculty understandably want to do and see as much as possible in the limited time allotted to the program. Students in study abroad programs may spend almost every weekend traveling from their primary place of study (be it London or Rome, Tokyo or Paris, Frankfurt or Mexico City) to some other part of the continent. There can be a certain joy in such fervid travel, but many students today complain of fatigue and burnout, so such students may do better working on a farm than running around Europe, Asia, or South America.

Yes, our “study afield” program would by no means be a time for mere relaxation, and certainly not laziness, for farm life involves real work, but manual labor, though it can tire the body, has a strange way of rejuvenating the mind. (See St. Isidore’s “Plan of Life.”) So the work of studying afield, though it may prove strenuous, should nevertheless heal rather than cause the kind of anxieties that very well may arise when trying to do things like navigate a foreign subway system or keep your passport and money safe from pickpockets.

Of course, study abroad programs can be great too–but if you pursue one be sure you visit some small towns wherever you go.