Dear Nicolai,
You’re quite right. The issue involves several factors you’ve summed up nicely. The first is what a word means. The second is the range of meanings from which one may legitimately choose in any language. The third is the possibility of different kinds of linguistic acts and para-linguistic acts – including sarcasm, gesture, tone of voice, etc.
To say that something is [ x ] is never simply [ x ]. It is [ x ] in the context of a range of issues.
Imagine that someone explained to you that a “researcher” is someone who does “research,” and the word “research” means sacrificing children to pagan gods. You would most likely think poorly of someone who identified himself as a “researcher.” Now, let’s come closer to home, and say that “research” means unethical experimentation on human beings of the kind practiced by in concentration camps by the Nazi regime or the Tuskeegee syphilis study conducted by the United States Public Health Service. These are forms of research as most of us use the word – unethical and illegitimate, but they do constitute research. If you did not know of anything else labeled research, you would not think better of researchers. One major debate in recent years is the ethical question of whether researchers who played no part in reprehensible experiments conducted decades ago on human beings long dead may legitimately use the results of those experiments if the results could contribute to medical advances that serve human beings now living and yet to be born. After World War II, for example, Gen. Douglas MacArthur gave immunity to the researchers at research units used for unethical experimentation on human subjects in exchange for the results. The debate that ensued is not abstract.
Compare this against the meanings subscribers to the PhD-Design list associate with the word “research.” That’s pretty much the situation you describe with the views of the term “creative” held by accountants and designers.
The current usage of the term “creative accounting” emerged around the time of the Enron collapse. The term designates the misuse of accounting in ways that violate generallyaccepted accounting principles, the body of standards, rules, and laws thatgovern accountancy. Prior to the current usage, there were both creative and rigid ways to apply accountancy to organizations. For a sense of the adverse effects on overly rigid accounting culture in industrial organizations, read David Halberstam’s book on the automobile industry, The Reckoning. In manufacturing organizations where accounting plays a role in the political struggles thatkill industries, a “creative” accountant would not necessarily be bad. The real problems of creative accounting emerge in the finance industry where the only goal of a firm is to harvest profits by moving money.
Even so, we agree. My challenge to Gavin involved the snap judgment stating that designers should not wish to be associated with functionaries. It seemed a bit short and unreflective – or so I thought at the time.
I notice that your email address includes the word “create.” It’s a good thing you don’t work at the Department of Business and Management!
Yours,
Ken
Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Phone +61 3 9214 6102 | www.swinburne.edu.au/design<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design>
--
Nicolai Steinø wrote:
—snip—
Interestingly, the same can be said for the word “creative”; a very positive term among designers, but negative, leaning towards incriminating, among accountants.
—snip—
Den 19/09/2012 kl. 02.30 skrev “Ken Friedman”:
—snip—
For those who live in kleptocracies where judges reach a verdict based on bribery, the word “law” is pejorative. For those who live in societies where courts and judges fulfill the roles we expect of them in democracies, “law” is an honored word even though we recognize failures in the system.
—snip—
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
