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

Place identity

An advantage of Proshansky’s conceptualisation of place identity is that it posits a flexible orientation to the surroundings in which the individual finds themselves. Further, it is also has a degree of temporality, examining as it does the ‘environmental past’ of the individual and the ability of different environments to satisfy different needs and requirements at different times. However, his view that, unlike the social, the spatial is a backdrop (page 63) runs at odds to developments made in human geography by researchers such as Massey and in social psychology by Dixon, to whom I shall come later. Proshansky also relates place identity specifically to the city environment through the medium of urban identity, implying that there are specificities about living in a city that impact on the individual in a number of different ways, matters taken up by the CIS network, which I shall explore below.

However, Twigger-Ross (2006) argues that the cognitive focus of Proshansky’s place identity gives it a rather individualistic focus, suggesting that the individual is more in control of their physical surroundings than may actually be the case. Nevertheless, the idea of place identity also suggests a social component, albeit tenuously, through the norms and behaviours associated with a particular environment (Twigger-Ross,C.L. 2006), which, as discussed above, can provide context to inform social identity. As such, if place identity has a social component, it could also be suggested that social identity has a spatial component.

Lalli (1992) also sees place identity as a part of self identity, although he too objects to the cognitive focus of Proshansky’s conceptualisation. He focuses on a particular facet of place identity, which he calls ‘urban related identity’. This is the ‘complex association between self and urban environment (page 294). This bears similarities with Valera et al (1998) and Pol et al (2002) who also see the urban environment as having a unique and distinct impact on identity. Bonaiuto and Breakwell (1996) concede that place attachment and identification with place are two of place identity’s most studied facets, but that it is not simply reducible to these two components, whereas Twigger-Ross and Uzzell (1996) maintain that place identity is reducible to place identification (a social category) and Proshansky’s more cognitive concept of place identity. More recently, writers have embraced this array of terminology as ‘terminological conceptual confusion’ (Hidalgo, Hernandez 2001) page 274 or ‘theoretical quagmire’ (Pretty, Chipuer et al. 2003) page 274, although each have added to the quagmire with their own definitions building on the literature. Hidalgo et al’s conceptualisation of place attachment follows closely from Proshansky’s cognitive place identity and Bowlby’s ideas of personal attachment (Hidalgo, Hernandez 2001), whereas Pretty et al separate the concept out into place identity, sense of community and place dependence (which takes a behaviouralist focus) (Pretty, Chipuer et al. 2003).

Other writers have continued to combine place attachment and identity claiming that it has ‘significant overlaps’ (Mannarini, Tartaglia et al. 2006), or that it is used ‘interchangeably’ (Lewicka 2005). Additional concepts have also been added to the mix, including sense of place and place based identity (Carter, Dyer et al. 2007) and social space (Liu, Sibley 2004). Further, other researchers have claimed conversely that the lack of these conditions, especially place attachment and neighbourhood cohesion, is correlated with levels of incivilities that are conducive to increased levels of anti social behaviour, disorder and crime (Brown, 2004), arguments which are also made about social capital, and which make ideas around place attachment of relevance to the FRS and this research project. These points will be addressed in a later section.

City-Identity-Sustainability

These researchers contend that the city frames social activity in two ways (Pol 2002): firstly as the physical setting which facilitates or impedes social interaction, and secondly as ‘a shared symbolic universe and as a community’ (page 15), factors which should be borne in mind for FRS/resident intergroup relations. For the CIS Network, this occurs particularly at the community level, ‘based on symbolic mutual interaction via an ecological relation linked to specific local areas’ (page 15). Needless to say, community is not equivalent to neighbourhood, however, the neighbourhood does represent the city at a social – that is to say human – level. These two characteristics of the city, (physical and the social properties), are easily identifiable in different conceptualisations of the neighbourhood, not just in social psychology but also in human geography and wider urban studies. The CIS network:

And indeed, this is what they mean when they refer to identity. Based on social identity approaches, this form of identity is constructed via identification, during which characteristics and values of the group are assumed by the individual. For the CIS network, this identity is facilitated also by urban ‘quality of place’. The network looked at a number of issues around place and social identity, including area quality, residential satisfaction, cohesion and sustainability, with the aim of determining to what extent these former factors promote sustainability, and whether their lack impedes it, with studies conducted in the UK (Uzzell, Pol et al. 2002), Spain (Pol, Moreno et al. 2002, Valera, Guardia 2002), Venezuela (Wiesenfeld, Giuliani 2002), Paris (Moser, Ratiu 2002) and Mexico (Jimenez-Dominguez, Aguilar 2002). Determinants of pro social behaviour, as seen in this way, have aspects transferable to the study of FRS, although, in this research project, it is more the lack of these which is of relevance.