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~Sardonyx¹ shared this article with me ... 2 months ago, and I've been meaning to write something regarding it since then -- seriously, it's been sitting in my Inbox for all this time, staring at me. It's about the labor that many of us do for a reduced price, or for free, because of a thing that the author, Anne Helen Peterson, terms "Vocational Awe." Go ahead and read the whole thing, if you'd like; I'll wait for you here.²
"Vocational Awe," by A.H. Peterson (Substack)
² Of course, I have to re-read it as well -- it /has/ been two months, after all.
So. I am a library worker (I say that instead of "librarian" because I don't have my MLIS, and because a lot of MLIS-holding librarians will be cross with me if I step on their hallowed ground) of ... coming up on four years now. My first job here was in the Outreach department, which meant I drove a big bus full of books around the parish and read stories to small children. Our department also drove (still does, just not my department any more) the bookmobiles to senior centers and low-income housing areas to lend books to the people there. For the past year, I've been at the Main branch of the library, splitting my time between the Career Center and the Small Business Services branch of the Reference department. In my current position, I help patrons with aspects of finding and applying for jobs, editing their resumes, and prepping for interviews; I help other patrons with navigating the business-creation process and interview local entrepreneurs; and I perform general "reference help desk" style duties -- which if you don't know what those are, try calling your local library's reference desk sometime, they can be really helpful!
Peterson's piece begins with a discussion of another one, the author of which (a sociologist named Eric Klinenberg) argues that libraries should be used as ballot drop-off points in the 2020 election. Peterson notes that Klinenberg neglected to interview any actual librarians, and when she fills that hole, she finds that -- shockingly -- librarians aren't super into doing even more extra work for essentially free. It seems as though libraries are another one of our society's essential institutions that are over-tasked and under-funded, alongside teachers, health workers, and even police officers.
But instead of treating libraries like the big, all-utility, all-service spaces they've become, we still fund them as if they're just lending books.
This quote especially got me thinkig about the police, especially in the light of This Year and all the unrest and calls for defunding the police. While police forces around America have deep-seated problems with racial profiling, unjust practices, and a host of other things, they /also/ have the real problem of under-funding and over-tasking: the police are called in cases of drug overdose, mental breakdowns, domestic disputes, shootings, robberies, and more, many of which would be better served by better-trained professionals without weapons. But the Police are this Revered Institution that Must be Respected, so they're called ... though they're still funded as if they're just busting robbers. See the parallels?
In the same way, I've been sickened by, specifically, Scott Walker, in his comments a few years ago about teachers, and how they don't work hard enough because they're "off" three months out of the year. I'm married to someone who was, until this year, a college professor, and she routinely worked 60- or 70-hour weeks, between curriculum development, lesson planning, meeting with students, meeting with fellow faculty, general office work, and, oh yeah, actually /teaching the class/ and /grading the materials/. And she didn't get paid enough to "take off" during the summer, and neither are a lot of other teachers. And she didn't have to deal with parents, or the school board, or any of the things that I can't even imagine grade-school teachers having to deal with, for roughly the same pay.
Peterson ties all these problems together under the umbrella of "vocational awe," an idea laid out by Fobazi Ettarh in /In the Library with the Lead Pipe/, the epigraph of which I'll quote here.
Vocational awe describes the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries as institutions are inherently good, sacred notions, and therefore beyond critique. I argue that the concept of vocational awe directly correlates to problems within librarianship like burnout and low salary. This article aims to describe the phenomenon and its effects on library philosophies and practices so that they may be recognized and deconstructed.
"Vocational Awe," by Fobazi Ettarh
Peterson looks at the vocational awe of librarians, but also mentions the all-too-familiar "essential workers" of the COVID era, who are just trying to do their jobs so they can make rent in an unprecedented time, but are for some reason being heralded as "heroes," while still making the same as they were before putting their lives on the line every day. It's the classic bait-and-switch double-speak of ... I want to say "bourgeoisie" here, but that feels too Marxist ... corporatists who want all of us to Have a Good Time Working.
I feel like it's been going this way a long time, at all levels -- cf. the "Take All the Vacation Time You Want" policies at Silicon Valley tech giants, which leads to /less/ vacation time taken; at wi-fi on planes, at, I don't know, *gestures vaguely around* all of the economy. I don't /want/ my vocation to be something awe-inspiring; I don't /want/ a job that is my Dream; I want to clock in, do my work, and clock out and enjoy my weekend.
"Vocational awe" is, at bottom, a farce, a con to convince workers to work without adequate compensation. That's what Peterson's article basically says, and I'm guessing that's what Ettarh's does as well. I'm not really adding anything new to the conversation. However, I'd like to thank ~Sardonyx for linking it to me and getting me to read it.
I feel like all these "think pieces" should have some kind of solution section, something with a proposal to move forward and, I don't know, /fix/ the problem they describe. Most don't -- probably because the problems are always pretty Big, and deep-reaching into the heart of America's brokenness ... which is deep and dark and very, very old. The same goes with this -- I think it has something to do with the Puritan Work Ethic, but I think everything has to do with that. I try to undo its programming whenever I can, but let's face it, I live in a Society (lol), and everybody else has to get on this page too. So, yeah. It sucks right now. I don't know where to put this. If you have any ideas, feel free to get in touch.
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