Fire Fighters, Neighbourhoods and Social Identity: the relationship between the fire service and residents in Bristol

Fire fighter identity

Once recruited, the training process begins, which has the effect of destabilising previous social identities as the recruit becomes socialised into fire service work, a process described at length by Myers (2005) and Scott and Myers (2005). Myers describes the process of assimilation, as ‘rookie’ fire fighters demonstrate trustworthiness and knowledge of insider norms to gain acceptance into their chosen culture. Although this is an American study, the fire service studied has a similar degree of competition for jobs as do British FRS. Myers describes the recruitment process as one which does not just eliminate those who are physically unable to perform the role, but also plays a part in the start of their socialisation process: as with British fire services, recruits really want to become fire fighters, and as such, come to the service immersed in the norms described by Cooper (1995) and others. Scott and Myers’ associated article from the same study looks in greater depth at a specific aspect of the socialisation process: the management of emotion. They found that fire fighters tended to internalise personal emotions in order to continue to be seen as ‘trustworthy’ and to get on with the job in hand. A notable exception to this was in the case of fire fighter fatality, which were met with overt grief, as also described by Sargent (2002). Despite seeming to be direct contradictions to the ‘manliness’ implied in fire fighting, these type of exceptions are explained in a number of ways: as reminders of the everyday dangers that fire fighters face (Scott, Myers 2005); as indicative of the subversion of masculinity within the firehouse (Yarnal, Dowler et al. 2004); or, as a reinforcement of the extent of the tragedy of losing a fire fighter (Sargent 2002).

These studies discuss the formation of fire service identities, and the socialisation processes that underpin them. A further set of work discusses how those identities manifest themselves within the fire service, and start to consider the implications for operational function. Baigent (2001) writes at length about fire service culture, conducting an ethnography accompanied by the insights he personally gained in 30 years of fire service employment. Although his research is primarily concerned with masculinity, it necessarily encompasses a considerable range of other aspects of fire service identity. He particularly looks at how new recruits are trained to adopt fire service identity, and how recruits are told that ‘they should listen to the advice of experienced fire fighters and it is their duty to fit in’ (page 39), further perpetuating fire service culture, a process also described by Myers (2005). The gendered focus allows Baigent to reveal certain factors of fire service culture in ways that correlate with the Home Office findings (1999, 2000), suggesting that there is widespread suspicion of paperwork (Childs, Morris et al. 2004), and of those (including senior officers) who undertake this role. Fire service masculinity is constructed in contrast to those who are not fire fighters, which includes those who might once have been, but whose role now incorporates the emasculating tasks of ‘pen pushing’ and ‘fire prevention’ (page 92), for it is the fighting of fire that constitutes the core of fire service identity: ‘by being reactive to fire, fire fighters create their public profile’ (page 100).

This issue is taken up again by Childs et al (2004), and by Hill and Brunsden (2009) in relation to fire fighter fatalities and Brunsden and Hill (2009) in relation to striking and has significant implications for the changing role of fire fighters, as described in the policy section, below. In the first paper, the authors discuss the role reversal that occurs when fire fighters themselves are injured, referring to a specific incident in which there were also a fire fighter fatality. Using interview and grounded theory methods, the researchers discuss the role confusion that occurs in response to the incident, mirroring Wieck’s (1993) consideration of the collapse of sensemaking (see below). As such ‘the macho identification and occupational rescue role is seen as being in conflict with any notion of victimhood’ (page 79). In the second paper (Brunsden, Hill 2009b), a single fire fighter is used as a case study to discuss the impact of the 2004 strike. The question of identity was found to permeate his talk of the strike, with the fire fighter feeling that any reference to fire fighters was personal to him, and to a ‘universal fire fighter’ (page 104). Again, his experiences within the strike, which is anathema to the usual ‘helping’ ethos of the service, cause him to adjust his world view (page 107) in relation to his peers, the service, and, most fundamentally, himself.

Sensemaking and the collapse of fire fighter identity

Identity is formed in a number of ways (Turner, Reynolds 2004), and as such it is plausible for fire service identity to be formed in relation to ‘civilians’ as non-fire fighters, but also in ‘competition’ with fire itself as an ‘enemy’ to be ‘defeated’. Indeed, the language of fire fighting reflects this, for instance where buildings are said to be ‘lost’ when fire takes over. Fire can also be considered to be dynamic in that it is constantly changing, and, as proposed in the Elaborated Social Identity Model (Drury, et al, 1999), responds to the actions of those around it (Quintiere 1998). This is reinforced through sensemaking, an idea which comes from organisational studies. It is the process through which people create the situations in which they find themselves, how they act in those situations, and how they rationalise them to themselves and to others both during and after the event (Allard-Poesi 2005). Allard-Poesi (2005) distinctly links it to social identity, suggesting that through sensemaking we decide which ‘self’ to invoke in any given situation. She suggests that this is a dynamic process, where actions and sense are defined in relation to the actions of others in the situation. When these actions are not comparable to personal understandings of the situation, sensemaking recurs, and the situation is redefined, again relating to the ESIM described by Reicher.

Weick’s study of the Mann Gulch incident builds and theorises on work conducted in the 1970s by Norman Maclean. He reconstructed events from 1949 where ‘smoke jumpers’ were parachuted in to tackle a wild fire in Montana (Maclean 1992). Much of the men’s equipment was lost on impact, and the fire quickly got the better of them. Despite the foreman’s protestations that they should light ‘escape fires’, this seemed counterintuitive (even though it was part of their training) to the rapidly unravelling crew, and many of them succumbed, having lost equipment and sight of their leader, to the fire. The only men who survived were those who clung on to their identity as fire fighters, building escape fires or finding their own escape routes. A number of further sensemaking studies have focussed on the fire service (Weick 1993, Landgren 2005, Putnam 1995), perhaps in response to Weick’s seminal work on ‘smoke jumpers’ in Mann Gulch (1993), but perhaps also in response to these dynamic factors outlined above. If fire is conceptualised as a group in relation to whose actions fire fighters are sensemaking, there is the possibility to study a dynamic encounter. Further, because it is clearly not a social entity, there is no need to study its actions, only those of the fire fighters. As such, there are only one group of subjects, making the experience of researching fire fighters potentially less problematic than researching, for example, crowds and the police (Drury, Reicher 2000) or groups coming together through organisational merger (Haslam 2000).

Fire fighters are who they are when they are actively engaged in fire fighting, and when that fight is successful. As Weick demonstrates in the Mann Gulch episode, it is less straightforward when the fight is lost. That identity is called into question when not fire fighting has serious considerations for non emergency responses, such as home fire safety visits and other preventive work. In this section, I have looked at how fire fighter identity is constructed and manifested. Although the majority of the studies discussed do not take an explicitly social identity approach, what they tell us about fire fighter identity has direct bearing on intergroup relations. If, as suggested, fire fighters prize masculinity and have an identity forged through conflict with fire, this surely has a bearing on how they relate to the public, especially when they meet with them as groups, and, as will be discussed in the next section, in preventive work.

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