Fire Fighters, Neighbourhoods and Social Identity: the relationship between the fire service and residents in Bristol
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The structure of the thesisThe first part of this thesis introduces the literatures which support and underpin the work. The first of these three chapters (Chapter Two) presents background literatures from social psychology, human geography and urban studies, which are particularly concerned with themes of identity and place; the second presents literature which takes the fire service as its subject matter; and, the third considers the methodologies used in these literatures to present the methods used for this research project. Chapter Two will start with an explanation of the social identity approaches in which this research programme is rooted. Many of these studies started in the laboratory, but as time has progressed, so too has methodology with a number of groups of researchers taking social identity approaches into the field and examining them in relation to football and protest crowds. The similarities of these types of groups and the dynamic between them and the police mirrors, to an extent, the relationship between the fire service and groups of young people in certain communities. A further set of theories within social psychology covers the issue of contact between groups as a way of minimising conflict. Although these studies originated in racially divided communities, such as South Africa, they have crossed easily into policy parlance, and the fire service certainly seem to subscribe to many of its tenets. However, a number of researchers are now critical of such approaches, and so contact theories and their opponents are examined in light of fire service / community engagement. Moving on from social identity approaches, other branches of psychology, including environmental psychology, also have relevance to this research project. The social identity of groups that has such a bearing on intergroup situations is formed, in part, by residential experience, and for many people geographical identity and social identity go hand in hand. Environmental psychology is thus examined in terms of place identity and associated concepts which might influence the nature of interaction between different groups, both because of where those groups originated and where that interaction takes place. Environmental psychology uses many similar terms around place and identity to human geography, which considers the interaction between people and place and which problematises much of the relationship between humans and their environment. A particular area of interest both to environmental psychologists and to this research project is the impact of neighbourhoods and the neighbourhood environment on residents, and vice versa. This taps into many urban studies discussions of what the neighbourhood is, and how it impacts on residents’ life chances. This forms the next section of this literature review. Over the past two decades, neighbourhoods have become subject to numerous initiatives from central and local government and have become the default unit for interventions across the board, from regeneration to education and housing. The fire service are not immune to this and so the nature of neighbourhoods and the prevalence of neighbourhood based initiatives are covered in this section of the literature review. A particular concern of residents and fire fighters in many neighbourhoods in Britain today is anti social behaviour (ASB), although this is hard to clarify and categorise. ASB has become synonymous with ‘broken Britain’ and encapsulates issues as diverse as young people hanging about (not in fact a crime at all), littering and dog fouling, arson and drug dealing (which are clearly criminal) and physical disrepair, which in many cases is not the ‘fault’ of the community at all, rather the responsibility of the landlord or council. The fire service are in an interesting position with regard to ASB, being both the victims of it (through attacks), dealing with the consequences of it (by putting out rubbish fires, dealing with hoax calls) and trying to prevent its occurrence in the first instance, for example by involvement in community safety partnerships. ASB is therefore covered in this part of the literature review. In Chapter Three, literatures which take the fire service as its subject are considered. It has been claimed (Brunsden 2007) that the fire service is an under researched area, but an increasing number of studies are being published that take the fire service as its subject, and in the past few years, the field has bloomed. These include, but are not limited to, studies which take an ethnographic approach to the fire service and which inevitably study fire service identity and culture from a variety of different perspectives, as well as cultural studies examining representations of the fire service made to and by non fire fighters (‘civilians’). A particular area of interest to a number of these researchers has been the male-ness of the fire service, and fire service masculinity has been covered in a myriad of ways, from its construction and reproduction (Baigent 2001), the way in which recruits are acculturated (Myers 2005, Childs 2005, Scott, Myers 2005) and the way it is challenged by work which does not conform to traditional modes of fire fighting (Childs, Morris et al. 2004, Tracy, Scott 2006). A logical extension of this work is to work on fire fighter sexuality, which is covered by Ward and Winstanley (2007). The next section presents a discussion of an instance where group norms failed. Sensemaking literature comes from organisational studies, and is touched on here as an important sensemaking study concerns the fire service. The incident in question occurred in the US in the 1940s, but was reconstructed first for a book, which was then filmed, and then by Weick for this 1993 study. It examines how a group of fire fighters come to be in a situation which proves fatal for a number of them, and raises a number of questions about group identity which link it both to social identity literatures and to the fire service identity papers reviewed above. The final part of the literature review examines the social policy context within which the fire service operate, and how this has changed over the previous decade. This sets the context for the ethnographic study, but also goes some way to explaining the provenance of this research project and starting to address some of the context in which the fire service operate, whereby the majority of fire fighters join to do just that, as in Weick’s study, yet the prevailing thought, not just in the fire service, but across the public sector, is focused on prevention, which is seen as far less appetising to fire fighters, and indeed divergent from their ‘actual’ jobs. This section has been prepared for publication in a social policy journal, in part because of the perceived lack of policy literature which covered the fire service, despite their ongoing role in society and changing role in local government. This section also concludes the literature review. Chapter Four presents the methodology used in this research project and outlines the methods used in the three discrete studies. As this research project aimed to come to an indepth understanding of the role of the fire service in a number of different communities and the nature of the interaction between residents and fire fighters, qualitative approaches were chosen. Although quantitative approaches are usual in a number of the fields covered in the literature review, perhaps particularly environmental and social psychology, quantitative approaches were rejected for this study. The qualitative approaches used will be discussed in this chapter, stemming from a broadly ethnographic approach, but which utilises semi structured interviews, focus groups and observations alongside traditional ethnographic techniques. Having discussed these issues in broad terms, this chapter will then turn to the methods used in the individual studies. The first study, in Chapter Five, used a broadly ethnographic approach to access staff within the fire service. A number of hours were spent in various fire service locations, shadowing and observing staff at Control, HQ and in two different stations. A number of other contacts included meetings with staff and union members, attending fire service conferences and visiting other services around the UK. In this study, I was particularly looking at how fire service identity forms and functions, what fire fighters’ experiences of different neighbourhoods were like, and how they explained this to me. I found that participants were quick to tell me about instances of attacks, perhaps because that’s how they understood my research, but were less receptive to ideas of lower level hostility. Many of the fire fighters I spoke with were passionate about their jobs and their roles, but only really when discussing fire fighting. They have a strong social identity, particularly compared with non fire fighters, or ‘civilians’, and, broadly felt that they were deserving of respect for providing a universal service. They particularly enjoyed fighting fires, and their identity was very much tied up with this, rather than with community safety work. Further, although they provide an emergency service in all neighbourhoods, they held a number of preconceptions about some, and were particularly keen to attend fires here, but not to undertake preventive work. This leads to a cycle of resentment, whereby they resent residents for requiring interventions, and residents resent them for interfering. This leads to the next study, presented in Chapter Six. Chapter Six covers the second study, in which I conducted focus groups in the three neighbourhoods of Shiregreen, Upperfield and Hilton1. Shiregreen and Upperfield had been outlined to me by the fire service as ‘problematic’ neighbourhoods that they would like me to consider. Hilton was chosen as a comparator as it too is a post war estate, in a geographically marginal part of the city. However, despite some crime and associated ASB problems, AFRS have not experienced the same problems in Hilton as in the other two neighbourhoods. Participants were recruited in two different ways: in the first tranche, I recruited participants from groups that met in community facilities. In this way, I recruited a wide range of people, including unemployed young people (aged sixteen to twenty five), a local history group, a parenting group and an older people’s afternoon club. In the second tranche, I worked with AFRS to identify recipients of Home Fire Safety Visits (HFSVs) over the last few months. These recipients were then invited, by letter, to attend a focus group at a given location on a certain day. The focus groups explored residents’ experiences of their neighbourhoods with them, asking them how they found living where they lived, and whether they thought the areas were unique in any way. Discussions also covered how participants formed preconceptions about residents in their own and other neighbourhoods before moving on to issues around the fire service. Whilst residents from the second tranche of recruitment had all had HFSVs, a number in the first tranche had done too. This gave some useful tools for discussion around people’s different experiences with the fire service at emergency incidents, in the community and in their own homes. Not surprisingly, findings from this study covered ideas around neighbourhoods and the FRS, although a number of other themes also came up. Participants discussed how their neighbourhood relates to their self identity, and spoke positively and negatively about their neighbourhoods, claiming they were either full of problems, but good places to live, or outlining the positive aspects before saying they were bad places to live. As such ideas of neighbourhood were complex with residents contradicting each other and often themselves. Views of neighbourhood were also bound up with ideas of who lives where and what people in other neighbourhoods were like. Participants often stated a reluctance to judge people on their neighbourhood, and then went on to do just that. Participants tended to express shock at the idea that people might be hostile to fire fighters, but invariably then went on to express hostility or resentment themselves. They also had very strong opinions of what the FRS should be doing and, like, fire fighters themselves, felt that this was principally fighting fires. However, there was also acknowledgement that prevention work did serve some purpose. What people were less happy about was being on the receiving end of these interventions themselves. The third study, discussed in Chapter Seven, built on the findings of these two studies and examined instances, through observation, of the fire service engaging with the community. This included community events and HFSVs and allowed me to observe the interaction from a greater distance, and with improved impartiality, than instances where attendance was alongside the fire service. Further, this study allowed me, to an extent, to ‘test’ the findings from the other studies: in the first study I was concerned with how fire fighters spoke about themselves and their interactions with residents; in the second study, I was concerned with how residents spoke about themselves and the fire service. In this final study, I could examine how these assumptions were played out in the intergroup context. This also particularly relates the studies back to some of the theoretical literature described in the literature review. In the final chapter I will reflect on the work undertaken through the duration of this research project, presenting both a discussion of the research project and a number of implications for AFRS. As this research project is part funded by AFRS, I intend to describe some of the implications for the service from the research, lessons which will also be transferable beyond the Avon area, so that, through mechanisms such as the Chief Fire Officers Association (CFOA) and initiatives including workplace violence and social marketing, recommendations made to Avon will be of benefit to the fire service nationwide. There are also benefits for the fire service at a more strategic level: Avon have been innovative in developing and sponsoring this research, and demonstrating to other FRS that there is a place for high level academic research in this field. Greater understanding of the fire service and its role and functions will have positive and ongoing ramifications, as will an ongoing academic focus on the service and further links between fire services and universities. These issues will be discussed in this chapter in order to locate this research as having real world applicability and use beyond the academy. This chapter will also start to frame some of the discussions arising from the work in academic terms. The studies will be drawn together, and consideration to how the research might be conducted differently, should it be done again. It has long been said that the purpose of research is to ask three questions where only one previously existed, and so in this light I shall propose areas for further consideration as a result of this research project. Download 0.87 Mb. Share with your friends:
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