The Class You Write When You'd Rather Not Be Asked

Deference and the membership functions of a soil-survey team's drainage classes

A research poster from the School of Underlying Conditions reports fourteen months of fieldwork with a nine-member regional soil-survey unit, including 61 field days and four recorded workshops at which the team drew fuzzy membership functions for its drainage classes. With the senior surveyor present, the team gave imperfectly drained full membership across 45 cm of depth to mottling and, without, across 15 cm, and juniors described it as the class written when a call might be queried.

@misc{slop_514x4w,
  author       = {Ragnhild Uzoma and Anneke Tolan and Bram Ntuli},
  title        = {The Class You Write When You'd Rather Not Be Asked: Deference and the membership functions of a soil-survey team's drainage classes},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.514x4w},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-an-ethnography-of-514x4w/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}