Fire Fighters, Neighbourhoods and Social Identity: the relationship between the fire service and residents in Bristol
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The contact hypothesisOne further set of theories from social psychology that have sought to explain conflict are contact theories. These are of relevance to this research project for a number of reasons. Firstly, contact theories, as will be discussed below, are often promoted as a natural counterpoint to social identity approaches and as an appropriate way to reduce the social conflict explained by these approaches. However, as we shall see, this is not necessarily straightforward. Secondly, contact approaches have passed, uncritically, into community use, both by the fire service and other service providers. This will be discussed in greater detail in Chapters Six and Seven where I examine fire service / community interventions, and alternative approaches, through engagement, will be discussed below. Thirdly, if contact is proposed as an option by AFRS, despite seeming not to be entirely effective, theoretical reasons for this failure need to be addressed. The contact hypothesis suggests that hostility and conflict between groups are fuelled by uncertainty and separation (Allport 1954), whereas if groups are brought together under certain conditions, hostility will be reduced and cooperation promoted. As such, contact between groups can improve relations between those groups if certain conditions are met. These conditions are that contact promotes social norms towards intergroup cooperation which is reinforced by authority; that interactions occur in a situation of equality of status; that the situation promotes ‘cooperative interdependence’ and that these are promoted by working towards common goals. Later researchers have also added that individuals are able to make ‘intimate contact’ with individuals from other groups, and that, as such, contact situations have friendship potential (Pettigrew 1998). Clearly these conditions are a lot to ask in contact situations that occur outside the laboratory, and to an extent this lack of groundedness forms part of the critique of contact theory that I shall come to below. Whilst Allport’s hypothesis predates SCT by some time, a number of researchers have sought to explain it in social identity terms (Hewstone 1996, Brewer, Gaertner 2004). In this way, social identity approaches are often simplified to the following schema (Brewer, Gaertner 2004) which is typified by preferential treatment of the ingroup, suspicion of and between ingroup and outgroup and intergroup competition. The challenge then is to reconcile categorisation processes with what is known about contact situations. One such interpretation suggests that if group conflict is the result of processes of depersonalisation, by addressing the stereotyping and depersonalising processes inherent in self categorisation, the need to achieve group distinctiveness will pass and intergroup conflict will be decreased, and indeed three different processes that build on this have been suggested: decategorisation, recategorisation and mutual differentiation (Brewer, Gaertner 2004). Decategorisation addresses the individual level processes that are enacted in intergroup situations, whereby individuals work together and get to know each other, to ‘decategorise’ the other from their social category. However, even if this does work at an individual level, it does not necessarily carry over to the group level, and in some cases can reinforce group animosity (Brewer, Gaertner 2004). The second method, recategorisation, promotes a higher level category to which members of both ingroup and outgroup can belong. However, this can be construed as assimilationist as both groups are likely to carry with them their group norms, with the more powerful group’s norms prevailing over the less powerful. Further, building on ideas of the salience of different identities at different levels of abstraction (Haslam 2000), it could be entirely possible for group members to hold onto different levels of identities, such as identifying as Bristolian, but being from a particular neighbourhood or ethnic community. In fire service terms, there is strong fire service identity, so that staff could easily identify as belonging to AFRS, but also have a strength of identification as operational or support staff. The third area, mutual differentiation, is based on the premise that cooperative interactions can be maintained alongside social categories (Brewer, Gaertner 2004), such as when groups bring particular strengths to working together to reach a common goal. However, this approach risks essentialising different groups, which in turn could lead to reinforcing negative group stereotypes. Further, it should also be remembered that in social identity approaches, as discussed above, social conflict is only one of a range of social strategies that are employed in intergroup situations, and whilst these approaches to prejudice reduction have been broadly adopted and used, often with no theoretical underpinning, in diverse situations, one has to question the efficacy of undermining group identity in the context of uniformed services, where the cohesion of the group is its operational strength, as in a fire service context. Furthermore, neighbourhood based initiatives frequently try to promote distinctive neighbourhood identities, which, in this context, could come to be counterproductive, especially if they entrench anti rather than pro social norms, an idea which brings these debates round to neighbourhood context, which will be discussed below in relation to place and to social capital. Further critiques are offered by Dixon (2001) and Dixon and Durrheim (2005). In the first paper, Dixon builds on Sibley’s work to look at the spatial aspects of intergroup relations. As I shall discuss in later sections on place and environmental psychology, social constructions of place reflect social and political issues made, quite literally, concrete. Real and imagined boundaries divide communities, and as I shall discuss, space is not just a ‘backdrop’ to social interaction (Dixon 2001). Further, Sibley’s work on the psychological affect of boundaries suggests that the way in which we internalise ideas of outsiders can make outgroup members appear not just other, but transgressive and dangerous, and that our physical location (for example within our own community) gives strong contextual salience to social categories. The location of contact, or indeed of any intergroup encounter, is then not something to be ignored. The second critique of contact (Dixon, Durrheim et al. 2005) takes this real world approach further, following comments made by a headteacher from a northern secondary school at an academic seminar on the contact hypothesis. As many non-academics might be tempted to do, he suggested that contact hypotheses required a ‘reality check’ (page 697). The first of their critiques, as mirrored above, is that the contact hypothesis is essentially utopian inasmuch as it postulates an ideal world in which optimum contact can occur. In contact situations beyond the laboratory, this is unlikely to happen, and indeed, the situations in which contact is attempted, if non ideal, can reinforce rather than redress intergroup differences, hostility and conflict. In the second critique, it is suggested that contact situations neglect participants’ own constructions of the contact situation. As both stereotypes, as demonstrated above, and contact are essentially socially constructed, this represents a significant shortfall in the stretch of the hypothesis. In the third critique, and similar to some of the categorisation issues outlined above, it is suggested that contact hypothesis relies on individual and not group change. This is problematised less from the perspective in which stereotypes are social constructions, not individual ones (as in self categorisation), but more from the failure to address underlying socio-political factors. As such, the contact hypothesis fails to take into consideration the political situation that inspired the enmity, with the implication that if change should occur, it is likely then to be shortlived. It also has the potential to pathologise the individual for failing to change, and by transferring the focus from the social to the individual, does not effect political change (Dixon, Durrheim et al. 2005). Download 0.87 Mb. Share with your friends:
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