Words Matter: Human Capital

Words Matter. 

Lately, while applying for open learning and leadership development positions, I’ve noticed a troubling trend in Human Resources in which these vital organizational departments have rebranded themselves as Human Capital. The term human resources is bad enough as it often connotes humans as resources with the goal of protecting the organization from you and not resources for the actual humans who compose, who give life to the organization.

And human capital is human resources’ darker ideological sibling. The term human capital draws on a long history of human enslavement and exploitation, and as a former literature and writing educator, reminds me of Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place (1988). 

In A Small Place, Kincaid travels back to Antigua, her home before moving to the United States as a child. Kincaid catalogs the harms enacted by the British Empire on this twelve-by-nine mile-wide island as she taxis from the airport to her hotel. In particular, Kincaid focuses on how slavery and capitalism (another set of ideological siblings) shaped the island’s culture and Antiguan’s understanding of both themselves and the dehumanizing machinations of capitalism.

Indeed, Kincaid writes:

You [white North Americans and Europeans] will forget your part in the whole setup, that bureaucracy is one of your inventions, that Gross National Product is one of your inventions, and all the laws that you know mysteriously favour you. Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, it’s because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital, like bales of cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were the commanding, cruel capitalists, and the memory of this is so strong, the experience so recent, that we can’t quite bring ourselves to embrace his idea that you think so much of. (36-7)

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Here, Kincaid deftly links our modern concept of (human) capital with the objectification and dehumanization experienced by Africans violently removed from their homelands, ferried across the Atlantic in barbaric conditions, and sold like commodities to support the endless consumption of capitalism. Kincaid connects human capital with its lived and entwined histories of enslavement and banking and commerce systems (Barclays, for example).

Words Matter. And choosing to name your human resources department human capital draws on the dark histories and legacies of enslavement, dehumanization, and exploitation in North America and throughout the Global South.

Words Matter.
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Thank you very much for your time and consideration. If you have questions, curiosities, or are interested in learning more about inclusion and leadership solutions for yourself or your organization, please fill out this nifty contact form. 

Sending y’all supportive, well-caffeinated vibes, 

Creighton

Today’s Pen(cil): 600 News | Oversized and Very Soft Graphite | Musgrave Pencil Company | Shelbyville, Tennessee

If you are curious about my approach to teaching A Small Place, check out “My Favorite Essay to Teach: Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place,” and for a look into my former life as an academic, check out “Educational Archipelago: Alternative Knowledges and the Production of Docile Bodies in Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place and ​Marjane Satrapi’s The Complete Persepolis.” Both pieces were published by the brilliant Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies.