A Case Study of the Mountain Park Fire Dissertation

MASCULINITIES IN CRISIS: A CASE STUDY OF THE MOUNTAIN PARK FIRE

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

Shelley Pacholok, M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University 2007

Dissertation Committee:

Professor Tim Curry, Advisor Approved by

Professor Steve Lopez

Professor Townsand Price-Spratlen ______

Advisor Sociology Graduate Program

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how workers respond to challenges on the job that threaten their identities. In order to study this phenomenon, I undertook a case study of a catastrophic wildfire, as the events surrounding the fire created two assaults on workers sense of self—failure and status inequality. I explore how firefighters negotiated these identity challenges; specifically, the identity management strategies that they used to rescue their dignity and self-esteem, and (re)construct credible occupational selves.

Further, I examine the consequences of their strategies for interpersonal relations, and gender and work equality. The findings are based on 40 in-depth interviews, fieldwork observations, and qualitative analyses of government transcripts and media accounts of the fire.

Drawing on gendered organizations theory, I demonstrate that while firefighting is a highly masculinized occupation, the presence of competent women firefighters creates tensions and contradictions for identity construction. Men firefighters discursively attempted to re-establish the link between firefighting and masculinity in order to preserve their occupational gender identities and privileged status. The ways in which women firefighters constructed their occupational identities aided in reproducing and naturalizing the masculinized nature of their work. However, I also show that

ii firefighters invoked myths of gender neutrality, and periodically distanced themselves from the masculine stereotypes associated with their occupation.

Further, I illustrate that firefighters’ occupational cultures champion winning. I demonstrate that firefighters felt like they failed, and argue that this challenged their occupational and gender identities. The identity management strategies that firefighters invoked in an effort to rescue their self-esteem included transferring responsibility, shifting focus, and minimizing losses. I also posit that tactics, like finger pointing, have negative consequences for inter-group solidarity.

Finally, I show how the organization of the firefighting efforts, and unequal support and praise from the public and the media, resulted in a hierarchy between firefighting groups that undermined firefighters’ identities. This created inter-group tension and conflicts, which firefighters resolved using identity management strategies that positioned some occupational groups as superior and others as subordinate. I demonstrate that we cannot fully understand firefighters’ strategies for negotiating this hierarchy without examining masculinity dynamics.

iii

Dedicated to my mom, Gina, who passed away before this project was completed. Mom,

I know you’re with me in spirit, and I know you would be proud.

iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have received a tremendous amount of support from colleagues, faculty members, family, and friends. Had I been less fortunate, this endeavor would have been much more arduous.

I have benefited greatly from the scholarly input of my dissertation committee. I am grateful to my advisor, Tim Curry, for suggesting that I study fire, for his enduring sense of humor, and for giving me the time and space to make this project my own. I am also indebted to my committee members, Steve Lopez and Townsand Price-Spratlen, for encouraging me to push my analyses in new directions, and providing ideas as to how I could do so. I have shamelessly incorporated some of those ideas here. In addition,

Steve provided valuable in-depth feedback on ways to frame my research, and helped me craft the findings from Chapter Four into a paper for publication. Townsand inspired me from the very early stages of my graduate career to the completion of this dissertation, and took care of my spirit along the way. I would also like to thank fellow graduate students and faculty members, including those in the Gender Working Group, who looked over earlier chapter drafts.

v Thanks to my friends, Lori and Jim, for always finding time to listen and provide words of advice, and Sharon for cheering me on from my early days as an undergraduate student. Your support meant a great deal, especially during times of stress and self- doubt.

Almost last, and certainly not least, I wish to thank my family for their unwavering support and encouragement, for their continued interest in my work, and for keeping me grounded. A big thank you to each of you for your love and support. I am especially indebted to my dad and mom, Maureen, for providing initial interview contacts, food, lodging, transportation, and every other kind of assistance imaginable during my fieldwork. Also, a very special thank you to my husband, Trevor, for never questioning my decision to undertake this journey. Your patience, love, sense of humor and, to borrow a line from the Dixie Chicks, “the way you keep the world at bay” mean more than words can say. Love you, big as the sky.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada provided financial support, which made this research feasible.

Finally, I owe a great debt to the research participants who volunteered their time, shared their fire experiences, and responded without complaint to my probes on sensitive personal topics.

vi VITA

July 10, 1966………………………………...Born – Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

1999…………………………………………B.A., Sociology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

1999, 2000.………………………………….Graduate Research Associate, Sociology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

2000, 2001…………………………………..Graduate Teaching Associate, Sociology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

2001…………………………………………M.A., Sociology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

2002, 2003………………………………...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Sociology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA

2004-2006…………………………………...Graduate Research Associate, Sociology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA

Present………………………………………Research Fellowship, Sociology, The University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

vii PUBLICATIONS

1. Curry, Timothy J., Jeffrey Jarosch and Shelley Pacholok. 2005. “Are Direct-To- Consumer Advertisements of Prescription Drugs Educational?: Comparing 1992 to 2002.” Journal of Drug Education 35(3):217-232.

2. Fedick, Cara B., Shelley Pacholok and Anne Gauthier. 2005. “Methodological Issues Related to the Measurement of Parental Time.” Electronic International Journal of Time Use Research 2(1):67-87.

3. Pacholok, Shelley and Anne Gauthier. 2004. “A Tale of Dual-Earner Families in Four Countries.” Pp. 197-223 in Family Time: The Social Organization of Care edited by Nancy Folbre and Michael Bittman. New York: Routledge.

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Sociology

viii TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT...... ii

DEDICATION ...... iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... v

VITA...... vii

LIST OF FIGURES...... xii

CHAPTER 1...... 1 INTRODUCTION...... 1 1.1 Research Problem...... 1 1.2 Purpose of the Study...... 2 1.3 Research Questions ...... 3 1.4 “We’re Not Used to Losing…”...... 3 1.5 Hierarchy and Victory...... 6 1.6 Why this Case?...... 9 1.7 Overview of Methodology...... 10 1.8 Field notes, July 7, 2004...... 10 1.9 Background of the Study ...... 12 1.9.1 The Making of a Firestorm...... 12 1.9.2 The 2003 Fire Season in British Columbia...... 13 1.9.3 Valley of Fire ...... 14 1.9.4 Disaster Strikes: A “Home Run” Fire in Okanagan Park...... 15 1.9.5 Black Friday: August 22, 2003 ...... 19 1.9.6 The Aftermath...... 19 1.10 Literature Review...... 20 1.11 Theorizing Masculinities ...... 23 1.12 Organization of the Study...... 28

CHAPTER 2...... 32 GENDER RELATIONS AT WORK: IDEOLOGY, IDENTITY, AND PRACTICE..32 2.1 Literature...... 33 2.1.1 Gendered Organizations ...... 34 2.1.2 New Directions ...... 35 2.1.2.1 Organizational Context ...... 35 2.1.2.2 Ideology Versus Practice ...... 36

viii 2.1.2.3 Masculinity as Relational: Bringing Women In...... 37 2.2 Masculinized Occupations...... 41 2.3 Social Interaction ...... 42 2.3.1. Camaraderie and Brotherhood ...... 43 2.3.2. Pecking Order ...... 44 2.3.3 Personality and Fitting In...... 46 2.3.4 Trust, Respect, and Proving Yourself ...... 48 2.4 Identity Construction...... 52 2.4.1 Organizational Masculinities ...... 53 2.4.1.1 Structural Firefighters...... 53 2.4.1.1.1 Believing is Seeing ...... 55 2.4.1.1.2 Dissociating from Stereotypes...... 59 2.4.1.2 Wildland Firefighters...... 61 2.4.1.3 Heavy Equipment Operators...... 63 2.5 Tensions and Contradictions ...... 65 2.5.1 Firefighting as Masculine and Competent Women: Invoking Myths of Gender Neutrality...... 66 2.5.1.2 Men Making Gender Invisible ...... 67 2.5.1.2.1 Capable Women Firefighters as Gender Anomalies...... 69 2.5.1.2.2 (Myth Of) The Level Playing Field ...... 72 2.5.1.3 Women Making Gender Invisible: Navigating Othering in the Mythically Neutral Workplace ...... 74 2.6 Discussion...... 78

CHAPTER 3...... 84 LOSING AND IDENTITY WORK...... 84 3.1 Literature ...... 85 3.2 Occupational Culture, Losing, and Identity Management ...... 88 3.2.1 Ethic of Protection...... 88 3.2.2 “We’re Out There To Win…” ...... 89 3.3 Losing and “Bad Effects”...... 91 3.4 Credibility Under Fire ...... 94 3.5 Identity Talk ...... 95 3.5.1 Shifting Responsibility ...... 96 3.5.1.1 Pointing Fingers at the Other: “Somebody has to pay…” ...... 96 3.5.1.2 “There’s nothing you can do…” ...... 100 3.5.1.3 Safety First ...... 101 3.5.2 Minimizing Losses ...... 102 3.5.3 Shifting Focus ...... 103 3.6 Discussion...... 105

ix 3.6.1 The Case of Women Firefighters ...... 106 3.6.2 Consequences of Identity Work...... 107

CHAPTER 4...... 110 GENDERED STRATEGIES OF SELF: NAVIGATING HIERARCHY AND CONTESTING MASCULINITY ...... 110 4.1 Literature ...... 112 4.1.1 Strategies of Self ...... 113 4.1.2 Synthesis: Gendered Strategies of Self...... 114 4.2 Social Hierarchy...... 116 4.2.1 Access and Reward: The Structural Organization of Firefighting...... 118 4.2.2 The Making of Heroes...... 120 4.2.2.1 The media as reputational entrepreneurs: firefighters and heroic masculinity...... 122 4.3 Contesting Credibility ...... 127 4.3.1 Calm and reliable in crisis ...... 129 4.3.2 Aggression and Risk Taking...... 131 4.3.3 Repudiating the Feminine...... 132 4.4 Discussion...... 134

CHAPTER 5...... 140 CONCLUSION ...... 140 5.1 Credible Selves ...... 142 5.2 Consequences of Constructing Credible Selves ...... 144 5.3 The Issue of Intention...... 148 5.3.1 Intention and Power...... 150 5.4 Contribution to the Literature...... 150 5.5 Challenges, Limitations, and Future Research ...... 151

APPENDIX A ...... 154 DATA, METHODS, AND ANALYTIC STRATEGY...... 154 A.1 Project Design...... 154 A.1.1 Case Study ...... 154 A.1.1.1 Sampling Within the Case...... 155 A.2 Sample Diversity...... 159 A.3 Data Collection ...... 160 A.3.1 Perspectives on Interview Data...... 164 A.3.1.1 The Interviews...... 167 A.4 Feminist Methodology and Practice...... 169 A.4.1 Reflexivity...... 169

x A.4.2 A Feminist Researcher Interviewing (Mostly) Men...... 171 A.4.2.1 Disclosure and Reciprocity ...... 171 A.4.2.2 Rapport...... 173 A.4.2.3 Interviewing Men ...... 175 A.4.2.4 Challenges ...... 177 A.5 Data Analysis and Interpretation ...... 180 A.5.1 Approaches to Grounded Theory ...... 180 A.5.2 Writing as a Method of Discovery ...... 183 A.6 Issues of Quality in Qualitative Research ...... 183 A.6.1 Approaches to Quality Utilized in this Study ...... 188 A.6.1.2 Research Memos...... 188 A.6.1.3 Negative Cases ...... 188 A.6.1.4 Deception and Rapport ...... 189 A.6.1.5 Respondent Validation...... 191

LIST OF REFERENCES...... 192

xi LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1 Description of firefighting groups…………………………………………..6

2 Map of Kamloops fire center………………………………………………..14

3 Location of fire start…..…………………………………………………….16

4 Concept map of the relationship between gender ideology, social interaction, and identity construction………………………………...40

5 Summary of findings………………………………………………………..149

xii

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Research Problem

Firefighting is a highly masculinized occupation that defines “success” as controlling and exterminating fires and where “winning” carries with it a great deal of pride. Therefore, firefighters who face catastrophic losses are confronted by an “identity challenge.” That is, losing the battle against a fire undermines their dignity and self- esteem. While literature in the Sociology of Work has examined how workers navigate some situations that challenge identities (e.g. performing service work, loss of expert knowledge), it has largely overlooked how workers in general, and emergency responders in particular, negotiate challenges to their identity when faced with failure at work.

Further, although gender and work scholars have illuminated the ways in which these occupations are gendered, they have yet to examine how masculinity is implicated in workers’ responses to failure. It is important to learn more about how workers mend their identities in the aftermath of failure, because it is likely that such events compromise their dignity, sense of self-worth and general well-being.

In the process of coming to terms with failure, status inequalities between workers may be exacerbated or created, as those affected by the event attempt to determine who is responsible, where to assign blame, and who (if anybody) should escape criticism. Such 1

status hierarchies present workers with another identity challenge, as those at the bottom must attempt to re-establish their credibility, while those at the top must work to secure their ascendancy. To date, the literature has examined how lower status workers navigate workplace hierarchies, but very little attention has been paid to how high-status workers do so.

1.2 Purpose of the Study

This study aims to fill the aforementioned gaps in the literature by illuminating how workers’ respond to identity challenges—specifically, how they (re)gain their credibility and self-worth when their identities are undermined by failure and status hierarchy. I also explore the consequences of workers strategies for inter-group relations and the allocation of valued resources. In order to examine these identity challenges, I studied firefighters who labored day and night, under trying and often dangerous conditions, in an effort to halt one of the most devastating wildfires in Canadian history.

In the summer of 2003, the Okanagan valley in British Columbia was ravaged by devastating fires, the Okanagan Mountain Park fire being the worst on record. The losses that resulted from that fire were unprecedented, as were the number of residents displaced from their homes and places of work in the city of Kelowna. The economic costs of the

Okanagan Mountain Park fire are well documented. However, the personal toll on the firefighters and their efforts to regain their dignity deserve closer scrutiny.

1.3 Research Questions

To fulfill my research objective, I formulated the following research questions.

How did firefighters who battled the Okanagan Mountain Park fire respond to challenges to their sense of self? More specifically, how did they (re)gain their dignity and self- esteem in the face of two identity challenges—failure and status hierarchy? Given the fact that their work, occupations, and organizations are gendered, how were gender dynamics implicated in their identity management strategies? Finally, what were the consequences of their strategies for interpersonal relations, social standing, and gender and work equality?

1.4 “We’re Not Used to Losing…”

Despite their efforts, firefighters lost thousands of hectares of forest, and were unable to save property totaling millions of dollars. However, their diligence also saved countless houses and resources from the flames, and prevented the loss of lives. Many were even lauded as heroes for their work. So I was puzzled when I discovered that, by and large, firefighters felt that they “lost” the battle against the fire. For example, in a press conference, city of Kelowna fire chief Gerry Zimmerman, holding back tears, stated, “We’re not used to losing things. We don’t want to lose a shed, let alone a house, and when we start losing houses in this number it has a bad effect on our guys”

(Canadian Press 2003). Not only were firefighters focused on losses, as the fire chief noted, “losing” had a “bad effect” on them. In essence, they felt like they failed. As one firefighter explained after the first houses burned, “last night we only did 50 percent of our job”.

Because they felt a sense of loss and failure, firefighters engaged in a number of strategies to rescue their self-esteem. These strategies indicate that losing did have a

“bad effect” on firefighters; more precisely, it threatened their sense of self. Challenges to sense of self require identity work (Allen Collinson 2004), defined as the impression management activities (Goffman 1959) in which actors engage to accomplish a particular type of identity (Allen 2000; Snow and Anderson 1987).

Occupational identities—the set of central, distinctive, and enduring characteristics that typify a particular line of work (Van Maanen and Barley 1984)—are deeply intertwined with personal identities (Allen Collinson 2004; Ashforth and Kreiner

1999; Woods and Jeffrey 2002). In addition, both personal (Kimmel 2000) and work identities are gendered (Ashforth and Kreiner 1999; Fuchs Epstein 1992). Therefore, challenges to work identities simultaneously threaten one’s personal identity and sense of self as a gendered being. I show that firefighters’ efforts to salvage their occupational gender identities—their identity management strategies—had serious consequences for inter-group relations, equality, and firefighters’ reputations.

In order to understand why firefighters felt like they lost, and why losing presented a challenge to their identities that necessitated a great deal of identity work, we need to take a closer look at the context in which they labor. First, firefighters were deeply troubled by the losses because the occupational culture of firefighting values

“winning”—defined as controlling or exterminating fire and preventing losses to property and other valued resources. Prior to the Okanagan Mountain Park fire, firefighters were relatively successful at these tasks therefore, losing undermined their occupational identities. However, there were additional, less obvious, gender dynamics that posed an

identity threat. Firefighters’ occupational milieus valorize and reinforce culturally dominant standards of masculinity, but at the same time are imbued with inconsistencies that may challenge gender hierarchies. Crisis tendencies (Connell 1995) in the gender order, such as the entry of women into formerly all-male occupations, have undermined the ascendancy of men firefighters in their own professions. Given that masculinity dynamics are conflict ridden, fluid, and contested (Connell 1995), it is not difficult to imagine that the changing terrain of gender relations in these workplaces placed firefighters’ occupationally-based masculinity under siege.

The events surrounding the fire further hindered firefighters’ efforts to accomplish masculinity,1 and presented new assaults on their self-esteem. Crises are by their very nature unpredictable, and situations arise that interfere with regular activities and interactions. Therefore, actors may not be able to draw on their usual practices for doing gender. Further, crisis events may call into question taken for granted assumptions and ideologies. Losing was one such event for firefighters. They were immersed in workplace cultures that championed culturally dominant ideals of masculinity such as toughness, control, and winning, but the fire presented a situation in which they could not live up to these ideals. Firefighters were expected to live up the very standards that this crisis event subverted. We need to take these circumstances into account in order to

1 This is not to say that there were no women involved in the fire fighting efforts, nor that women cannot make valuable understandings to our understanding of masculinity. There were, in fact, hundreds of women in both paid and volunteer positions who worked many hours during the crisis. However, similar to other disaster settings (e.g. see Fothergill 2004), they were relegated primarily to “support” roles, such as serving food, finding temporary housing etc. As a result, the majority of firefighters who I interviewed were men. However, I did interview several women firefighters, and I explore their strategies for accomplishing gender in Chapter Two.

understand why firefighters’ were so concerned about the losses, and why they engaged

in the identity management strategies that they did.

1.5 Hierarchy and Victory

Another situation surrounding the fire posed a challenge for firefighters—a status hierarchy in which one group of firefighters received considerably more accolades than other groups. There were four distinct occupational groups involved in the firefighting efforts: (i) structural firefighters; (ii) wildland firefighters; (iii) pilots; and (iv) heavy equipment operators. Figure 1 provides a brief description of each group.

Group Gender and number Job composition interviewed Structural fight structural City of Kelowna 16 men firefighters fires, primarily firefighters and within the city supervisors limits

Wildland fight forest initial attack crew, 14 men, 3 women firefighters fires, usually unit crew, outside of the supervisors, city limits contract crew, administrators Pilots fight forest supervisor, air 4 men fires from the attack officer, air air tanker pilot, helicopter pilot Heavy equipment fight forest loggers and forest 3 men operators fires industry employee on the ground Total 40

Figure 1. Description of firefighting groups

There was a collective sense of loss among all firefighters because they felt like they failed in their mandate “to control and exterminate fires”. It was also evident that all firefighters worked hard to put out the fire. We often think of disasters as situations in which people “come together”, and these observations would suggest that the fire created solidarities among firefighters. However, on the contrary, there were deep divisions between firefighting groups. This was partly the result of the status hierarchy that became apparent during the fire. Structural firefighters received much more prestige, recognition, and rewards from the public and the media than other firefighters. Less than a year after the fire, structural firefighters also secured a pay raise. This hierarchy generated a great deal of antagonism from non-structural firefighters, who were keenly aware of these disparities. So, while all firefighters had to deal with a sense of loss, non- structural firefighters felt unsupported and abandoned by the public and the media.

Structural firefighters, on the other hand, had to justify disproportionate praise and rewards in light of the fact that they lost the battle against the fire. While the task of

managing identities is ever present (Padavic 2005), Schwalbe and Mason-Schrock (2002) point out that these kinds of challenges necessitate intense identity work:

All social life requires identity work….but the work may be more or less arduous and constant depending on the features of the context….Status inequalities may amplify this need, as serious consequences can ensue from establishing or failing to establish one’s claims to a valued identity. Intergroup conflict might likewise call for intense identity work…as groups lay claim to valued identities…while perhaps also trying to impose devalued identities on their antagonists (p. 138).

It was in an occupational context of contested masculinity, change and uncertainty, losing the battle against the fire, and unequal praise and rewards, that firefighters had to rescue their self-esteem—more, they had to rescue their masculinity.

In this dissertation I show how they attempted to do so, and with what effects. I illustrate how in the very act of attempting to regain their dignity and secure their masculinity, firefighters created and reinforced divisions between occupational groups that undermined larger solidarities that could have been created by the fire. I further demonstrate that firefighters’ efforts to establish a stable sense of masculine identity resulted in short and long term consequences for the allocation of symbolic and material resources. In the end, some of those who “failed”—namely, structural firefighters— emerged as victors. While they may have lost the battle against the fire, structural firefighters won the war over masculinity. I argue that we can’t understand how and why this happened without examining gender dynamics.

1.6 Why this Case?

The case of the Okanagan Mountain Park fire provides fertile ground for studying

identity challenge issues. First, the firefighters who fought on the fire work in

occupations and organizations where men affirm their masculinity and their occupational

identity by what they do. Furthermore, firefighters’ masculinity was contested due to the

gradual infiltration of women into their ranks, placing their gender identities under threat.

Second, the fire resulted in unprecedented losses and, by and large, firefighters felt like

they failed in their mission to control it. This sense of failure challenged their identities.

Third, as mentioned above, even though there was a collective sense of failure, one group

of firefighters received many more accolades and rewards than the other groups, which

caused dilemmas for identity construction. Fourth, this event was unique in that it was an

interface fire,2 necessitating the involvement of several kinds of firefighters. This allows for an analysis of inter-group relations that are not normally available for investigation.

Finally, while there are some important differences between the firefighters who fought on this fire, they are relatively privileged in terms of race, class, and gender. As sociologists we often study “down” the social hierarchy—the poor, the incarcerated, blue- or pink-collar workers (Messner 2001), however, Dorothy Smith (1999) and others argue that “studying up”—that is, examining privileged standpoints—promises to provide new insights about the workings of power. The fire and those involved in it provide one such opportunity for “studying up”.

2 The wildland/urban interface is the geographical point where the wilderness and urban development meet. In an interface fire, structures and vegetation are sufficiently close that a wildfire spreads to structures and/or a structural fire ignites trees and vegetation (Ministry of Forests Protection Branch 2004b). The Okanagan Mountain Park fire started in the forest and spread to houses in the city of Kelowna.

1.7 Overview of Methodology

To find answers to my research questions, I drew on in-depth interview data with

40 firefighters, work-site observations, and archival documents. I traveled to the

Okanagan valley to do fieldwork on three occasions, and spoke to those involved in the firefighting efforts. A detailed discussion of my methodological approach is provided in

Appendix A. In the section below, I describe one of my forays into the field.

1.8 Field notes, July 7, 2004

As I started my two-hour car commute to the regional forestry office in Penticton,

British Columbia on July 7th, 2004, I wondered what the day ahead held. It was overcast and unseasonably chilly, just the kind of weather I was hoping for. This lessened the possibility of new fires, meaning that the chance of catching firefighters at the base was fairly good. The cool weather also meant that it would be a comfortable drive in the car loaned to me by my Dad, a reliable vehicle with lots of spunk but no air conditioning.

After two weeks of interviews and fieldwork, I had become accustomed to last- minute schedule changes, and the possibility of showing up only to find an office empty, with firefighters called to a fire or tending to another emergency. Today, things went smoothly. Shortly after 10 a.m. I arrived at the firefighter base, donuts in hand, and was relieved to find that there were people milling about. I chatted briefly with the office assistant and a forest protection officer whom I had interviewed several days earlier.

A few minutes later, Jack, a long-time veteran of the forest service, arrived and announced that he was ready to start our interview. I headed to Jack’s office—a space crammed with an eclectic array of photographs, posters, gag gifts, and fire manuals—and

he proceeded to explain the importance of humor for workers’ morale, especially on large fires. We went on to talk for about two hours. Through laughter and tears, Jack explained some of the personal costs associated with his line of work, and highlighted various technical and organizational aspects of his job. He also relayed the events of the

Okanagan Mountain Park fire. Jack talked at length about public (mis)perceptions surrounding the fire, the personal toll that large losses take on firefighters, including himself, and the lack of recognition that the Ministry of Forests Protection Branch received for its efforts.

Later that afternoon, Jack invited me along on a helicopter ride over an area burned by one of the last big fires of the previous summer. I jumped at the chance, and after a short safety demonstration on the tarmac, we boarded the helicopter. I found my way into one of the back seats, and put my headphones and seat belt on. As the rotors reached full speed, and we lifted off, I felt a surge of excitement and anticipation. We ascended quickly. As we soared high over Skaha Lake and continued south down a canyon in the Okanagan valley, the beauty and ruggedness of the terrain came into full relief. It was difficult to imagine that only 12 months earlier, the valley had been ravaged by devastating wildfires.

1.9 Background of the Study

1.9.1 The Making of a Firestorm

Fire is a natural part of the forest ecosystem in British Columbia (Ministry of

Forests Protection Branch 2006g). Prior to European settlement, wildfire is thought to have burned 500,000 to 1 million hectares3 of land annually. In the dry, interior part of the province, where the Okanagan Mountain Park fire occurred, low intensity fires once swept through on a five- to 15-year cycle, preventing ground fuels4 from accumulating to the point where they caused more intense, less suppressible wildfires (Keller 2002).

When the B.C. Forest Service was established in 1912, it emphasized the prevention and control of forest fires in the province. The success of these fire suppression efforts significantly reduced wildfires (Filmon 2004) and hectares burned. The average hectares burned per year from 1994 to 2002 was 25, 177 (Ministry of Forests Protection Branch

2006d). Aggressive fire suppression has concomitantly resulted in a dangerous build-up of forest fuels, tree encroachment on grasslands, and in-filling of the once open, dry forests in the southern interior part of the province (Ministry of Forests Protection Branch

2006g). According to Freake and Plant (2003):

3 One hectare is the equivalent of four acres.

4 Fuel is combustible material needed for a wildfire to burn, such as trees, brush, and other vegetation. The more fuel available in a wildfire, the more difficult it is to put it out (Filmon 2004).

Professional foresters had predicted that a catastrophic fire would engulf Okanagan Mountain Park. The 10,000 hectares of forest had been left in their natural state untouched by fire for almost 50 years. The forest floor was covered by tinder. Blocks of standing dead trees grew bigger because falling them in BC parks is forbidden. Insects killed many of them, providing more fuel (p. 14-15).

In addition to fuel, a wildfire’s progress is determined by weather and topography

(Filmon 2004). Dry, hot weather rapidly increases the danger of wildfires (Ministry of

Forests Protection Branch 2006h), and 2003 was a very dry, hot summer in the interior region of British Columbia. Kelowna recorded the driest June to August period since records began in 1899 and set a record with 44 consecutive rainless days (Environment

Canada Weather Summary cited in Filmon 2004).

1.9.2 The 2003 Fire Season in British Columbia

The 2003 fire season was one of the most catastrophic in British Columbia's recorded history. Due to the extended drought in the southern half of the province, forest firefighters faced conditions never before seen in Canada. Lightning strikes, human carelessness, and arson all contributed to igniting nearly 2,500 fires involving more than

10,000 firefighters and support personnel and burning more than 265,000 hectares at a cost of $375 million (Ministry of Forests Protection Branch 2006i). A quarter of a billion trees were lost. Three hundred and thirty-four homes were destroyed. More than 50,000 people were evacuated. More property was lost to fire than in any previous year in B.C. history (Freake and Plant 2003; Ministry of Forests Protection Branch 2006i).

1.9.3 Valley of Fire

The province of British Columbia is divided into six fire centers: Coastal,

Northwest, Prince George, Kamloops, Southeast and Cariboo. The Kamloops fire center is the shaded area in Figure 2. In turn, each fire centre is made up of fire zones. The

Kamloops Fire Centre encompasses 7.5 million hectares and is divided into seven fire zones: Clearwater, Kamloops, Salmon Arm, Vernon, Penticton, Merritt, and Lillooet.

The Okanagan Mountain Park fire occurred in the Okanagan Valley, which is part of the

Penticton Fire Zone (Ministry of Forests Protection Branch 2006c)—denoted by the arrow in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Map of Kamloops fire center. Source: Protection Branch Website

In 2003, the number of hectares burned and number of fires significantly exceeded 10 year averages for the Kamloops Fire Center. The 10-year average for number of fires per year is 546, while the average number of hectares burned per year is

16,298. During the 2003 fire season, 785 fires occurred, resulting in the consumption of 14

106,961 hectares (Ministry of Forests Protection Branch 2006c). According to the fire zone manager, a normal season in the Penticton Fire Zone consists of 120 fires, approximately two of which grow to be 100 hectares. However, in 2003, there were already 95 fires in the zone by August 16. In addition, three new fires started on August

16, and 47 fires were still burning as of that day (Ministry of Forests Protection Branch

2006j).

Two of the biggest fires of the season burned more area than the average hectares per year for the entire Kamloops Fire Centre. In addition, seven large interface fires occurred in the Kamloops Fire Centre during 2003, resulting in the loss of 334 homes, 10 businesses and other valuable structures (Ministry of Forests Protection Branch 2006c).

1.9.4 Disaster Strikes: A “Home Run” Fire in Okanagan Park

“There’s certain fires that we call home run fires….It doesn’t matter what you do, the fire, the ball, is going outside the park.”

After decades of fuel buildup and several consecutive years of unusually hot, dry weather, the interior area of British Columbia was ready to explode. All that was needed was a spark to start a large, destructive wildfire (Freake and Plant 2003), and that is exactly what happened in the early morning hours of August 16, 2003. Lightning struck in a remote section of Okanagan Mountain Park at 1:55 a.m. at a point about 200 metres above Okanagan Lake.5 The fire was located on the east side of the lake in an area of the

5 The information in this section was obtained from interviews, the Fire Review Summary for the Okanagan Mountain Park fire (Ministry of Forests Protection Branch 2006j), and Wildfire News (Ministry of Forests Protection Branch 2004c).

park that was inaccessible by road. A photograph of the starting location of the fire is provided in Figure 3. The view is from the west side of Okanagan Lake, looking at the approximate location of fire start on the east side of the lake.

Figure 3. Location of fire start. Source: Author’s photograph.

Jack was the first forest protection officer on the scene, as he was on field response duty that week. At 2:30 a.m. he received a call from Brad, the lookout, saying

“we got one in the park”. Jack looked out the window in the direction of Okanagan

Mountain park and agreed that he should drive over and check it out. By 3:00 a.m. he was on the scene taking pictures, evaluating the topography and fire activity, and deciding what to do next. The fire was about five hectares in size, and located in steep, rocky, and poorly accessible terrain. He concluded that it was too dangerous for crews to cross the lake (the only way to get to the fire) and climb the steep bluffs in the dark. He

requested early morning action by aircraft and firefighting crews, and by 6:30 a.m. a helicopter was bucketing the fire. By 7:00 a.m. the fire size reached about 15 hectares.

While Jack was assessing the fire from a helicopter shortly after 6:30 a.m., a local logging company radioed in to say there was another fire at nearby Ratnip Lake. He flew over the fire and decided it was more ominous than the fire in Okanagan Mountain park.

It was closer to the city of Kelowna, had continuous fuel, lots of dead beetle trees, and was about 3.5 kilometres (km) from a local tourist lodge. He knew he had to take immediate and aggressive action. On the positive side, it was more accessible than the

Okanagan Mountain Park fire. The topography was such that heavy equipment could get in, and there was a pump-able water supply. Crews managed to contain the Ratnip fire at just about 4 hectares; a “save” by wildland firefighting standards.

Meanwhile, the Okanagan Mountain Park fire was proving to be a major challenge. Ground crews and aircraft were battling wind, heat, dry conditions, smoke, and difficult terrain. Ten to twelve hours after the fire began, it took a major run. Heat and extremely low relative humidity eventually overcame the effects of the water scoopers. Gusts of wind began to play havoc with the fire. Two fire spots appeared north of the main fire within 15 minutes. Two helicopters bucketed these spots immediately but reported that even with a 2 to 3 minute turn around, they could make no progress due to the dry conditions. They would drop water on a spot and by the time they returned from the lake with another bucket of water, the fire had regained its intensity.

By mid-afternoon it was clear that the dangerous potential of the fire had increased dramatically. Jack received a call from the supervisor in charge of the south side

firefighting operations. Jack recalled, “I remember when he called me, he said, ‘Hey, you better come have a look at this Jack, it’s gone’—and from there it’s history”.

The fire grew progressively larger over the next few days, and on August 19 it took a significant run to the south. The fire grew from approximately 2,000 to 9,000 hectares, pushed by strong winds from the north. On August 20, Jack’s colleague working on the south side of the fire undertook a harrowing burn-off operation in an attempt to slow the advance of the fire. After an all-day struggle the crew managed to save the homes in the small community of Glen Fir:

We started up at first light and I told the guys that they had until noon to get the [fire] guard in because I wanted to take advantage of the winds….So again the fire was still coming back against the wind and it was burning still towards Glen Fir and the houses there. Um, we managed to get the guard in, we finished it by about 1 o’clock…. the reason you put in a guard is you want a starting point. You want something that the fire isn’t going to cross…. They did, I don’t know, 8 or 9 kilometres of guard….Then we came in in the afternoon and we lit it up, and it burnt, burnt off that whole hillside. So seven, eight hundred hectares….that’s big, very big….The fire was still moving, even with that the fire was moving south to the houses. And um it was probably within 300 metres of that one house when we started lighting it.

By August 21, the fire, now 13,000 hectares, started to threaten the city of Kelowna.

Homeowners in affected areas were given evacuation orders. The fire was throwing burning embers up to 100 metres in front of the main fire. Wildland and structural firefighters, pilots, and heavy equipment operators toiled through the night. Their efforts saved 17 homes, but 21 structures were lost to the flames.

1.9.5 Black Friday: August 22, 2003

By August 22nd, the fire that had started five days earlier was raging out of control, growing to 17,000 hectares. Crews continued to construct fire guards and conduct structure protection, but some had to be pulled off the fire line in the afternoon for safety reasons. At 4:45 p.m. the fire blew up, pushed by 75 km/h winds and gusting downdrafts. The fire was moving along three fronts, generally expanding to the northeast with Rank 5 and 6 fire behavior.6 The fire intensity was carrying burning debris (the size of dinner plates) 6 to 8 km from the main fire. Wildland fire crews worked alongside structural firefighters to save as many structures as possible. Air tankers, water bombers, and helicopters provided support from the air and heavy equipment continued suppression efforts on the ground. Unfortunately, the winds did not subside until 3:00 a.m. on August 23—over 250 homes were lost.

1.9.6 The Aftermath

The final size of the Okanagan Mountain Park fire was 25, 912 hectares—the most significant interface wildfire event in British Columbia history. The devastation caused by this fire was unprecedented and forever changed the history of the Okanagan

Valley. The communities of Naramata and Kelowna suffered the worst effects. The blaze caused the evacuation of 33,050 people (4,050 of these people were also evacuated

6 The Protection Branch utilizes a fire intensity ranking system ranging from rank 1 (a smouldering fire with no open flames) to rank 6 (blow up or conflagration; violent fire behavior with a rate of spread in excess of 18 meters per minute) (Ministry of Forests Protection Branch 2006k).

for a second time) and loss or damage to over 250 homes (Ministry of Forests Protection

Branch 2003a). The fire also burned a significant portion of a national historic site

(Heritage Society of British Columbia 2004). In the end, millions of dollars of property were lost.

1.10 Literature Review

The pioneering work of Snow and Anderson (1987; 1994) begins to illuminate how people respond to identity challenges. Their research on homeless street people indicates that those who find themselves at the bottom of status hierarchies attempt to gain a measure of self-worth and dignity by engaging in identity work. One variant of identity work—identity talk—entails the verbal construction and assertion of personal identity. Homeless people utilized various kinds of identity talk (such as distancing themselves from their homeless peers) that enabled them to salvage a measure of self- worth in the context of their stigmatized status.

Sociology of work scholars have expanded this line of inquiry to examine how stigmatized and marginalized workers, such as midwives (Foley 2005), contract researchers (Allen Collinson 2004), care workers (Solari 2006) and those who perform

“dirty work” (Ashforth and Kreiner 1999; Tracy and Scott 2006), construct positive identities in light of their subordinate standing. While these studies illuminate the identity work strategies of marginalized workers, there is no literature that I am aware of that examines how workers (marginal or otherwise) might engage in identity work in

response to failure. This is important because many workers are likely to experience failure at work, and when they do it is likely that their dignity, sense of self-worth and general well-being are compromised.

One challenge that firefighters confronted—a status hierarchy—has been investigated by Rachel Sherman (2005; 2006) who explores how service workers in luxury hotels negotiate status hierarchies between themselves and their guests. She finds that workers maintain dignity and assert a powerful sense of self by comparing themselves to guests and establishing superiority on a range of symbolic hierarchies, such as competence, authority, status, need, morality, intelligence, and cultural capital. For instance, workers evaluated guests on the basis of their intelligence, often reframing guests’ demands as indicators of incompetence, and indicative of inferior social status.

Sherman coins these identity work tactics “strategies of self”. These strategies allowed workers to effectively portray themselves as superior to their socially and materially privileged guests. Sherman implicitly suggests that workers construct superior selves because their sense of self is threatened by status inequality…

This work goes a long way toward explaining how low status workers cultivate a positive sense of self in response to status inequalities. Far less is known, however, about the strategies of self utilized by high status workers. Sherman (2006) finds that high status hotel guests attempt to minimize status differences between themselves and low status hotel workers. But we cannot assume that high status workers exercise the same strategies to maintain dignity, power, and respect when their status is threatened or undermined. Sherman found that some higher status workers (e.g. doormen and concierges) attempted to elevate their status in relation to their co-workers by

emphasizing the authority and material privileges associated with their jobs. Similarly, I found that structural firefighters, who had comparatively high status vis-à-vis other firefighters, attempted to maintain their dignity and self-esteem by maximizing their social status.

However, there is a key difference between the workers in Sherman’s study and the structural firefighters in mine. Despite their relatively high status on internal hierarchies, doormen and concierge workers remained subordinate to hotel guests, explaining why they engaged in strategies of self. However, it is much less clear why structural firefighters, who were at the top of a status hierarchy, and held up as heroes for their efforts, attempted to situate themselves as superior in relation to their firefighting colleagues. That is, unless we incorporate gender; something that Sherman does not theorize in her formulation of strategies of self.

Identity management strategies can have unintended negative consequences. For example, Roschelle and Kaufman (2004) found that some homeless kids’ stigma management strategies actually worked to reinforce their spoiled identities. Identity work also has implications for patterns of inequality that transcend the social psychological realm. When workers engage in identity work, like strategies of self, they create symbolic boundaries that not only differentiate them from others, but situate them as superior to others (Sherman 2005). What then are the implications for inequality that emerge from these tactics? One could hypothesize that engaging in these tactics would elevate social standing. However, Padavic (2005) found that workers identity management strategies inadvertently reproduced consent to exploitative work relations.

Sherman determined that hotel workers’ efforts to construct superior selves normalized

guests’ entitlement to their labor and therefore, legitimated class inequalities between workers and guests. I also found that firefighters’ strategies of self resulted in inequality.

However, I argue that we cannot understand how, in a time of change, uncertainty, and crisis, one group was able to emerge as (symbolic) victors that enabled them to claim material rewards, unless we recognize the ways in which gender was implicated in their identity work. In short, we can’t understand how broader inequalities are created and perpetuated in work contexts unless we understand workers’ strategies of self, and we can’t understand strategies of self unless we understand how gender operates.

To summarize, we need to unpack gender dynamics to understand: (i) how firefighters constructed their identities in the face of failure and status inequalities that undermined their dignity and self-esteem; (ii) why high status (i.e. structural) firefighters attempted to elevate their social standing and (iii) how structural firefighters were able to translate opportunities generated by the fire into material rewards, while other firefighters were not. Toward this end, a brief overview of the theoretical literature on masculinity is required.

1.11 Theorizing Masculinities

Contemporary theoretical approaches to gender relations, and masculinity in particular, provide a number of pertinent insights. First, differences among men shape the ways they experience and enact gender. For example, masculinity is profoundly influenced by social structures such as race, class, age, sexuality, etc. and these structures affect men in different ways. In addition, masculinity is historically and culturally contingent. So there is not one pattern of masculinity that is found everywhere, rather

there are masculinities (Connell 1995; Kimmel 1994). In addition, some masculinities are deemed culturally superior to other masculinities; hegemonic masculinity is the most honored or desired at a particular time, in a particular setting. Hegemonic masculinity is relational; it cannot exist unless there are subordinated Others (i.e. women and marginalized men) who are constructed as deficient in some way. As a result, hegemonic masculinity upholds power and status inequalities, both between men and women, and among men (Connell 1995; 2000a; 2000b).

The relational aspect of hegemonic masculinity can be more broadly situated in the oppressive practices of Othering. Patricia Hill Collins (2000) provides a number of important insights in this regard. In order to construct an identity for themselves, dominant groups construct boundaries based on certain characteristics (such as race and/or class and/or gender); those that fall outside of the boundaries are thereby constructed as the “Other”. Inevitably, the Other is constructed as inferior in some way.

In the case of race, “White” becomes the norm against which all other communities of color are judged, and found wanting. In short, Othering is domination based on difference. Othering has been, and continues to be, a central process in the subordination of African-American women (Hill Collins 2000).7 Likewise, the power and very

7 It is worth noting here that my analyses of masculinity dynamics and hierarchy are an extension of Patricia Hill Collins’ “matrix of domination” (1991). Rejecting additive models of oppression, in which one system of oppression (such as class) takes theoretical precedence, she argues that systems of oppression such as gender, race, and class work together to produce injustice. Within this framework there are few pure victims or oppressors, rather each individual derives varying amounts of penalty and privilege from the multiple systems of oppression in which they are located in the matrix of domination.

existence of hegemonic masculinity rests on the ability to situate Others as not only different, but inferior.

The main patterns of contemporary hegemonic masculinity in Western societies include the connection of masculinity with toughness and competitiveness, the subordination of women and the marginalization of gay men (Connell 1995). In addition, appropriately masculine men are supposed to (i) remain calm and reliable in a crisis; hold emotions in check, (ii) be aggressive and take risks, (iii) repudiate anything remotely related to femininity, and (iv) strive for power, success, and wealth (e.g. see Brannon

1976; Goffman 1963; Kimmel 1994). While few men actually meet all of these normative standards, hegemonic masculinity is the benchmark against which all men are measured. Moreover, according to Kimmel (1994), it is other men who do the evaluating, “We are under the constant careful scrutiny of other men. Other men watch us, rank us, grant our acceptance into the realm of manhood. Manhood is demonstrated for other men’s approval. It is other men who evaluate the performance” (p. 130).

A further theoretical insight is that hegemonic masculinity cannot be reduced to a simple model of cultural control, as the notion of hegemony implies an active struggle for dominance (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). Therefore, while hegemonic masculinity is the standard against which all other masculinities are measured, the position at the top of the hierarchy is never secure and always contestable (Connell 1995). As Monaghan

(2002) stresses, “male hierarchy is never static or guaranteed; it is processual, contested and requires the continual…(re)production of situational dominance, authority and subordination” (p. 530).

Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity has been widely applied in gender- related research, however the concept has also been criticized on a number of fronts

(Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). A number of critiques are germane to this discussion, the first of which points to a tendency to essentialize differences between men and women (e.g. see Peterson 2003). Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) note that the concept has oftentimes been misinterpreted and misused, and acknowledge that a great deal of essentializing has occurred in the literature, despite the fact that hegemonic masculinity was formulated in an anti-essentialist way:

Masculinity is not a fixed entity embedded in the body or personality traits of individuals. Masculinities are configurations of practice that are accomplished in social action and, therefore, can differ according to the gender relations in a particular social setting (p. 836).

While I focus on men’s strategies for engaging with masculinity, my position is not an essentialist one. In Chapter Two, I discuss how the women firefighters in my study sometimes constructed gender on masculine terms, for example, by positioning themselves as more competent at symbolically masculine tasks than their male colleagues. This demonstrates that individual women can practice “masculinities” just as individual men can practice “femininities” (Connell 1995), a finding also borne out in the broader literature on gender and work (e.g. see Iacuone 2005). However, because almost all of my participants are men, I speak mainly about patterns of masculinity construction among men.

Second, the concept of hegemonic masculinity has received criticism for tending to dichotomize men’s and women’s experiences (e.g. see Brod 1994), making it seem as though women are peripheral to hegemonic masculinity. The solution to this problem, is

to return to a focus on a relational approach to gender (Connell and Messerschmidt

2005). Because gender is accomplished in interactions with others, and often defined by what one is not, what is considered “masculine” is defined in oppositional relation to understandings of what is feminine (Connell 1995; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005;

Kimmel 1994). In Chapter Two, I demonstrate how men and women firefighters construct gender relationally.

Finally, Wetherell and Edley (1999) assert that Connell’s (1995; 2000a) work on hegemonic masculinity has proven useful for understanding the broad social context of gender relations, but has not been developed in a way that accounts for the social psychological reproduction of masculine identity. Therefore, more micro-level analyses are required to understand men’s strategies for negotiating identities in everyday practice.

They conclude that masculinity is not a character type, but a way that men position themselves through psycho-discursive practices—that is, men come to identify and create masculine identity through talk.

Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) note that discursive perspectives, such as

Wetherell and Edley’s, emphasize the symbolic dimension of hegemonic masculinity, however, the concept is more than a set of cultural ideals. Rather, hegemonic masculinity encompasses structural dimensions, such as the organization of paid and unpaid labor, that place limits on discursive flexibility. I attend to the ways in which masculinity is created through discourse in all of my analyses, and in Chapter Four I pay close attention to the structural and cultural conditions that both limited and enabled the achievement of masculine identity for firefighters. I elaborate on my approach for doing so in the

Methods appendix.

Before moving forward, it is instructive to note that in addition to my gender and masculinities framework, the notion of ‘the self’, rooted in symbolic interactionism, is an element of my conceptual framing. McIntosh and McKeganey (2001) provide an excellent synopsis of identity in the symbolic interactionist tradition:

[The self] refers to how people see themselves or their sense of who and what they are: in other words, their identity. According to the symbolic interactionist approach, one’s sense of self is continually formed and reformed through interactions with others as individuals internalize the attitudes which others hold towards them (Blumer, 1969; Mead, 1934). However, the messages which are received from external sources are not incorporated automatically into the individual’s sense of self. An important part of the process of maintaining and reforming one’s identity lies in the individual’s ability to interpret the messages which he or she receives from others and to accept, reject, or modify them (p. 49).

1.12 Organization of the Study

Masculinities are collective processes sustained and re(created) in institutional settings (Connell 2000a), therefore, a thorough analysis of the ways in which firefighters respond to identity challenges posed by crisis events, and how their strategies are gendered, must consider the broader institutional contexts in which these relations occur.

Of particular importance are firefighters’ work milieus—it is imperative that we are familiar with the settings in which they labor if we are to properly interpret and understand their fire experiences.

In Chapter Two, I undertake an in-depth analysis of firefighters’ work settings.

Drawing on gendered organizations theory, I first argue that when we focus on the cultural construction of an occupation as masculinized or feminized, we tend to lose sight of the fact that the gendering process is affected by the contextually specific organizational settings in which it occurs. Therefore, we need to take into consideration

that firefighters’ workplaces are sites of contested masculinity, due to the relatively recent arrival of women firefighters, and that firefighters were confronted with feelings of loss, failure, and animosity in the wake of the fire. It is only by folding these organizational dynamics into our analyses that we can better understand why firefighters responded to identity challenges and constructed gender in the ways that they did.

Second, I maintain that although firefighting is culturally constructed as masculine at the occupational level, we need to examine the gendering process at the levels of interaction and identity, as there may not be a direct correspondence between these levels. I demonstrate that the occupational ideologies of firefighting occupations are highly masculinized, and in many ways firefighters’ social interactions and identity constructions are congruent with these ideologies. But because these are also sites of contested masculinity (due to the presence of women co-workers), firefighters discursively attempted to re-establish the link between firefighting and masculinity in order to preserve their occupational gender identities and privileged status. Further, I illustrate that the ways in which women firefighters constructed their occupational identities aided in reproducing and naturalizing the masculinized nature of their work.

However, I also show that the connection between firefighting and masculinity is not without its tensions and contradictions. At the level of identity, I show that firefighters invoked myths of gender neutrality, and periodically distanced themselves from the masculine stereotypes associated with their occupation.

In Chapter Three, I begin by discussing the importance of winning in the occupational culture of firefighting, and how this culture is also imbued with an ethic of protection. I show that losing did have a “bad effect” on firefighters, arguing that their

identity work provides evidence that losing threatened their identities. I highlight a number of strategies that they used to resituate themselves as competent firefighters, including shifting responsibility, minimizing losses, and directing attention away from losses toward positive outcomes. Firefighters worked especially hard at this because, as I show in Chapter Two, their occupational identities were under siege at work. Losing exacerbated this situation, resulting in a great deal of identity work. Finally, I examine some of the consequences of their identity work, proposing that in the very act of trying to regain their self-worth, firefighters undermined the possibility of larger solidarities between firefighting groups.

The status hierarchy that became evident over the course of the fire presented firefighters with another challenge to their identities. In Chapter Four, I flesh out how the hierarchy developed; starting with the organization of the firefighting efforts, and the ways in which the media covered the fire. I also demonstrate that firefighters engaged in strategies of self to regain their dignity and that these strategies were gendered—their narratives positioned them as worthy of rewards and recognition, and rested on claims to exemplary masculinity. Finally, I outline how these dynamics allowed structural firefighters to translate the opportunities generated by the fire into material rewards.

Snow and Anderson (1994) distinguish between social identities and personal identities. Social identities are “imputed to others in an attempt to place or situate them as social objects” (p. 240), and personal identities are the meanings attributed to the self by the actor. However, it is important to note that identity work is always a social activity; whether it primarily serves the needs of individuals or groups, it is a joint accomplishment created through social interaction (McCall and Simmons 1978;

Schwalbe and Mason-Schrock 1996). I use the general term “identity management strategies” to denote several kinds of identity work utilized by firefighters. In Chapter

Two and Three I focus primarily on firefighters’ “individual” identity work. In Chapter

Four, attention is paid to firefighters’ gendered strategies of self (incorporating a gender and comparative dimension to identity work), and boundary work (collective identity work).

In Chapter Five, I discuss the broader implications of these findings, highlight some contributions and limitations of this research, and offer several suggestions for the direction and focus of future work on identity, gender, and work. Finally, I include an appendix outlining the methods that were utilized to gather, analyze, and interpret the data used in this study.

CHAPTER 2

GENDER RELATIONS AT WORK: IDEOLOGY, IDENTITY, AND PRACTICE

In Chapter 2, I demonstrate that the occupational ideologies of firefighting occupations are highly masculinized, and how in many ways firefighters’ social interactions and identity constructions are congruent with these ideologies. However, these are also contexts of contested masculinity. Women firefighters present a threat to masculinity construction because their presence undermines the connection between firefighting and masculinity. I outline how men firefighters discursively attempted to re- establish this link in order to preserve their occupational gender identities and privileged status. Further, I illustrate that the ways in which women firefighters constructed their occupational identities helped to reproduce and naturalize the masculinized nature of their work.

Although firefighters from different occupational groups were involved in the firefighting efforts, they all worked in settings that were male-dominated. By this I mean that men were advantaged both numerically and socially. Their workplaces could be classified, to borrow Dellinger’s term (2004:550), as “safe” contexts—that is, men were in positions of power and their workplace cultures strongly supported culturally dominant ideals of masculinity. However, the presence of women firefighters created tensions in these safe spaces that weakened the connection between firefighting and masculinity. In

this chapter, drawing on gendered organizations theory, I highlight some of the correlations and tensions between occupational gender ideology and practices, and analyze how firefighters’ accomplish gender in this context. I show that we must examine the narratives of both men and women firefighters in order to understand how gender is constructed in these contested spaces. I conclude that women firefighters’ practices simultaneously undermined and re(enforced) the link between firefighting and masculinity.

2.1 Literature

Burawoy’s (1979) classic treatise on the labor process, Manufacturing Consent, largely disregards the ways in which gender is embedded in relations of production

(Leidner 2001; Pierce 2001; Salzinger 2001). Scholars of work and occupations have criticized this gender blindness, noting:

Many studies of work, organizations, and management…have long assumed that their subject is both male and neutral. Men often have been studied without realizing that this was the case, or men have been studied without attending to the gendering of the men in question in any critical detail (Collinson and Hearn 2005:293).

As a result, recent years have seen the growth of a wide range of studies that seek to make explicit the gendering of men and masculinities in work and organizations

(Collinson and Hearn 2005). Much of this research focuses on how men construct masculinity in male-dominated occupational settings, such as automobile factories

(Meyer 1999), law enforcement agencies (Prokos and Padavic 2002), prisons (Britton

2003), law firms (Pierce 1995), the military (Barrett 1996; Sasson-Levy 2002), mining, oil and lumbering (Quam-Wickham 1999), steel mills (Catano 2003), firefighting

(Chetkovich 1997), and business management (Cheng 1996; Collinson and Hearn 1996;

Yancey-Martin 2001). There are also a smaller number of studies that examine men's gender practices in female-dominated occupations (e.g. see Henson and Krasas Rogers

2001; Williams 1995). This body of work indicates that men routinely enact masculinities in the multitude of settings in which they labor (Collinson and Hearn 1994;

Collinson and Hearn 1996; Mills 1998). While this work illuminates how workers “do gender” (West and Zimmerman 1987), it does not examine how the organizational context of work is gendered. Joan Acker speaks to this oversight in her theory of gendered organizations.

2.1.1 Gendered Organizations

Acker (1990) argues that one of the main problems with conventional organizational theories is the assumption that organizational structures and processes are essentially gender neutral. These perspectives posit that men and women are affected differently by organizations because they bring differently gendered attitudes and behaviours with them which, in turn, contaminate the gender-neutral structure of organizations.

Acker points out that occupational and job gender segregation are pervasive and persistent, and theories that posit organizations and bureaucracy as gender neutral cannot adequately account for this segregation. What we need, she says, is a systematic feminist theory of gender and organizations that examines the gendered processes embedded in organizations. To say that an organization is inherently gendered means:

Advantage and disadvantage, exploitation and control, action and emotion, meaning and identity, are patterned through and in terms of a distinction between male and female, masculine and feminine. Gender is not an addition to ongoing processes, conceived of gender neutral. Rather, it is an integral part of those processes, which cannot be properly understood without an analysis of gender (Acker 1990: 146).

Gendering of organizations occurs at the institutional and individual level through at least five interrelated processes: (i) constructing divisions along gendered lines, (ii) constructing symbols that explain, express, reinforce, and sometimes oppose those divisions, (iii) interactions that produce gendered social structures, including patterns that enact dominance and submission, (iv) gendered identity construction, (v) organizational logic—the underlying gendered assumptions and practices that construct work organizations (Acker 1990). Taken together these comprise the “gender regime” of an organization—all of the gendered practices that coalesce to form the institutional arrangements of an organization (Connell 2000a). Viewing social institutions as gendered changes the focus of inquiry—one can ask how men’s interests and particular masculinities are implicated in the maintenance of institutions, and the everyday institutional practices and processes through which male advantage is created and maintained (Acker 1992; Britton 1997).

2.1.2 New Directions

2.1.2.1 Organizational Context

The notion that institutions are inherently gendered has been widely applied in the literature on gender and work (for example, a cited reference search for Acker 1990 on the ISI Web of Knowledge index revealed 362 citations). However, this approach is not

without its problems.8 According to Britton (2000), using the gendered organizations paradigm to examine gendering in occupations is common practice. Nevertheless, she argues that when researchers characterize occupations as gendered, two common problems arise. The first of these has to do with context. When we focus on the cultural construction of an occupation as masculinized or feminized, we tend to lose sight of the fact that the gendering process is affected by the contextually specific organizational settings in which it occurs. Britton (2000) calls for research that illuminates gender at each level identified by Acker (1990)—structure, ideology, policy and practice, interaction, and identity—and closely examines the specific contexts in which this gendering occurs. Unfortunately, few have responded to Britton’s directive for more nuanced investigations of these issues.9

2.1.2.2 Ideology Versus Practice

Second, researchers often fail to clearly distinguish between the levels of analysis to which they are applying the concept of gendered organizations. This is problematic because “the gendering process at the individual and interactional levels is often much more flexible and contradictory than the cultural construction of an occupation or organization” (p. 429), therefore the processes of gendering at one level may not correspond in any clear or predictable fashion with the ways in which organizations are gendered at other levels (Britton 2000). This claim finds support in research that investigates how masculinities are constructed in response to discrepancies between

8 For a thorough critical review of the gendered organizations tradition see Britton 2000.

9 For an exception see (Dellinger 2004).

occupational gender ideology and workplace practices (e.g see Alvesson 1998; Barrett

1996). Further, contradictions between ideology and practice have theoretical implications. Barrett (1996) posits that because there are contradictions between ideology and practice in every gender regime, “a relational theory of masculinity must identify how men work through these contradictions and challenges to achieving a secure identity” (p. 131).

2.1.2.3 Masculinity as Relational: Bringing Women In

As noted above, many critical studies on men, gender, and work analyze how men construct masculinities in various organizational and occupational contexts. Some scholars (e.g. see Barrett 1996; Maier and Messerschmidt 1998; Messerschmidt 1995;

Mills 1998) also take a gender relations approach and examine how men construct workplace masculinities in relation to other men and/or women. However, there are few studies that examine how women and men construct gender in relation to one another in male-dominated workplaces. Perhaps this is not surprising given that the relationship between masculinities and femininities has dropped out of focus in the development of research on men and masculinities (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). This is problematic because:

[F]ocusing only on the activities of men occludes the practices of women in the construction of gender among men. As is well shown by life-history research, women are central in many of the processes constructing masculinities—as mothers; as schoolmates; as girlfriends, sexual partners, and wives; as workers in the gender division of labor; and so forth….We consider that research on hegemonic masculinity now needs to give much closer attention to the practices of women and to the historical interplay of femininities and masculinities (p. 848).

Given Connell and Messerschmidt’s imperative, we can re-state Barrett’s (1996) argument to say that a relational theory of masculinities must identify how men and women work through contradictions between workplace ideologies and practices in order to construct gendered identities. Because my sample contains women and men firefighters I am able to examine these social dynamics.

Drawing on Acker’s (1990) theory of gendered organizations, and Britton’s

(2000) subsequent critique, I examine how men and women firefighters working in highly masculinized occupations—defined as occupations that represent the interests of men, and male workers (Acker 1990; Britton 1997; Williams 1995) and those viewed as appropriate for workers with stereotypically masculine characteristics (Wright 1997)— accomplish gender in the specific organizational contexts in which they labor. Due to the presence of competent women firefighters, these contexts are sites of change and uncertainty. They are also populated by workers who were dealing with feelings of loss, failure, and animosity in the wake of the fire. As Britton (2000) argues, if we disregard this context we obscure the ways in which the gendering process is affected by organizational dynamics. I demonstrate that we must take these dynamics into account in order to understand both how and why firefighters’ constructed gender in the ways that they did.

Second, I identify congruencies, as well as tensions and contradictions, between the cultural construction of firefighting occupations as highly masculinized and two levels in which gendered organizations are created and maintained—social interactions

(Acker 1990; Lorber 2005) and gendered workplace identities (Acker 1990). I show how, in many ways, firefighters’ social interactions and identities correspond with the gender ideologies of their respective occupations, making for a relatively seamless connection between occupational gender identity and the cultural construction of firefighting as masculine work. However, I also demonstrate that the presence of women firefighters creates a disjuncture between occupational gender ideology and workplace reality that creates dilemmas for firefighters’ identity constructions, and illuminate how firefighters’ construct gender in response to this contradiction. Further, I show that although firefighting occupations are culturally constructed as masculine, in practice workers often construct their workplaces and workplace identities as gender-neutral, and on occasion distance themselves from the masculine stereotypes associated with their occupations. If we focus our analyses solely on the cultural construction of gender at the level of occupations, we do so at the risk of concealing the fluid and even contradictory nature of the gendering process at the individual and interactional levels (Britton 2000); specifically, the ways in which firefighters invoked myths of gender neutrality to construct gender. Figure 4 provides a visual summary of these statements. Finally, I show how men and women construct gender relationally—that is, in relation to other configurations of masculinity and femininity.

Figure 4. Concept map of the relationship between gender ideology, social interaction10, and identity construction.

10 I am not implying a processual sequence; rather, I am highlighting how particular components of micro level interactions unfold.

2.2 Masculinized Occupations11

Wildland firefighting, piloting, logging, and structural firefighting have been identified as occupations in which culturally valued ideals of masculinity are embedded in the meaning of work and valorized and practiced by workers. However, each of these occupations can also be said to have an occupationally specific masculinity. According to Wright (1997):

An occupation traditionally held by men can be said to have an occupational masculinity when these elements [i.e. behavior, identities, experiences, relationships, practices, appearances, and language], are relatively unique to and dominant in the culture of an occupation, as well as reinforce the dominance of men in that occupation (p. 438).

In wildland firefighting accomplishing masculinity entails hard physical work, knowledge of the forest, and love of the outdoors(Desmond forthcoming), while in piloting, masculinity is associated with professionalism, reliability, scientific knowledge, and technical efficiency (Mills 1998). The occupational masculinity of structural firefighters is connected with physical size and strength, athleticism, competition, emotional control, hard-work, bravery, aggression, and self-confidence (Chetkovich

1997). In logging, masculinity is constructed through hard work, mastery of machinery, risk, independence, and freedom (Brandth and Haugen 2005). Although there are occupationally specific variations on the theme, all of these traits are compatible with hegemonic notions of masculinity. Having established that these occupations are masculinized at the level of ideology, I now examine how gender is accomplished at the level of social interactions and identities. Firefighters’ narratives about occupational

11 See section I in Figure 4.

gender segregation revealed a great deal of information about masculinity construction, therefore many of the quotes I present below were in response to my queries about the dearth of women in firefighting occupations.

2.3 Social Interaction12

Social interactions in these work settings were primarily between men because in all four work settings there were very few women, if any, working side by side with men.

In the Kelowna Fire Department there were 100 firefighters, all of whom are men. The men loggers did not have any women colleagues, nor did they know of any women that worked in their geographic location, however they were aware of women loggers working in other areas of the province. In the air tanker program there were two women pilots. Wildland firefighting employs the largest proportion of women. Each year the

Protection Branch employs approximately 850 seasonal firefighters, and roughly 20 percent of these are women. On the initial attack crew that I studied, in the mid 1990’s all 18 crew members were men. Two years later two women were hired, and the following year another woman was hired. Since that time they have averaged three women on an 18 person crew. On the unit crew, there were three women and 17 men on the 20 person crew in the summer of 2004.

When women were employed in the same workplaces as men they typically worked in different jobs, often characterized as “support” roles. In the Kelowna Fire

Department, while there were no female firefighters, there were two women in administrative positions and two dispatchers. Similarly, on wildland firefighting bases

12 See section II in Figure 4.

women were primarily employed in administrative and secretarial positions. In the

regional fire center, upper-level managers were mostly men, while departments such as

dispatch were all women. One employee noted that as far as he knew no men had ever

worked in dispatch. There was also a gendered division of labor on large project fires. A

number of participants noted that in the Incident Command13 hierarchy there were no

women incident commanders or division supervisors, and no women in operations.

Rather women were found in finance and logistics positions. Finally, at the time of the

study there was only one woman initial attack crew leader in the entire province.

2.3.1. Camaraderie and Brotherhood

When asked what they liked best about their jobs, many firefighters mentioned

close relationships with their co-workers. Firefighters spend a great deal of time together

and, as a result, they get to know each other extremely well and in many cases even view

their colleagues as a second family. This phenomenon is not unique to the groups

examined here, as others have also found familial-like bonds between firefighters

(Chetkovich 1997; Desmond forthcoming). These bonds are not only the result of

spending time together, they are rooted in the dangerous nature of the work. When

queried about camaraderie, one veteran structural firefighter explained that you better be

close because “you’re putting your life in these guys’ hands”.

13 When a fire burns for extended periods, or when the work load is heavy, an incident command team is called in. The team is comprised of an incident commander (responsible for the overall management of the fire), operations (fight the fire on behalf of the incident commander), finance and administration, logistics (transport, feed, and house crews) and planning (responsible for fire behavior predictions, evacuation procedures, documentation) (Ministry of Forests Protection Branch 2006l).

Importantly, for many firefighters this is a gendered family—namely, a brotherhood. While it was primarily structural firefighters who utilized this term to describe their relationships with their workmates, one veteran from the Protection Branch remarked that he chose to stay with the organization for his entire career because of these interpersonal dynamics:

The protection branch of the forest service is a very sort of fraternal organization. And you know we get so that we know everybody across the province, because it’s not that big of an organization. And I don’t know, it’s a real kind of a brotherhood and a kinship and you get kind of into the whole game.

This structural firefighter described the unconditional support that a “true” brotherhood provides its members:

We have a true brotherhood in the fire department. I know, at any time, I can pick up the phone, there’s 22 guys on my shift, and I can phone any one of them and I can ask them for help and they’ll be here, no matter what.

Firefighting families are characterized not only by affection and support but, like all families, antagonism and power dynamics are present. One unit crew member remarked, “By the end of the summer you hate each other”. Structural firefighters also noted that more than a few firefighters dislike each other, and occasionally these feelings escalate into physical aggression.

2.3.2. Pecking Order

Firefighters’ interpersonal relations were based not only on strong friendship bonds but power relations. This was primarily true for structural firefighters, whose relations with their colleagues were structured by formal and informal hierarchies. Here I explore the informal dimensions of these hierarchies (as opposed to formal organizational

hierarchies based on job functions). As Blau’s (1963) work so aptly demonstrates, the importance of unofficial rules for understanding organizations cannot be underestimated.

For structural firefighters there are formal and informal rules for navigating firehouse relations. Formal rules state that one’s place in the hierarchy is a function of start date which, in turn, determines rank (i.e. junior firefighter, senior firefighter, lieutenant etc.). However, there is also an “informal moral order” (Padavic 1991:282) that dictates norms of deference and authority among firefighters, including duties that one is expected to perform. In the following passage Kyle stresses the importance of rank and justifies his extra duties by pointing to his junior status and noting that senior firefighters reciprocate by passing on knowledge to junior members:

The cornerstone of the fire service is seniority. And everyone respects that. So I’m the most junior guy on the shift here tonight, you know, and by being the most junior guy on the shift like, you know, it’s kind of my responsibility to make sure that things get done around here. Like the coffee, and just the little things that people take for granted. That’s where the junior man kinda, is supposed to jump in and take care of all that stuff. Looks after the guys because they’re passing knowledge on to me and it’s just a respect thing, eh?

Kyle noted earlier that many skills are learned while on the job, therefore the transmission of knowledge from veterans to newcomers is key to occupational success

(Chetkovich 1997). While Kyle feels that these relations are fair and respectful, comments by other structural firefighters suggest that there is also a darker side to the story. One veteran equated the interpersonal dynamics of the fire hall to “locker room mentality”—a sports team atmosphere in which weakness is disdained, hierarchy prevails, and newcomers are appropriately deferential. Insightfully, he observes the linkage between these rules of conduct and masculinity:

I guess it probably ties into the macho thing. You know, like…don’t show if you’re weak, don’t show your weakness, know your place, shut up and earn your, you know, shut up until you’ve been around for a while. ‘How long you been here? I’ve been here for 28 years, and you’ve been here how long? Like, shut the fuck up.’ Right?

Shelley: there’s a hierarchy

Yeah. So you have to sit within that, kind of in the pecking order. And know where your place is. The rookie keeps the kitchen clean, he makes sure there’s coffee made for everybody. All that kind of stuff, right? That’s locker room mentality. There’s a pecking order, so realize what it is, and work within it and wait your turn kind of thing.

2.3.3 Personality and Fitting In

Having the “right” personality in order to fit in was an important theme in firefighters’ accounts. Kyle, a structural firefighter, explained how the hiring process works to select those with a certain personality:

When you’re trying out, the different things that you have to go through; you have to put in an application and they sort through that, and then you have to do a written exam, physical, and then interviews, and it’s all funneling down to that kind of [Type A] personality …it’s like a cookie cutter. Pretty close. I mean there’s one or two guys that kind of you know maybe slip through the cracks or whatever, still good guys, but just not exactly in that mold, right? But pretty much I think the majority of us are pretty close.

Kyle’s colleague stressed the importance of the interview for finding people that will fit in:

The way they interview them, they make sure that they do fit in with the rest of us, sort of deal. They know what we’re like, sort of deal, so you know they sort of groom it that way.

Kyle went on to point out that finding a person who would fit in was even more important than knowledge or skills because those could be taught on the job:

That’s the biggest thing, hey? You need someone that fits in. If you got a guy that didn’t score very well on the exam that doesn’t matter as much as he’s able to fit in with the guys, because you’ll be able to teach them on the job.

Fitting in was not unique to the structural firefighting setting. A Protection Branch employee indicated that personality is an important consideration because crews spend so much time together:

A lot of different things factor in to our decision in hiring people and a good portion is personality. Personality is a big thing. Ah, you know, you’re working in close quarters with someone in general. I mean, once you establish your crew, the three of you will not leave each others side for quite some time….You have to be able to get along.

The notion of fitting in is gendered. Here we can see how employers’ preferences for a certain personality type and someone who will get along well with their colleagues might favor a certain demographic. It is likely that these requirements are most readily filled by someone who has similar characteristics to those already working in the occupation—in the case of these firefighters, primarily white, heterosexual men. Desired worker attributes are typed as “masculine” or “feminine” (Lorber 2005), and Type A personality—one who is an aggressive, rational, over-achiever—is a culturally valued masculine trait. For women to truly “fit” into male-dominated workplaces, they must essentially become men. I return to this point near the end of the chapter when I discuss women firefighters’ strategies for navigating the gender regimes of their workplaces.

2.3.4 Trust, Respect, and Proving Yourself

Newcomers must prove to their peers that they are competent firefighters

(Chetkovich 1997). Wildland and structural firefighters undergo extensive training,

however the first fire is an important occasion for demonstrating competence. A job well

done garners the trust and respect of co-workers. One rookie structural firefighter

explained that the Okanagan Mountain Park fire provided an opportunity to show his

senior colleagues that he could be trusted to perform under pressure:

When you come on as a new guy you’re trained and everything but the guys don’t really, they trust you, but until you’ve been in a situation with them that’s when the team gels, and the morale, and everything else. So for us [rookies] [the fire] was probably the best thing that could have happened to us because we were right alongside everybody during this and there wasn’t you know, we’re still probationary and we’re still junior, but you kind of went through something with just about everybody…I got to work with just about everybody in the department in two weeks, or a week and a half. So now when I do shift coverages or shift exchanges a lot of guys they know me, they trust ya and it’s not an issue anymore. So that was a positive for us….they trust you…they’ve seen you, you’re not scared to go in somewhere, you’re gonna, you know, because that’s what everyone thinks about, if I go in I don’t know this new guy, is he gonna have my back if something goes wrong.

Women who enter male dominated blue-collar occupations must work

exceptionally hard to demonstrate that they are competent workers (Britton 2003;

Chetkovich 1997; Martin 1994; Padavic 1991; Yoder and Aniakudo 1997). This appears

to be the case for women wildland firefighters; a number of their colleagues noted that

they tend to work harder in an effort to prove themselves.14 Below, Sherry’s narrative

14 One crew supervisor noted that he tries to ensure that there are some women on every crew because the presence of women prompts men to work extra hard lest they be outdone.

highlights her ongoing efforts to achieve credibility in the face of paternalism from co- workers and outright disdain from male heavy equipment operators.

The guys are so funny because, it’s just hilarious working with guys. Cause in the very beginning…the guys that are running the equipment and stuff like that, whenever they’re first around us, [and] even this crew, because last year was the first year they had girls on the crew right, like you go to pick up a pump and they grab it from you. So that lasted for about a week or two [laughter]. Last year with this crew, you know, the guys were the whole chivalry thing. They’re trying to be nice and they’re trying to do all this stuff for you and then they start realizing that you’re getting paid just the same as them so [laughs]

Shelley: you can probably do the same thing!

Yeah. So that can get a little bit frustrating, you know…and you end up, it’s always this feeling like you have to prove yourself every time you have somebody new. It always is, right?

Shelley: Does it matter if the new person is a guy or a girl?

No, it’s just around the guys. Like the [heavy equipment] operators and stuff, they’re always, they see you take something and they always want to run and grab it from you. And in [one fire location] we put in this wooden culvert. It was basically a bridge over their water line, because it’s an above ground water line there. And the [fire] guard had to cross it so they wanted [the equipment] to be able to cross it and stuff. So it was all bucked logs. And they had [some heavy equipment] making guard. So they were there to help us with the bridge and stuff. So we had two [chain]saws. And [one of the guys] was running one of the saws and then the other guy, there was another guy who was doing the planning part of the bridge or whatever, and he had faller’s pants.15 And it was going pretty slow with just the one saw, but he was just supposed to be doing the planning. So I asked if I could grab his pants just to, you know, [cut] up logs. So he was like, ‘are you sure?’, you know. So I you know put on his faller pants and I’ve got his saw. And there’s the [heavy equipment operators] and this guy, and then there’s our squad. And these three guys, they actually asked me if I knew what I was doing with the saw. The asked me if I was qualified, ‘Are you allowed to run the saw?’

15 Protective pants worn when working with a chain saw.

In addition to proving themselves in the face of these challenges, women in traditionally male dominated blue collar jobs are intensely scrutinized by their co- workers (Martin 1994; Yoder and Aniakudo 1997). This was certainly the case for

Sherry who, much to her dismay, was closely monitored by her male counterparts:

They were looking at me and they watched me for like 45 minutes.

Shelley: just to make sure..?

Yeah, just to make sure I was you know doing whatever. And [laughs], and so it’s stuff like that that’s just brutal. It’s like, c’mon guys, you know.

Shelley: you would hope that they won’t do that to the next woman that comes along.

Yeah, like well the guys on our squad and our crew, they’ve seen us running the saw and stuff like that. But when we first picked it up you can bet they watched us.

Shelley: they were checking you out?

And there’s extra attention paid to you. So if you screw up, it’s pretty…

Shelley: not good?

Yeah [laughs]. ……

Sherry was also treated in a condescending fashion by co-workers who offered “help” based on the assumption that she did not know how to operate small engines, even though this equipment is an integral part of firefighting:

I was drop starting [the chainsaw] and it wasn’t starting because it’s been running too rich. Like it’s just, it’s kind of like it’s flooded….So anyway, I’m sitting there and pulling it and pulling it and I probably pulled it over 20 times, right? And you pull it a couple times and then you check and make sure it’s on [laughter]. You know as soon as you pull it a couple times if it doesn’t start you always check it over to make sure that there’s, whatever, and then you pull the choke, and then if that doesn’t work, you just, it’s just how you start it or whatever, right? So I’m sitting there and I’m pulling it and like this guy starts walking over to me like

he’s gonna start it for me and I’m just like go away, you know. It’s that whole thing that if it was another guy they’d never dream of doing that. And they hover around you and they give you advice and watch your every move….It’s the same with the pumps—if you have breasts you can’t start the (Blum and Vandewater) pump [laughs]. I’m probably better on the pump and like small engines and stuff than half the guys on the crew….So if you’re trying to start a pump and it’s not starting up right away you always get some guy come over [laughs] and then they spend like you know half an hour doing the wrong thing and it’s just irritates me because I’m just like ‘out of my way, I know what I’m doing!’ [laughs]

Sherry’s dialogue reveals that her presence on the job was tolerated but suspect, at least until she proved herself.

In an effort to present herself as an adept firefighter, Sherry discursively positions herself as equally, if not more skilled than many of her male co-workers. For example, she maintains that she’s better at operating equipment than the majority of men she works with. When I asked her whether people assumed that she didn’t know anything about small engines, she retorted “I probably really know more than most of the guys! Because my boyfriend is a mechanic and I actually do a lot of stuff in the shop with him. And he explains a lot of stuff to me. And I do a lot of work on my own vehicle and stuff like that.” Earlier in the interview Sherry boasted that by the end of boot camp she was regularly beating at least four or five of her male colleagues in training runs. Sherry’s discursive strategy foreshadows processes of identity construction—another level identified by Acker (1990) through which gender is created and sustained in institutions.

2.4 Identity Construction16

Gendered identity construction includes the presentation of self as a gendered member of an organization. Below I sketch how men firefighters constructed masculine workplace identities and the ways in which women wildland firefighters accomplished gender in the masculinized context in which they labor.

I also provide evidence that gender is constructed relationally—particularly, in relation to what one is not. Identity lies in difference; moreover, difference is asserted against what is closest, that which represents the greatest threat (Bourdieu 1984:479).

Tellingly, men firefighters distanced themselves from stereotypically feminine attributes and to what they saw as the hypermasculine archetypes associated with their occupations.

Essentially, they were engaged in the business of Othering, via boundary work (Gieryn

1983)—that is, delineating “real” and appropriately gendered firefighters from “others” who threatened to blur those boundaries—in the interests of preserving their masculine occupational identities. According to Fuchs Epstein (1992), “Some of the reasons that people become invested in boundaries are because their sense of self, their security, their dignity, all are tied to particular boundary distinctions, and these personal investments are bound up with authority and hierarchy” (p. 237). I discuss the consequences of firefighters identity work for gender politics below.

16 See section III in Figure 4.

2.4.1 Organizational Masculinities

2.4.1.1 Structural Firefighters

Structural firefighters constructed a shared sense of masculine identity through

discourses17 that valorized aggression and competition, physical strength, risk, and

bravery. In a similar vein, Chetkovich (1997) found that physical size, strength, courage,

toughness, and aggressiveness were hallmarks of good structural firefighters. Of course,

many of these traits are consistent with hegemonic forms of masculinity suggesting that,

in essence, to be a structural firefighter is to be an appropriately gendered man.

Shane, like many of his colleagues, maintained that Type A personalities are best

suited to the job. When asked to elaborate on these characteristics he remarked:

I think another good example of [type A personality] is you sort of learn to be aggressive. Like, when you get to a fire you learn pretty quickly that like when you’re a new guy you show up and if you hesitate for a minute someone else you know they got the nozzle and they’re putting the fire out. I mean you don’t have time when you get to an emergency situation to sit around and figure out what you’re going to do. You’ve gotta know. And you learn that, I think guys sort of become control freaks as a result of that. Because you have to take charge and you have to do it quickly. And I know my girlfriend really thinks I’m a control freak. And I think it’s something that’s come about since I was on the job.

Shane’s dialogue reveals that competition (if you hesitate somebody else will grab the

hose) and aggression (you have to take charge) are job requisites in this setting. “It’s

seniority, pecking order, militaristic kind of environment”, as one administrator noted. In

male homosocial interactions competition is an important shared meaning that aids in

reifying hegemonic norms of masculinity (Bird 1996).

17 Similarly, Collinson (1992) found that engineering workers created collective masculinity through discourse.

Risk and bravery were also important components of structural firefighters’

narratives. For example, Mark’s interview was rife with references to helping people in

trying and often dangerous circumstances:

Our job as firefighters is to help people in their time of need. You know, everybody says yeah, when everybody’s running that way [i.e. away] we’re going that way [i.e. towards the danger], right?”

Mark’s American counterparts are also are fond of saying. “We run into burning

buildings while other people are running out” (Chetkovich 1997). While Mark would

probably deny being a hero (a theme I discuss in Chapter Four), at the very least bravery

is implied.

Almost all structural firefighters pointed to physiology to explain the dearth of

women in their occupation (with the exception of Grant who also identified “locker room

mentality” as a possible deterrent). A self-described “chauvinist”, Steve’s explanation

was typical of his co-workers, “Women do apply, but the physical end of the job is where

they’d probably break down more– in their shoulder strength, upper body strength is what

they really need, then you need leg strength underneath you.” This apparent lack of

strength is problematic, according to Steve and his colleagues, not only because it is

required to pass the fitness test, but because firefighters must have the ability to pull their

colleagues out of burning buildings—a difficult physical feat, according to most. It is not

clear how often this heroic act is actually required, nevertheless it is used to construct

women as less capable firefighters than men.18 Assertions that women are not strong

18 Britton (1997) found that men corrections officers relied on the relatively remote possibility of inmate violence to frame resistance to women working in men’s prisons. They believed that even though women may be able to handle the job under normal circumstances, they would be unable to deal with a crisis involving violence. Similarly, men structural firefighters relied on the 54

enough to do the job contribute to a discourse in which the masculinity of structural

firefighters, similar to hegemonic masculinity, is one that is equated with physical

strength.19 In addition, constructing women as physically weak and unable to do what men do allows men to resolve the contradiction between the presence of women and occupational masculinity based on physical strength (Barrett 1996), because it suggests that the few women who do manage to succeed are aberrations from the norm, a strategy that I discuss further below.

2.4.1.1.1 Believing is Seeing

The “believing is seeing” paradox (Lorber 1994:37) refers to the power of gender

ideology, especially ideas about biological gender differences, to shape perceptions and

expectations, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Consistent with this, some

structural firefighters who pointed to gender differences in physical strength to explain

the scarcity of women in their occupation, noted that they aren’t “big” guys. The

possibility that their own stature might contradict their assertions about physical strength

was not apparent because gender ideology trumped (contrary) evidence. This also

illustrates the seamlessness of the connection between masculinity and physical strength

(Britton 1997). Perhaps most disturbing, arguments that rest on presumed gender

possibility that women may have to drag unconscious or otherwise injured firefighters out of burning buildings.

19 Physical strength was not invoked to any substantial degree by pilots, loggers, or wildland firefighters to explain the paucity of women firefighters in their professions. As Hank, a supervisor in the Protection Branch remarked, it can’t be the fitness test, because “many women pass that”. Instead, their explanations were largely couched in the language of individual choice and personality traits (especially Type A personality).

differences have pernicious effects, as gender essentialism contributes to the maintenance and reproduction of occupational segregation (Charles and Grusky 2004).

Believing as seeing did not work as efficiently for other structural firefighters.

Some seemed to recognize the contradiction between the ideology of physical strength and their personal physical attributes, and attempted to explain it away by saying things like, “you don’t have to be the biggest guy”, you “need some guys with brains”, and a smaller firefighter is more efficient. One of these men, Grant, who used to think he could never be a firefighter because they were all “great big, huge guys”, argued that someone who is physically fit and average in size is a better firefighter than someone who is physically big, and strong.

I don’t think most [firefighters] are great big guys, most of them are in pretty good shape and stuff.

Shelley: Pretty strong?

Yeah, most of them. Not all of them though. But I think if I can say that the more average size guy, in good shape, I’d rather have a squad or a crew of guys that size than a crew of guys 6’2” and 250 pounds and stuff like that. Because the average size, good shape crew, will go a lot longer than those guys will.

Shelley: Oh is that right? Stamina wise?

Yeah, for sure. Because the big guys, I mean they’re strong, they’re in good shape, but they’re carrying an extra lot of weight. And compared to some guys, I don’t care what shape you’re in, that becomes a burden after a while.…So I think an average size guy in good shape is a more versatile, more effective firefighter in most situations.

While Grant seemed to recognize that his physical size may be viewed as problematic, like most of his colleagues, he did not follow this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion—if having a very large physique is, in many cases, a detriment, we should find more women working as firefighters than we do.

Believing is seeing also could not erase the tensions between gender ideology and evidence for one of Grant’s colleagues. Mike, who noted that the fitness test tends to

“weed out” women, was also cognizant that there are physiological and other similarities between women and men:

Shelley: So there’s the (physical) test part. Do you think there’s anything about the job per se, that maybe wouldn’t be appealing to women, or that might appeal more to men?

Well this doesn’t appeal to men I don’t think, but the blood and guts and stuff like that in a car accident. I can’t see, well actually no one wants to see that, right? Maybe that part of it; maybe women might have a tougher time with children? Seeing children in trouble or...like, and that’s, I’ve never seen one and I hope I can go through my whole career without seeing one. Because that’s what the guys say is the absolute worst, you know. And maybe they see that, with the maternal thing, and you know, maybe that’s a tougher aspect for them. I don’t know, I can’t speak for women [laughs]

Shelley: I know and I don’t want you to. I’m just puzzled because it really does seem like a good job.

Great job.

Shelley: and I can’t figure out why more guys apply than women. So I’m trying to figure out, what is it about the job that would either turn women off or maybe appeal more to men?

Well the men, I don’t know, because I mean it is an adrenaline thing as well. When the phones go off it’s—which, not that you guys don’t get adrenaline, but that’s where maybe the macho part of it comes in, you know? It’s adrenaline, we’re going, we’re, you know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Mike struggled with my questions regarding the gender ratio in his workplace. Earlier he indicated that most women can’t pass the fitness test, but said plenty of men have difficulty too. He mentions “blood and guts”, but notes that nobody wants to see that.

He says maybe it's an “adrenaline thing”, then observes that women have adrenaline too.

He makes a connection between adrenaline and being macho, but earlier in the interview

he defined himself as someone who is not macho (or at least someone who was closer to the middle of a masculinity continuum). He speculates that women would have a hard time seeing an injured child (because of their maternal instincts), but notes that it’s the worst part of the job, and something that he too hopes he never has to see.

Mike relies heavily on biological reasons (e.g. physical strength, adrenaline, maternal instinct etc.) to explain workplace gender segregation, but for each explanation he acknowledges conflicting evidence. Mike’s dilemma is that gender ideology relies on differences between men and women, however this ideology contradicts at least some evidence about similarities between men and women. While some of his colleagues did not recognize, or chose to ignore contradictory evidence, falling prey to believing is seeing, Mike was cognizant of the contradictions in his account, which he attempted to resolve. However, he was unwilling to forsake gender ideology which, in the end, simply left him with “I don’t know”.

Why were firefighters reluctant to dispense with the rhetoric of gender differences even in light of evidence to the contrary? Because the believing is seeing paradox rests on “differentiation”. According to Barbara Reskin (1988), this is the primary mechanism through which dominant groups in general, and men in particular, maintain their privileged position. “Differentiation—the practice of distinguishing categories based on some attribute—is the fundamental process in hierarchical systems, a logical necessity for differential evaluation and differential rewards” (p. 62). Amplifying or creating differences between women and men enables men to set women apart and define them as inferior, which provides “justification” for unequal rewards and the sex-gender hierarchy

(Reskin 1988).

2.4.1.1.2 Dissociating from Stereotypes

Structural firefighters largely agree that they are a “macho” bunch, and hegemonically masculine characteristics are certainly valued and rewarded, however more than a few structural firefighters disparaged the stereotypical hypermasculine firefighter, portrayed as a “big brawny guy, who kicks down doors and asks questions later”. Many noted that in addition to physical strength firefighters should be “caring”,

“personal”, and “able to deal with people”. One fire department administrator noted that

“[firefighters] are not as hard as you might think—they have feelings but they don’t play that up”. Jaime, an upper-level supervisor, explained that there is more to the job than putting out fires:

One thing that we’re starting to realize, or coming to grips with here is that you don’t have to be the 250 pound, you know, muscle guy, and dead from the neck up to do this job. There’s a lot of the job that takes a lot of intellect, a lot of common sense, a lot of work experience in other places and the ability to connect with people. Back in the 60’s, 70’s, that’s what the job was. It was kicking the door in and putting the fire out. And there’s a lot more to it now. And we’re, I think we’re trying to prepare our officers especially with the soft skills they need to not only to get their crew to perform to the maximum on the job, but also when they go to, out in the street and they’re dealing with the public in the worst case scenarios, is to make a connection…. And to show compassion, and to show we care, and we’re here to help you.

Charlie, also a veteran firefighter, acknowledged the importance of “soft” characteristics.

When asked whether he felt that the firefighter stereotype was accurate (i.e. emotionally and physically strong, aggressive, manly, tough) he replied:

It is, to a degree but I think you still have that soft, caring side. I think you have to have that, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to do the things you do to help people. You know what I mean?....Now firefighting is becoming more technological and scientific in ways. It’s not just the big guerrilla type guy who kicks the front door down and goes in the house and puts the fire out anymore.

It’s a lot more mechanics and science to it. And the training and education that we take and do is way more ahead and advanced than it used to be years ago. A long time ago firefighting was kind of like a low paid, kind of ‘oh, you can’t do anything else so be a firefighter’ type job. It used to be that way a long time ago. But it’s slowly, it’s become more, a bit of an esteem kind of job, you know? People kind of put you up there a little more than they used to.

Both Jaime and Charlie, and a number of their colleagues, stressed the importance of

“soft skills” and caring—traits stereotypically associated with femininity. In addition,

they emphasized that their job requires more smarts, training, and skill than it once did.

Their rhetorical moves effectively distance them from the “muscle”, “guerrilla” guy from

days of old who is derisively positioned as intellectually inferior.

There is an important tension in structural firefighters’ narratives. The majority

do gender by dissociating themselves from the lowly, physically big and strong

firefighter who is “a little thick between the ears”, and construct their workplace

masculinity in a way that emphasizes skill, rationality, intelligence, and caring. Their

narratives imply that brute strength is not as important as it once was,20 and actually

might be something to be disparaged, as it is associated with lesser mental capacity and,

by some, with less efficiency. However, almost all firefighters drew on the ideology of

gender differences in physical strength to explain the scarcity of women in their

occupation. In effect, their discursive strategy—distancing themselves from the

hypermasculine stereotype—backed them into a corner, making it somewhat illogical to

20 Quam-Wickham (1999) also found that, historically, male workers in extractive industries participated in “He-Man” masculine ideals, but did so in ways that emphasized skill, rather than brute strength.

draw on physical strength to explain the lack of women in their occupation. However, because of the “believing is seeing” paradox, many seemed unaware of this flaw in their reasoning.

2.4.1.2 Wildland Firefighters

Wildland firefighters shared some commonalities with their structural counterparts. For example, they stressed that their work is dirty, hot, dangerous, and physically arduous. Pilots also emphasized danger, “[pilots] are flying 100 feet off the trees, in smoke, in [rough] terrain, box canyons. It’s not for everybody!” They also constructed their masculinity around a strong work ethic. As Tom, a former wildland firefighter who had recently moved into an office position, noted:

We do have quite a variety of people on the crew—of personalities, and lifestyles, and everything, but I think the common factor is probably a fairly driven person, obviously someone that can handle uncertainty, someone who can handle long hours, lots of responsibility in high pressure situations, and you have to enjoy being outside, and you have to enjoy hard work, there’s no way around it.

Most often, wildland firefighters defined themselves in relation to what they were not—namely, structural firefighters and American wildland firefighters. This is consistent with Lamont’s (2000) claim that lower-status groups protect their self esteem by selectively devaluing those performance dimensions on which they fare poorly and valuing those dimensions on which their group excels. For example, wildland firefighters viewed themselves as far more modest than structural firefighters; they are not the

“macho 911 saviors of everything”, nor the type to “jump in front of a camera”. In addition, wildland firefighters indicated that they had a more difficult job and worked under more challenging conditions than structural firefighters. They often proclaimed

that they may have to work for weeks to contain a fire, using very little water, and with

far fewer tools than structural firefighters. Here, Randy, a forestry officer who

supervised wildland firefighters during the Okanagan Mountain Park fire, explained that

structural firefighters have a relatively simple job. Wildland firefighters, on the other

hand, must stop a much more powerful force:

Fighting forest fires is nowhere near fighting a house fire, okay? Because when [structural firefighters] fight a house fire what the main job is, other than get everybody out safe, for fire departments, is to keep it from spreading to the next door neighbor’s. That’s it. They’ve got this one, two thousand square foot house burning in a block. They stop it from burning into other structures. That’s what their primary function is. How can you stop something [i.e. a wildfire] that’s moving a kilometer, you know…every ten seconds?

In his ethnography of wildland firefighting, Desmond (forthcoming) insightfully

advances the following argument to explain why wildland firefighters claim to be the

“real” firefighters:

Wildland firefighters do not enjoy the cultural prestige that structural firefighters do. They do not wax their fire engines and cruise down the local parade route, lights flashing; they are not the subject of countless popular books and movies;21 major politicians don’t reference their sacrifices from the Senate floor or the Rose Garden; and they don’t have bagpipe bands, elaborate public burials, fancy equipment, enduring icons (such as the Maltese Cross), or other signifiers of honor….In retaliation, wildland firefighters claim authenticity….[W]ildland firefighters classify structural firefighting as the less authentic and more sissified kind of firefighting (p. 92-93).

Wildland firefighters also tended to construct their masculine identities in

opposition to what they perceived as their excessively masculine American counterparts.

Tom indicated that there were some “fundamental differences” between Canadian and

21 However, it seems that wildland firefighters have received more public exposure in recent years. Several books on wildland firefighting have appeared both in Canada (e.g. “Wildfire Wars: Frontline Stories of BC’s Worst Forest Fires” by Keith Keller) and the United States (e.g. “A Season of Fire” by Douglas Gantenbein, and the widely read “Young Men and Fire” by Norman Maclean).

American wildland firefighters. For instance, he felt that Canadian wildland firefighters were more experienced, highly trained, and safety-conscious. In contrast, he portrayed

American wildland firefighters as hypermasculine, with a reckless disregard for safety:

In Canada, and this is the way procedure works with air drops, the bird dog will come through, run a siren, let you know he’s coming, you’re in communication. You clear the path, the drop path. The tankers come in, do their drops, we move back in. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. In the States, it’s a badge of honor to be painted, we call it being painted by flame, because the red retardant makes it look like you’ve been painted. So they consider that a badge of honor if you’re in the middle of the drop.

Shelley: Can’t that stuff kill you if it lands on you?

It’s heavy and if you get a full load from an Electra [aircraft], it can kill you. So I’ve heard direct accounts from air attack officers who will run, go do the all clear, everyone’s all clear? Yup, we’re all clear. We’re all clear. Come through the final run, and just as [the bird dog is] passing over, the tanker’s right behind him about to do his drop, and he can just see people running underneath the path so they can get hit. And I was down there [on a fire]…and we’re down there eating our dinner at the end of the day, and this guy just comes strutting in, he’s painted from head to toe in this sticky red crap that itches like hell, it rots your shoelaces, it’s brutal stuff. [gruff voice] ‘yeah, got painted today, yup yup yup’ . You know, I was down there for five minutes and already the Vietnam war was being referenced. And it’s like, pal, we don’t have guns, we’re not shooting people, we’re here to put out fires. It’s just that general attitude, you know, I’m gonna get in front of that thing and I’m gonna stop it no matter what!

In sum, men wildland firefighters constructed their masculinity as modest, down to earth, hard-working, conscientious, and safety-conscious, and in opposition to structural

(pseudo) firefighters and hypermasculine American firefighters.

2.4.1.3 Heavy Equipment Operators

Similar to wildland firefighters, loggers portrayed themselves as very hard working. Paul boasted that he often worked double shifts, sometimes “12 hours straight without scratching my nose, just go, go, go”. Loggers were decidedly more working

class than the other groups and their blue collar masculinity celebrated practical manual

work (Collinson 1988). Paul’s fellow logger, Dan, declared, “You put in a hard day, if

you do a good job you can take pride in what you've done”. Moreover, this hard work is

“honest work” according to Paul. Working class men tend to judge the measure of a man

through a value system that prioritizes attainable attributes such as breadwinning, a hard

work ethic, and integrity over those perceived as unattainable such as wealth, education,

and a powerful career (see Desmond forthcoming; Lamont 2000). Finally, both Paul and

Dan, stressed “independence” and the ability to “call the shots” as valued features of their

work.

Like their firefighter colleagues, loggers Paul and Dan distanced themselves from

the hypermasculine archetype associated with their profession, described as a gruff burly

guy who drinks heavily and wears a black and red checkered shirt with suspenders. Paul

suggested that the presence of this kind of logger was due to the physical nature of the

job:

You get all different types [in this job]. I mean, you get everything from, you know, what people used to think as a typical logger, like, a real haywire, loggers have a bad name where they’re just you know drinkers and just work hard and gruff and whatever. And there were. When my dad and my grandpa were involved years ago it was a lot more that way where, you know, guys were driving their logging trucks with a 12 pack of beer all day. And it was that way….[L]ike in those days it was more physical labor, right?...You [would] throw a big heavy cable over your shoulder…and you run out and you pull this thing out and then you hook cables around the bundles of trees and it’s real physical work. So, I mean, it was a lot different type of people back then.

While logging used to be an extremely physical job, Dan stated that (even) women can do it now:

You don’t need brute strength anymore. You’re starting to see the odd woman in the job. I could teach you two [points to me and his girlfriend] to go out and do what I do….I sit in a cab all day and press buttons like this. I mean there’s nothing physical about it anymore. It’s nothing that a female or a 16 year old or a 40 year old couldn’t do.

Paul also implied that the stereotypical loggers would not have the technical skills and knowledge required today:

Now, like, some of this equipment is so computerized now that I mean I can’t just take anybody and just throw them on [equipment]….you can’t just take a guy who threw a cable over his shoulder and throw him on equipment. It’s the guy that, you know, someone downtown would be really good and fast on the keyboard, have a quick twitch, and a good thinker, and you know it’s not, gone are the days of where guys would quit school when they’re in grade five and find little jobs and the next thing you know they’re loggers. You have to be, you know, it’s not just, you know, we call ourselves dumb loggers.

Shelley: Really?

Oh yeah, all the time. We’re like, yeah, we’re just dumb loggers. But really you can’t be a dumb person to work out there now….Just the mechanics of it, to be able to work on the stuff, um, gone are the days of being a dumb logger.

While Paul and his contemporary colleagues refer to themselves as “dumb loggers’ their tongues are firmly in cheek. Ostensibly it is the burly loggers from days of old who more closely resemble the stereotype.

2.5 Tensions and Contradictions

Thus far I have established that piloting, logging, wildland and structural firefighting are socially constructed at the level of ideology as highly masculinized occupations. I have also examined two levels at which organizational gendering occurs—through social interactions and identity construction. The evidence presented so far suggests that the ways in which men and women firefighters’ accomplish gender is

largely consistent with occupational gender ideology—that is, firefighting is equated with

hegemonic masculinity. Next I turn to a contradiction between ideology and practice in

firefighters’ workplaces and explore how firefighters’ construct gender in light of this

paradox.

2.5.1 Firefighting as Masculine and Competent Women: Invoking Myths of

Gender Neutrality

The tension between ideology and practice is a result of women’s entry into firefighting occupations. Some men firefighters in my sample worked side by side with women. Many did not, but they were keenly aware of the presence of women firefighters working in other departments and/or regions. Women’s presence in these occupations set up a contradiction between occupational ideologies that equate firefighting with masculinity, and practice—that is, women successfully performing firefighting duties.22

Messerschmidt (1995) notes that some situations are especially salient for the construction of gender:

Certain occasions present themselves as more intimidating for demonstrating and affirming masculinity. In such settings, sex category is particularly salient; it is, as Morgan [1992] puts it, ‘more or less explicitly put on the line’ [p. 47]—a time when doing masculinity requires extra effort (p. 5).

Much of the work of doing gender is taken for granted and thus made invisible, however at boundaries and points of change gender dynamics become open to explicit negotiation

(Arendell 1997). I posit that the presence of successful women firefighters presents one such occasion. The following narratives show how men and women firefighters

22Barrett (1996) makes the same argument with regard to women’s integration into the Navy.

construct gender in this context of change, uncertainty, and contested masculinity by neutralizing gender. Men firefighters accomplished this by discursively portraying women firefighters as exceptions to the norm, and invoking the myth of the level playing field, while women firefighters downplayed femininity.

2.5.1.2 Men Making Gender Invisible

Men firefighters strategically rendered gender irrelevant using a number of strategies. Their tactics not only obfuscated the inequalities embedded in the gender regimes of their workplaces, it allowed the link between firefighting and masculinity to go unchallenged. This veteran wildland firefighter and supervisor neutralized gender in the following way:

We had Gail out there [on the fire], we had Sherry out there, digging the guard, doing their thing and they’re doing it as a worker, not necessarily as a woman. The other guys are doing it as a worker, not necessarily as a man.

Firefighters are constructed as workers, period—not gendered workers. However, as

Acker (1990) notes, the ostensibly genderless worker is really a man. By neutralizing gender this firefighter is able to preserve masculinity, and the privileges that go along with it, while maintaining the guise of workplace equality.

Shortly after neutralizing gender, this firefighter pointed to male dominance to explain sexist images of women, and asserted that warnings about harassment in the

United States were “too much”; however he quickly noted that he was proud of his female colleagues’ accomplishments:

Now we get some stupidity out there where we get the, because of dominance of male, we still have stuff like this [points to a large beer advertisement containing a scantily clad woman near his desk], yet if you were down in the U.S.A. on a fire, oh man, they just drill you [about] harassment and everything. And it’s almost too much. And where we, I’m proud, [we have] the only [woman] crew leader in the province that we’re aware of. The other thing I’m proud of is the only woman fire chief in Canada [works in B.C.].

His picture objectifies women, yet he simultaneously applauds the accomplishments of women firefighters. We can see the tensions in his dialogue—he denies the salience of gender when he invokes the genderless worker, but he also acknowledges male dominance. In the end, his discursive attempt to render gender invisible is not entirely successful.

In the following passage the same firefighter continues to utilize gender, this time to explain why there are no women incident commanders:

You have to be demanding and in control. You don’t have an incident commander that is just passive. And you don’t have an incident commander that is, I don’t want to say authoritative, but at certain times has to be. So I don’t know whether that has a slight linkage there, that guys are boisterous noisy people versus the ladies, I don’t know.

His attempts to render gender invisible did not prevent him from drawing on gender stereotypes to explain the division of labor in his organization. He downplays gender when it is convenient, and highlights gender differences when it is useful. This provides some evidence that gender (at the level of identity) is more fluid than the notion of organizations as “inherently” gendered would suggest (Britton 2000).

2.5.1.2.1 Capable Women Firefighters as Gender Anomalies

When women are integrated into blue-collar jobs men must come to some

accommodation with their new colleagues. One way they adjust to this change is to

develop collective interpretations of experience that allow them to preserve masculine

ideology while still accepting women’s presence (Padavic 1991). A common collective

interpretation that men firefighters drew on was that their female colleagues were gender

anomalies.23 This strategy allowed them to preserve male privilege, rooted in gender ideology, while simultaneously working side by side with women, whose mere presence threatened the prestige of their work (Fuchs Epstein 1992) and it’s equation with masculinity (Padavic 1991).

Although structural firefighters in the Kelowna fire department did not usually

work side by side with female firefighters, the Okanagan Mountain Park fire provided an

occasion for interaction with paid and volunteer firefighters from other departments,

some of whom were women. Here, Rick, a veteran with the Kelowna fire department,

recounts his experience with a woman structural firefighter:

There were some gals up [at the fire]. Now they were all [structural] volunteers, from around the province....On the Friday night, I was lucky, and I’ll tell you that. She was a female and if you give me a minute I’ll think of where she’s from. But she was an assistant chief of a volunteer department. And she’s a little, short, she was just as wide as she was tall, right? And she really impressed me. Because like I say, you had to see this fire. And these guys, when we went back in there, I think they looked at me like I had six heads. And then when plan A failed, and then when I came up with plan B, they were not gonna do it. And there’s all these males, and this little chicken, and she was I think an assistant chief, she went in there, and I have bad language when I get mad, and I’m going holy crap! She

23 In like fashion, the wildland firefighters studied by Desmond (forthcoming) viewed their female colleagues as anomalies.

went up one side of these guys and down the other and told them that if they didn’t listen and do exactly what they’re told by me, you know, and I’m just wow. And she was a female, and that’s not, I think most females are great. There was lots of assistant chiefs, males, that were there but she was the one that stepped up to the plate. And I think all the rest of the males were holy crap, we’re not gonna mess with her.

Rick simultaneously praises his colleague and marginalizes her. He feels “lucky” and

(pleasantly) surprised that a woman firefighter (insultingly described as a “chicken”) took charge. Clearly he was impressed; not only was she a volunteer firefighter (viewed as less skilled and trained than paid firefighters), she was a woman. Rick was not only astounded by her assertiveness, but by her language. And it is no accident that he chose to describe her body, "she was just as wide as she was tall". His dialogue implies that she was not "feminine" in body nor in spirit but, in fact, was a gender anomaly.

Some men wildland firefighters also constructed their women co-workers as gender deviants. When asked if women changed workgroup dynamics, Duncan, a crew supervisor, stated that the crew has improved tremendously with the arrival of women who were “very organized” and “put out a lot of effort” to improve the crew. They also cleaned things up, both literally (the work trucks) and figuratively (the “male literature” disappeared). Duncan further elaborated:

[Having women on the crew] makes a big difference. I mean, again, I had some pretty tough girls. They work just as hard as the guys do, if not harder. Like, they don’t like people carrying anything for them, they won’t let you carry anything for them. They don’t like to be segregated [in camp]. I mean realistically you’ve got your own tents anyway. I mean, everybody respects everybody’s privacy. Again, they’re, at least from my perspective, they fit in quite well. Again, you know, you’re going to have your 20 percent who feel like, ‘why is she running the saw, and not me?’ ‘Because she’s better!’ [laughter] and that’s exactly what I tell them, you just weren’t good enough. You know it might sound mean or, however it comes off to them. It’s just to put a point out there. It doesn’t matter who you are, anybody can run the chainsaw.

Even though Duncan supports the presence of women on the crews, his discourse

portrays competent women as exceptions to the norm, which has the unfortunate effect of

undermining the credibility of his women colleagues. Because the "girls" didn't want

special treatment they were "tough" (i.e. exceptions to the norm). Also, his response to

male crew members that “anybody can run the saw" diminishes the skills and capability

of the person working with the saw (in this case a woman). I believe Duncan meant well

and was likely trying to convey to his male co-workers that both men and women are

capable of using a chainsaw, however his dialogue also discursively subverts the integrity

of women firefighters and the status of women more generally. A corollary of this is the

entrenchment of male advantage; specifically, the association of firefighting with men

and masculinity.

Josh, in his third season as a wildland firefighter, explained that a good firefighter

is a team player and somebody who likes to get dirty. However, “girls”, according to

Josh, don’t normally like to get dirty:

I mean, you always kind of go, you don’t want to be sexist, but you go ah girls, you know, they don’t really want to get in [the dirt]. Well the girls here, [makes squishing sound], right in there, right in there. Just as much as anybody else.

Josh’s assumptions about women may have been challenged by the actions of his women colleagues, however because he believes these women are unusual, their actions do not disrupt the broader gender stereotype.

The presence of competent women firefighters threatens to blur distinctions between men and women and in so doing threatens the status of firefighting as “men’s work”. By dismissing their women co-workers as aberrations, firefighters lessen the

threat that women present, allowing them to reinforce a masculinized version of their work.24 As a result, these token exceptions to the rule in no way erode broader cultural stereotypes; but rather have the opposite effect (Desmond, forthcoming).

2.5.1.2.2 (Myth Of) The Level Playing Field

Many structural firefighters maintained that women are welcome in their occupation as long as they do not receive any special treatment in the hiring process— competition for jobs must be played on a level playing field. Like gender neutral discourse, the trope of the level playing field obscures the gendered structures of inequality and practices that marginalize women in these occupations, while simultaneously preserving the link between firefighting and masculinity.

Norman invoked this metaphor, ironically while acknowledging that women are at a disadvantage because most don’t have a background in the trades (an attribute that earns extra points in the hiring process):

24 Padavic (1991) makes a similar argument with regard to male power plant workers.

Most of the guys, there’s a few guys in the department and they’re kinda your ‘oh we don’t want women around here’ [gruff voice], you know kind of thing. That’s the way they are. But, you know, the majority of guys have got the attitude that so long as they’re not hired strictly because they’re female, they have to make the same requirements and go through the same testing. You know, it has to be a level playing field. And so long as that, if there’s a woman that comes along that can do the same, by all means hire her. But that’s not always the way it is across the board. Um, like, down in the States, women, there’s two tests, like when it comes to the physical part of the test, the man has to drag a 200 pound dummy and the woman drags a 125 pound dummy. So there is some discrepancies there on, you know, the way that works. Around here any training…they have to do it exactly. By all means, if they can, you know, do that. And maybe too, a lot of them, like I said, to get the number of points you have to have, like, a trade really helps. So there’s probably not many females out there that are plumbers or electricians to start with, eh? So that knocks them down a little bit. But we haven’t had, we’ve had very few apply.

Like Norman, Grant, who earlier noted the presence of a locker room mentality in the firehall, recognized that women are at a disadvantage, but stood by the gender neutral ideology of the level playing field:

To me whoever earns the job earns the job, okay? That’s the way I look at it. No special considerations. Earn the job, it’s yours, congratulations. So having said that, it’s still, and it’s changing, but a lot of it is that male oriented locker room kind of atmosphere, right? So that’s also a part of it, right? It’s not just the pressure of performing and stuff. There’s a real lot of locker room mentality still.

Of course, this metaphor is a myth—women are not on a level playing field with their male counterparts, because formal and informal practices work to exclude women from traditionally all-male workplaces (e.g. see Chetkovich 1997; Padavic 1991; Prokos and Padavic 2002). In the same way that hiring criteria, such as personality type and fitting-in, disadvantage women, the myth of the level playing field works to the advantage of men and functions to justify the exclusion of women. In addition, invoking the myth is a low risk discursive strategy for gender inclusion—relative few women apply for structural firefighting jobs, and those that do may be disqualified for failing the

fitness test, not having the right personality, or scoring fewer total points because they lack a trade or sports background. Since most women are at a disadvantage from the start, they would have to be truly exceptional to make it through the screening process; in fact, they would have to be gender anomalies.

2.5.1.3 Women Making Gender Invisible: Navigating Othering in the

Mythically Neutral Workplace

When women are integrated into blue-collar jobs they must adapt to a male workplace and to men who define their relationships with one another in part by their difference from and objectification of women (Padavic 1991). In the following section I examine how women wildland firefighters practice gender given an occupational gender ideology in which firefighting is synonymous with hegemonic masculinity.

Similar to some of her male colleagues, Kathy minimized the salience of gender at work. She struggled to describe what it was like to be a woman firefighter because she thought of herself as a genderless firefighter:

I think it’s getting more and more common to see women in um, maybe [a few years ago] I would have answered it slightly different but, it’s kind of a hard question to actually answer just because I’ve never really felt different from, I mean on this base, I’ve never really felt different that I’m a female. I’m a firefighter, and it’s sort of like that whole thing when you say ‘hey, you guys’. I mean I don’t care if they call me guys, girls, I mean it’s one in the same….I apologize because people have asked me this before and I really can’t give them a fair answer because I don’t think that my gender has anything to do with my ability to fight fire.

Kathy did not mind contending with what many might view as sexist language because in her mind guys and girls are “one in the same”; the power and omnipresence of gender are erased through her dialogue. So is Kathy truly genderless or is she actually trying to be

one of the guys? I submit that the latter is true. Male nouns signify power and authority in ways that female nouns do not (it is not hard to imagine that men firefighters would react negatively to “hey, you girls”). In addition, being called a guy would suggest that

Kathy is part of the group, she fits in. As noted earlier, fitting in is important for success in highly masculinized workplaces. Fitting in is also gendered—women in these workplaces not only have to fit into the existing gender regime (largely, a man’s world); they must do so in a way that an appropriately gendered man would. As Chetkovich

(1997) notes, “men must prove they can be firefighters; women must prove they can—in some sense—be men” (p. 15). In addition, fitting in through the successful accomplishment of gender bestows workplace proficiency upon the bearer. A story relayed by Kyle, the structural firefighter who earlier noted the importance of fitting in, demonstrates how firehouse masculinity and firefighter competence are linked:

I worked with a gal [in another department] and she was an excellent firefighter. An excellent firefighter. And a real team player, you know. Played hockey with the guys, strong, she was really cool. I mean she could swear up a storm just like the rest of ‘em right?

This woman firefighter was awarded the social seal of approval (“she was really cool”) because she successfully navigated the gendered terrain of her workplace. She fit in— more, she became one of the guys. In turn, her enactment of fire hall masculinity garnered the status of “excellent” firefighter.

Given these dynamics, it is not difficult to see why Kathy discounts gender. This strategy situates her as one who fits in with her colleagues and, by effectively erasing femininity, it confers firefighter competence. Although this is my interpretation, not

Kathy’s, the fact that she deliberately notes that her gender is not related to her firefighting abilities suggests that she is at least liminally aware (Martin 2003) of these processes.

Kathy continued to minimize gender in the remainder of the interview, and explained that she didn’t want to use the term male dominated to explain the prevalence of men in her occupation, “the numbers are a lot more male, the ratio. I don’t want to use the word dominated because I don’t, I think that’s sort of an overtone of you know, I don’t think it’s domination at all…but it’s more men than women.”

Kathy doesn't appear to make the connection between the lack of women firefighters and the masculine ideologies and practices in her workplace. However, when

I said, “It sounds like you’ve never been made to feel like gender is an issue”, she responded, “I, yeah, perhaps I have but I refuse to let it, I guess. So I just, I can only control what I think, not what other people think”. So while Kathy largely tries to erase gender, ultimately she recognizes its presence and indicates that her co-workers may too.

While Kathy’s attempts to make gender invisible provide her with some advantages, constructing gender this way also presents some dangers. Kathy can never truly be a genderless firefighter because this worker is actually a man. As Acker argues,

“the concept of a universal worker excludes and marginalizes women who cannot, almost by definition, achieve the qualities of a real worker because to do so is to become like a man” (p. 150). In addition, being one of the guys (if only marginally) presents its own

challenges. For example, Sherry’s acceptance by her male colleagues was bittersweet because she was subjected to offensive language:

When you work with a bunch of guys like this, they actually start forgetting that you’re a girl. They start forgetting that you’re female.

Shelley: Right. Is that good?

It is and it’s not. Because sometimes you get to hear some crude remarks.

Both Kathy and Sherry construct gender on masculine terms—Kathy implicitly, by discursively neutralizing gender, and Sherry more explicitly by positioning herself as more competent at symbolically masculine tasks than most of her male colleagues. In so doing, they demonstrate competence by practicing appropriate workplace masculinity.

Organizations are peopled by women and men who construct both femininities and masculinities (Martin and Collinson 1999), and individual women can practice

“masculinities” just as individual men can practice “femininities” (Connell 1995). In the discussion at the end of this chapter I discuss the implications of their strategies for changing gender relations in their workplace.

Contrast Kathy’s and Sherry’s approach with their colleague, Amanda, who works in dispatch—an all-woman setting:

We had a bad incident earlier in the year….One of our crews…had been working on [a] fire all day and then it sort of blew up, and they were doing structure protection and they had missed their check in. So we didn’t know where they were for about four hours. And it was really, we’re kind of the mothers in here, we really are. We’re like the mother hens, make sure everybody’s okay, and everybody has their ducks in a row.

Amanda works side by side with other women dispatchers in a job that is deemed gender appropriate (as office and “support” staff often are); therefore, she can accomplish gender at work through the practice of mothering—a task associated with femininity. In contrast, Amanda’s women colleagues working on the fire line risk losing status if they

“do” femininity.

2.6 Discussion

To summarize, these findings reveal that there is a great deal of congruence between occupational gender ideologies and actual practices. We saw how social interactions (such as fitting in and proving oneself), and identity construction processes maintain and reinforce the link between firefighting occupations and hegemonic masculinity. However, there was an important discrepancy between macro level ideology and the practice of gender at the micro level of identity and interaction. The presence of women in these occupations threatens to disrupt the connection between logging, piloting, wildand and structural firefighting and masculinity. Firefighters responded to this contradiction by rendering gender invisible through myths of gender neutrality. Men firefighters portrayed their capable women colleagues as gender

anomalies, and drew on the myth of the level playing field, while women attempted to make gender invisible by distancing themselves from femininity. Importantly, this kind of egalitarian discourse is ideologically compatible with widely shared cultural beliefs about gender differences that contribute to sex segregation in the labor market (Charles and Grusky 2004), a point to which I return in the Conclusion chapter.

Discrepancies between occupational ideology and the micro-level accomplishment of gender provide further evidence for the claim that we should not assume a direct correlation between the construction of gender at different organizational levels. To say that an occupation is gendered misrepresents the level of complexity at which workers negotiate and accomplish gender in their day-to-day lives (Britton 2000).

The ways in which firefighters’ constructed gender was complex and multifaceted, rather than a perfect facsimile of occupational (hegemonic) masculinities, demonstrating that gender is much more fluid and contradictory (Connell 1995) than occupational gender ideology would suggest.

Firefighters’ narratives also point to the ways in which gender is relationally constructed—that is, in relation to real or imagined others. For example, women wildland firefighters constructed gender in relation to their male co-workers, structural firefighters constructed gender in relation to (physically weak) women. Structural firefighters provided a foil against which wildland firefighters constructed their more modest and hard-working masculine occupational identities. And loggers, and wildland and structural firefighters, constructed gender in relation to what they construed as hypermasculine archetypes associated with their occupation.

While men firefighters’ efforts to distance themselves from (hyper)masculinity may seem like progressive gender politics at first glance, an important caveat is in order here. We should not assume that these strategies make them any less invested in maintaining gender hierarchies. Sometimes one of the most effective ways of being a man in a particular setting is to demonstrate one’s distance from cultural constructions of hegemonic masculinity (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Wetherell and Edley 1999).

Just as the gender displays of the “new man” project aggression, domination, and misogyny onto subordinate groups of men (Hondagneu-Sotelo and Messner 1997), firefighters’ identity work casts the socially undesirable characteristics associated with blue-collar occupations (such as brute strength, limited mental capacity, and extreme aggressiveness), onto real or imagined inferior others. In addition, their alternative identities as technically competent, rational, intelligent, and independent workers emphasize characteristics that have long provided a rationale for the exclusion of women from public life (Wetherell and Edley 1999). Finally, structural firefighters’ discourse of

“softer”, caring characteristics, serves to “file off some of the rough edges of hegemonic masculinity” (Hondagneu-Sotelo and Messner 1997:61) in a way that allows them to construct a socially desirable identity without forsaking the patriarchal dividend—the privileges given to most men by virtue of being men (Connell 1995).

Importantly, we saw how the presence of women in the traditionally male- dominated occupation of wildland firefighting necessitated gender negotiations for both women and men. Women working in male-dominated organizations face “the dilemma of difference”—they must choose whether to negotiate gender in a way that is more or less different from men, or more or less visible as women (Melby 1995:53 cited in

Kvande 1999). This ‘choice’ is not an easy one for women wildland firefighters because they face an “impossible paradox” (Britton 1997:800). They can enact femininity and risk being viewed as incompetent, or they can try to become one of the guys, as Kathy and Sherry did, and be subjected to offensive remarks and/or marginalized as gender anomalies. Kathy’s and Sherry’s strategies are not unusual. Like their colleagues in the male-dominated occupations of management (Martin and Collinson 1999) and engineering (Jorgensen 2002; Ranson 2005), their efforts to be accepted as “one of the boys” are a “typical adaptive strategy on the part of many women who measure the requirements of success in male terms and attempt to assimilate by disqualifying their femininity and by matching male styles of behavior” (Jorgensen 2002:351-352).

These findings suggest that while women’s mere presence challenges the gender regimes of male-dominated workplaces, it is not necessarily revolutionary. For women wildland firefighters, male colleagues’ reactions to their presence and their personal strategies for navigating highly masculinized terrain, helped to reproduce and naturalize the gendered organization of work and, therefore, had the unfortunate effect of further marginalizing them. However, as Ranson (2005) argues, we must be careful not to assume that these strategies represent a “conscious ‘anti-woman’ stance” (p. 148), because acting like a man to achieve workplace rewards and recognition is not necessarily the same as identifying with male colleagues—the former can happen without the latter. Unlike Kathy, Sherry worked as a (conceptual) man (Ranson 2005), but did not appear to identify as a man. Rather she discursively detached herself and her female colleagues (identified as “us”) from “the guys”. Clearly she saw herself as different, and

on some dimensions more skilled, than her male co-workers. Unfortunately the end result is the same for both Sherry and Kathy, because conceptual men do not reap the same benefits from the patriarchal dividend as actual men.

Analyzing the practices of women shed light on the ways in which men constructed gender. Women wildland firefighters provided a “real” Other against which their male co-workers constructed masculinity. Women wildland firefighters’ gender practices, such as working extra hard to prove themselves, resisting men co-workers efforts to “help” them on the job, and downplaying femininity, were central to the process of masculinity construction of their colleagues who, in an effort to preserve the link between firefighting and masculinity, responded by portraying these obviously capable women firefighters as gender anomalies. Answering the call to include women in masculinity studies (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005) allowed us to see how masculinity is relationally constructed through associations of difference (Barrett 1996;

Kimmel 1994). I also expanded on Barrett’s (1996) invitation to examine the ways in which men work through contradictions between occupational ideology and practice by including women’s strategies for constructing gender identities in light of these tensions.

The findings suggest that examining women’s strategies and occupational tensions are necessary components of a more theoretically rigorous framework for the ways in which gender identities are created at and through work.

This chapter demonstrated that firefighters’ occupational contexts are highly masculinized but also contested. We saw how the efforts of men and women firefighters to accomplish gender identities in light of these tensions largely reinforced the link between firefighting and hegemonic masculinity, at least for the time being. While

firefighters continued to struggle over gender politics in their workplaces, a crisis was looming in the forest; the outcome of which promised to heat up this battle and raise the stakes to new heights. The Okanagan mountain park fire created two situations—losing and a status hierarchy—that undermined firefighters’ occupational identities and had the potential to further erode the relationship between firefighting and exemplary masculinity. In the next two chapters I discuss how firefighters attempted to rescue their occupational identities, and entrench their masculinity in the face of these challenges.

CHAPTER 3

LOSING AND IDENTITY WORK

As we saw in Chapter Two, firefighting can be characterized as an occupation in which hegemonic masculinity is, in many ways, valorized and reinforced. However, the presence of women firefighters served both to undermine the link between masculinity and firefighting (because they were competent), and reinforce it (through their gender identity work). Here I will examine how firefighters responded to a further challenge to their occupational identities—losing.

When natural disasters occur, the public looks to emergency responders to stop, control, manage, contain, or at least minimize the damage caused by forces of nature that are, in many ways, beyond their control. These imperatives are reflected in firefighters’ occupational cultures, in which success is synonymous with controlling and/or exterminating fire and protecting valued resources. Therefore, firefighters' occupational identities, and consequently their gender identities (perhaps less so for women, as I discuss below), are bound up with their occupational duty to protect people, homes, and the forest. However, in the case of the Okanagan Mountain Park fire, firefighters largely

"failed" to fulfill this mandate (at least according to their standards). Because they were unable to contain the fires, substantial areas of forest as well as homes and property were lost.

As I demonstrated in Chapter Two, when workplace reality conflicts with occupational ideology it creates dilemmas for identity construction. In this chapter I show that the losses caused by the fire were difficult for firefighters to come to terms with; they felt like they lost, and the occupational ideology of firefighting values winning. As a result, firefighters engaged in various kinds of identity work in order to re- create themselves as competent workers and regain their self-worth. I also discuss the social consequences of identity work and argue that in the very act of reclaiming their occupational identities firefighters created and strengthened boundaries between groups that precluded the possibility of occupational alliances.

3.1 Literature

Work is one of the central ways in which individuals evaluate themselves and are evaluated by others, thus constituting a core part of ‘social identity’ and ‘the self’(Allen

Collinson 2004; Hughes 1959 cited in Allen Collinson 2004). The sociology of work has explored workers’ selves primarily in connection with service work, since the work directly implicates the self—the worker’s presentation of self and capacity to interact constitute part of the product (Sherman 2006). Much of the research in this area examines the implications of service work for workers’ selves, particularly how one’s sense of self may be compromised by performing service work. For example, workers may be subjected to managerial imperatives to control and manipulate their selves

(Sherman 2006), become estranged from their emotions (Hochschild 1983), experience

“psychological exploitation” by their employers (Rollins 1985), and a loss of authenticity in human interaction (Leidner 1993).

This research makes clear that the organization and performance of service work can undermine workers’ identities. There is also a small body of work concerned

(sometimes implicitly) with other workplaces and work-related factors that present challenges to the self. Allen Collinson (2004) found that institutional marginality and loss of expert knowledge destabilized contract researchers’ occupational sense of self;

Woods and Jeffrey (2002) discovered that changes to assessment measures, role expectations, and teaching philosophies imperiled primary teachers’ identities; and

Sherman (2005) observed that status differences between workers and hotel guests prompted workers to construct superior selves. Finally, some scholars have looked more specifically at the workplace dynamics that challenge workers’ gender identities finding, for example, that membership in a numerical minority (Cross and Bagilhole 2002) and the feminization of work (Alvesson 1998) strained gender identity construction for men.

This body of work reveals that workplace conditions, such as exploitation and marginality, can challenge workers’ sense of self. It seems very likely that failure on the job could have similar consequences. Some have examined different types of occupational failure, such as downward mobility (Newman 1999) and blocked access to jobs in the legal economy (Bourgois 2003). Others have considered organizational characteristics, such as gender dynamics (Messerschmidt 1995), or “routine non- conformity” (Vaughan 1999:274) that lead to failure and disasters. However, there is scant research in the sociology of work that explores how workers deal with failure in the aftermath of disasters, nor how the consequences of their strategies may have adverse outcomes.

Identity is a largely taken-for-granted phenomenon until people experience a problem that makes maintaining it difficult or impossible (Fine 1996; Goffman 1963;

Mead 1964), and failure could be one such problem. In addition, crisis events such as disasters, challenge worker’s usual practices for constructing and maintaining their identities because they disrupt routine activities and interactions, and call into question taken for granted assumptions and ideologies. While failure likely affects identity, there is no research I am aware of that examines how workers’ selves (gendered or otherwise) are compromised when they fail, or concomitantly how workers respond in an attempt to regain their dignity and self-esteem.

These issues matter, I suggest, for two reasons. First, our most basic drive is for a sense of self-worth or personal significance (Becker 1962 in Snow and Anderson 1987), and for many people this is accomplished through work. Realizing self-respect and dignity through work are key to workers’ well-being. This is also important for organizations because they want to maximize human capital (Hodson 2001). One task workers must accomplish is to maintain dignity in the face of workplace assaults on it

(Padavic 2005). When workers experience failure at work, it is likely that their dignity, sense of self-worth and general well-being are compromised. It seems this would be especially true for firefighters, because the occupational culture of firefighting values winning, so losing the fight against a fire is viewed as failure.

Second, work is one of the most important means through which identities are constructed, and a key setting in which gender is constructed (Cheng 1996; Yodanis

2000). Adult men, more than women, have few other ways to define their identity than by the paid work they do (Martin 2001). As a result, work in the paid labor market is a

major basis of identity and what it means to be a man (Collinson and Hearn 1994;

Messerschmidt 1995). As men’s occupational identities are gendered, it is plausible that failure presents a challenge to both their occupational and gender identity. Yet, because there is very little, if any, work done on the occupational self and failure, we have no idea how masculinities are linked to the ways in which workers’ respond to failure, and the implications for individuals’ selves and larger group dynamics. Given that many men’s gender identities are intertwined with paid work, it is appropriate to take a close look at gender in order to learn how they respond to failure.

3.2 Occupational Culture, Losing, and Identity Management

Below I show that firefighters’ occupational cultures champion winning. I also demonstrate that firefighters felt like they failed, and argue that this challenged their occupational and gender identities. This is followed by a discussion of their identity management strategies, including finger pointing, which ultimately had negative consequences for inter-group solidarity.

3.2.1 Ethic of Protection

Firefighters are mandated to protect communities, natural resources, and lives. This is reflected in the mission statement of the wildland fire administration center in which the fire occurred, "We will protect life and property, and natural resources from catastrophic wildfire impacts" (Ministry of Forests 2004a). It is also evident in job and

organizational titles, such as “Forest Protection Officer”, and “Protection Branch”.

Structural firefighters also feel they have an occupational duty to protect people, homes, and other structures, as we shall see below.

3.2.2 “We’re Out There To Win…”

The narratives of wildland and structural firefighters, and pilots, revealed an ethos of success defined by “winning”—their workplace subjectivities were strongly connected to their ability to control and extinguish fire. Many noted that “we’re used to winning” and proudly gave statistics to back up their claim. Bill, an air tanker pilot, described the satisfaction that goes along with catching a fire before it gets too big, “So, yeah, we’re out there to win, to stop the fire. And when a fire is just on the verge, and starting to go, and you’re working hard and you catch it, everybody feels good.”

Notably, winning was in many cases described in decidedly masculine terms. For example, Ken, a supervisor in the air tanker program, described the will to win and the dire consequences of losing (on par with death) using tellingly militaristic and aggressive language:

Well, we’re kinda like, the analogy I would use is we’re like emergency surgeons. People don’t come to us unless they have a problem. And when we fail it’s a big problem. The patient dies. And that’s our reality. So we’re all here because we kind of like that ego-stroking, win/lose moment. But when we lose, we beat the shit out of ourselves. We eat our young, quite frankly. We’re a brutal organization on ourselves, internally. We take no prisoners. Like our de- briefings and our fall meetings are knock down, drag ‘em out affairs. But that’s because everybody wants to win. And if we can fix something we’ll fix it…You know, we feel it because we’re the last line of defence. We’re the best and last hope for that fire a lot of times. And often times, 94 percent of the time, we win. And so, in some years 97, 98, and when we lose it’s a big problem. It starts to cost a million dollars a day and hundreds of people, and homes get threatened, and timber gets lost and the sky gets all smoky and on and on and on.

Mark, a structural firefighter, used similarly masculinized discourse to describe this ethos, and like his colleagues equated winning with putting out fires:

As a structural firefighter, we’re very well trained. We’re considered a very aggressive, proactive, firefighting group. Something’s burning, we go there, we put it out. We don’t lose houses, we don’t lose foundations. Occasionally it’s through the roof but it gets put out.

Hank, a supervisor with 30 years of wildland firefighting experience, remarked that “our people are used to winning”, and although on occasion a fire got the best of a crew (as was the case with the Okanagan Mountain Park fire), more often than not they won:

Most summers, you know, we’d fight fires like we did last summer, but most of the time we’d go out and maybe the fire kicks our butts one day a week, or something. And then we win 6 days and we’d feel pretty good about that.

Neal, a manager who, like Hank, worked his way up through the ranks and had extensive wildland firefighting experience, indicated that his organization was proud of their record of success:

We are a, our organization has been developed over the years where we don’t like to lose. We have a couple of, sort of, instilled prides. One is our safety record, and the other one is sort of our success of catching the fires small.

On the flip side, when a fire got away the mission was deemed a failure.

Tellingly, fires that grew bigger than four hectares were classified as an “initial attack failure” by wildland firefighters. Chris, a wildland firefighting crew leader, remarked,

“We’ve always been successful, except for these two instances, at keeping the numbers really low. But all of the sudden you start losing over, it’s in the hundreds [of homes].

Well, I don’t think that’s success.” For pilots, wildland, and structural firefighters, being a “good” firefighter not only meant being an appropriately gendered man (as we saw in

Chapter Two), it meant successfully extinguishing or controlling fires.

Heavy equipment operators, on the other hand, did not appear to adopt the winning imperative. This was likely due to the fact that logging and forestry, rather than firefighting, were their primary occupations, therefore their perception of occupational success was not centered on extinguishing fires. They may have framed occupational success differently, nevertheless, they were motivated to put out, contain, or otherwise slow down the progression of the fire, as their livelihood depended on the availability of merchantable timber. In addition, they were sent out to the fire line to bring the fire under control, and just like the other firefighters, they were under pressure from the public, and their employers to do so. Moreover, until several decades ago, when the

Ministry of Forests began using seasonal fire suppression crews, loggers were an essential element of the province’s firefighting force. They were the preferred recruits of forest rangers because they could use the required equipment and knew the lay of the land (Keller 2002). So there is an historical element to their participation in fire suppression.

3.3 Losing and “Bad Effects”

Because pilots, wildland and structural firefighters’ occupational cultures are imbued with an ethic of protection and define success in the way that they do, they felt like they failed when they were unable to control the fire. They may have been used to winning, but in the case of the Okanagan Mountain Park fire, they clearly felt that they lost. Moreover, losing did indeed have a negative effect; it destabilized their identities as

competent firefighters. Here I show that losing was a difficult experience for firefighters.

In the following section, I show that they engaged in impression management strategies in order to save face in light of this identity threat.

Kyle’s feelings about losing echoed those of many of his colleagues in the structural fire department:

I remember feeling pretty low on the Saturday morning. Like we just got the shit kicked out of us. You know, we lost like 200 and some homes, eh? Like in one night. And that sucks. We don’t like to lose an outbuilding, let alone a house. And we lost 200 and some? I remember kind of thinking you know like, what the hell are we doing here? Like we’re used to going in there and kickin’ ass and getting the job done, you know. And we’d just been hammered, you know.

Kyle’s colleague, Charlie, indicated that the pain of losing was not only intense (the equivalent of extreme physical pain), it was intensely personal:

Everybody felt bad….like I had this real bad feeling that we let people down.

Shelley: Oh, really?

Yeah, because, I mean, I know everybody felt that way….Because here we are, we’re supposed to be you know, protecting the city and doing everything we can. The losses were just unbelievable. Like when we heard the numbers we were just, I mean you felt like you’d been kicked in the nuts. Like you were just, you felt sick. I really felt sick about it.

Similarly, many wildland firefighters, from supervisors to crew members, took the loss of houses personally. Neal, the manager who remarked that catching fires small was an “instilled pride” stated, “Again, we don’t like losing. And to me, I don’t know how to say it, it’s a personal thing. I’m embarrassed that we lost houses.” Josh, an initial attack crew member, agreed, “It does get personal, because a lot, like guys are really down in the dumps about like losing 200 and some odd houses.” His colleague, Sherry, expressed similar sentiments, explaining that when houses burn “you feel kind of crappy,

no matter what”. This supervisor tearfully explained that he very much sympathized with colleagues in other fire zones who suffered major losses because “you can see how it gets to you…you can see it’s more than a job”.

Firefighters’ discourse suggests that losing did in fact result in “spoiled”

(Goffman 1963:19) occupational identity. I posit that losing also threatened firefighters’ masculinities because, as we saw in Chapter Two, firefighters’ occupational identities are gendered. Here, one administrator insightfully makes the connection between losing and masculinity:

Part of the mentality is that we can pretty much do anything. You know, and that goes back to the macho image, and that got bashed that day; that got bashed really hard that day.

I submit that losing resulted in “spoiled masculinity” (Evans and Frank 2003); a predicament that necessitated a great deal of identity work, which I outline below.

Notably, both women firefighters who worked on the front lines of the fire engaged in identity management practices. I surmise that while their occupational identities were threatened as a result of losing, their gender identities were not bound up with their occupational selves in the same way as it was for their men colleagues. I provide a more detailed discussion of this topic in the final section of this chapter.

Before turning to a discussion of firefighters’ identity management strategies, I set the stage with some contextual information below. Non-structural firefighters did not go into the fire with the same degree of social capital as their structural colleagues. While, in theory, the fire could have provided an opportunity for non-structural firefighters to increase their social capital, unfortunately this was not the case. I further discuss this outcome in the discussion chapter.

3.4 Credibility Under Fire

Prior to the fire, wildland firefighters, pilots, and to a lesser degree, loggers were contending with credibility concerns that structural firefighters were not. There is a history of conflict between the Protection Branch and the public over prescribed burns and air quality issues that gave the Protection Branch a bad name, in some camps. In addition, wildland firefighters and pilots have the dubious distinction of having fought on other large interface fires in which homes were lost. Structural firefighters from the City of Kelowna, on the other hand, had never lost houses to an interface fire prior to the summer of 2003. Further, as employees of the provincial government, wildland firefighters were subject to stereotypes that characterize government workers as underworked, overpaid, and inefficient. The Protection Branch was painfully aware of this perception, as evidenced in some of the rules of decorum for wildland firefighters.

For example, Sherry explained that her crew could not sit down for lunch on interface fires because the public might see them sitting. Similarly, they had to be mindful of their surroundings when joking around, because their antics may have given the impression that they were not taking the fire seriously. Wildland firefighters and their supervisors have to be very careful how they comport themselves because they are always under public scrutiny.

Pilots are also employed by the provincial government during the fire season and by association are subjected to some of the same negative attention. Loggers also faced credibility issues, as they knew they were not highly regarded by the public. As Paul noted, “I know a lot of people say they hate loggers because they say they’re wrecking

the environment”. Conversely, structural firefighters have a comparatively favorable

image. As one supervisor observed, “We’re largely appreciated in the community”. In

Chapter Five, I elaborate on the ways in which the events surrounding the fire aggravated

this situation for non-structural firefighters.

3.5 Identity Talk

From previous research we know that challenges to workers’ sense of self, such as

marginality, require identity work (e.g see Allen Collinson 2004; Padavic 2005). I

propose that failure also destabilizes workers identities and, as a result, necessitates

identity management strategies. Hollway and Jefferson (2000, cited in Rohleder and

Gibson 2006) suggest that threats to the self create anxiety, which precipitates

unconscious defenses against these threats. The defense mechanism firefighters

employed to assert and maintain their personal identities was “identity talk”—a variant of

identity work (Snow and Anderson 1994:241).

Actors manage their identities, resist identity challenges, and take great pains to

avoid being discredited (Goffman 1963).25 Toward this end, actors invest in particular

discourses in order to defend against threats to the self (Tracy and Scott 2006). As

25 Goffman outlines a number of resistance strategies that actors use to navigate stigma, such as concealing discrediting facts (passing), biographical revisions, and attempting to move beyond superficial encounters to more personal relationships in which their stigma will cease to be salient (breaking through). While actors who use these strategies are actively managing their identities, these techniques are primarily passive in nature. The strategies utilized by firefighters, especially finger pointing, were more active than those envisioned by Goffman.

organizations furnish discursive resources that members employ to make sense of their experiences (Allen 2000), the discourses that firefighter drew on often had occupational roots.

As we saw above, firefighters viewed the fire as a loss; one that they took personally. Here I will show how they engaged in identity talk, often drawing on occupational frameworks such as safety and Mother Nature, to preserve their self-worth and dignity in light of this challenge. Schwalbe and Mason-Schrock (1996) contend that

“excuses and justifications of various kinds…can be seen as forms of talk used to assert, protect, and repair situated identities” (p. 116) Firefighters’ identity talk was an attempt to resist stigmatization (Goffman 1963), and resituate themselves as competent firefighters. In addition, part and parcel of the identity repair process was Othering firefighters from different groups. This was most clear when firefighters blamed other firefighting groups for the losses by insinuating or claiming outright that they were incompetent.

3.5.1 Shifting Responsibility

A prevalent identity work strategy for firefighters from all groups was to shift some of the responsibility for the losses incurred to other groups, or alternately, to forces beyond their control. Below I highlight each of these tactics.

3.5.1.1 Pointing Fingers at the Other: “Somebody has to pay…”

Finger pointing was a common way that firefighters transferred accountability from themselves to other groups or forces. In so doing, they played “the blame game”. I

have italicized passages below that illustrate how, in the blame game, firefighters set up

their colleagues from other groups as incompetent Others.

Rick, a structural firefighter, maintained that while it’s “easy to talk…somebody

has to pay”. Soon after he claimed that interface fires in which structures were lost were

“screw ups” by the Protection Branch, and the Okanagan Mountain Park fire was no

exception. Moreover, he hoped that wildland firefighters learned something from

structural firefighters about how to fight fires, presumably so “screw ups” could be

prevented in the future:

Whenever you talk to a forester, a forest fire fighter, they call it contained. And you know…what the hell is this contained? Cause we don’t contain, we fight. We fight fires – that’s what we are, we’re fire fighters, not fire containers, you know. And they learned that from us this year….They don’t have the ability to move water. Like our trucks can pump thousands and thousands of gallons of water a minute. And we can move it miles. We can pump from one truck to the other and move thousands of gallons of water. The forestry run around with little things on their back, and shovels, and hose. So they dig a big circle around a fire and let it burn itself out. They sort of learned, well these assholes have the ability to go in and fight the fire. And whether they learn it and use it I don’t know.

A number of Rick’s colleagues blamed wildland firefighters for “letting” the fire get to the city limits, lamenting that because it was so big by the time it got to them there was little they could do to stop it. One supervisor, after noting that structural firefighters couldn’t stop the fire, went on to point out that wildland firefighters ran, implying that they weren’t much help:

We thought we could stop it. We thought put a lot of guys at it, a lot of water on a big fire, you should be able to put it out….The forestry guys said look there was no fire truck made big enough to put that fire out. The helicopters, no. You gotta realize forestry had a couple hundred guys out there too. There was probably 5 or so hundred guys out there that night. Some of them running for the water, you know.

Wildland firefighters were aware that some of the blame was placed on them, and in like fashion, did some finger pointing of their own. For example, Sam directed at least some of the blame toward the fire chief for neglecting to take fire prevention measures that the Protection Branch recommended almost a decade earlier:

[Gerry Zimmerman] is not the guy that we can hang this all on. There’s no way. I mean he’s just one component of it. And he’s one component that’s massive in media. But he’s pulled the wool over a lot of people’s eyes. In the community, in the public.

Shelley: in terms of what went on, or in terms of…

Oh well, our organization has been to that community many times. You look around at all of our large centers…most places we have great working relationships with the fire department. You have to, right? We’re all in the same business. And a lot of times our wildfires threaten their structure fires, or potential structure fires. So we go to these communities, we go to these fire departments, we go to these cities, we go these fire chiefs, and say ‘You guys have a problem here’. And the normal response is, ‘Yeah, we know that. And how can we work together to fix it?’. Our guys, our people, our folks went to Kelowna in 1994 and 1996….Simulated fire—you’re going to have a fire come to you in this direction. You’ll lose 40 homes, in simulation, under these conditions. Gerry Zimmerman was there and said that’ll never happen.

Several other wildland firefighters indicated that the Kelowna Fire department was noncompliant when it came to implementing fire prevention practices. It is likely that there were even more than this who engaged in the blame game. However, they may have been reluctant to voice their stories to me, as they were instructed not to make disparaging comments about the Kelowna fire department in the event that they would be held liable for the losses. Many comments regarding structural firefighters were prefaced by statements like, “not to take anything away from the structural side”, “not a criticism towards them” etc. According to one supervisor, “I’ve had many phone calls from the chief there, saying you’re putting us, you’re saying things that weren’t true, your staff

are, and it makes us look like we’re liable….” I certainly got the sense that wildland firefighters wanted to say more; instead they often danced around the subject. For instance, one wildland firefighter, Kathy, explained that on Black Friday she didn’t feel they were in danger (they were “ready to do structural protection or maybe a burn off”) but the structural firefighters weren’t comfortable staying (they “removed themselves”), so the wildland firefighters were given the word to leave, which was “difficult” for them.

Wildland firefighters and pilots were just as likely to point fingers at the public, corporations, and/or other government agencies, especially for a lack of fire prevention practices. This was a particularly contentious issue because wildland firefighters and pilots felt that they were blamed for losses that they had in fact tried to prevent. The irony of this situation was not lost on this supervisor:

You know, I spent 10 years, before I got this job my big role was the wildland urban interface….I was trying to convince city councils, municipalities…the premier’s office that we need restrictive covenance on sub-divisions to prevent them from putting shake roofs. To have setbacks, to have fuel modification programs, to have, to have, to have, to have. The opening line of my speech was it’s not a question of if, but a matter of when we’re gonna have home losses on a parallel with Oakland, which was the fire in 1991 that burnt up 3,000 homes, or a 1,000 homes in Oakland. And lo and behold it happened. And I found that frustrating and that pissed me off because that was like a foregone conclusion from the early to mid 80’s, that we were going down this road….And we’d talk to the insurance companies, we’d talk to everybody that would listen. Not just media, whole organizations. And then we have a fire and it’s our fault! [laughter] You know, mother nature starts it, we don’t catch it, it must be, someone must have fucked up!

One heavy equipment operator also blamed the public, in this case for problematic fuel build-up, stating that the “do-gooders” didn’t want logging or burning in the park. Most often heavy equipment operators faulted the Protection Branch for losses, claiming, for

example, that “the way they manage these fires is a total farce”. Paul went further, alleging that their inefficiency resulted in the loss of hundreds of homes:

At 10 o’clock the heat starts picking up, and the winds and all that….You should be done your major hitting that fire with all you got before 10 a.m…..I don’t want to run them down too much but I have to tell you the truth, I don’t know if there was many days where we would start until, like when we were in staging…until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. So by the time they’d had their little meetings and went and assessed the fire, hundreds of homes are being swallowed up.

Firefighters’ narratives that position their own group as competent, and others as incompetent, foreshadow collective dimensions of identity construction, a topic which I discuss further below, and in the following chapter. It is also worth noting that while we saw in the previous chapter that many of these firefighters depicted themselves and their workplaces as gender neutral territory, they were very much engaged in the business of

Othering, suggesting that gender is, in fact, salient in firefighters’ individual and collective identity dynamics.

3.5.1.2 “There’s nothing you can do…”

Firefighters also practiced identity work by transferring at least some of the responsibility for the losses to forces beyond their control, oftentimes making explicit reference to Mother Nature. When I mentioned to Trevor, a structural firefighter, that some of his colleagues said they felt responsible for the losses he replied:

I think a lot of us did [feel guilty] afterwards….And thinking that you could have done more, you know after the fact. Although when you analyze it, and sit down and talk to the guys, there’s really nothing else you could have done. It was beyond anything we could have controlled, you know, so. And that was tough, that was tough to accept.

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In a similar vein, Trevor’s colleague Ben remarked, “We weren’t used to having…such a magnitude coming at us, that there’s nothing that we could have done to stop that part of it. It was a monster.”

Firefighters from all groups used similar discursive tactics. For example, when asked whether his group felt a sense of failure, Dan, a logger, explained, “Um, I don’t think we felt we failed, I mean because we know fire behavior, and we knew that it was such a catastrophic event that you can’t stop something like that”. Here we can see how

Dan mitigates the feeling, or potential feeling, of failure by implying that there’s nothing he or his colleagues could have done to stop the fire (despite the fact that they collectively worked thousands of hours trying to do just that).

This pilot explained that the heavy losses incurred in the 2003 fire season were due, in part, to the uncontrollable force of Mother Nature, “You realize early on that

Mother Nature, when it decides it’s gonna burn, it’s gonna burn, no matter what man’s gonna do, and that’s what happened last summer”. His colleague, a unit crew supervisor, felt a similar sense of futility, “Nature’s gonna go where she wants to go. She’ll pretty much do what she’s gonna do.” Mother Nature was also invoked in reference to extinguishing the fire, as this structural firefighter noted, “Mother Nature started the fire, let it burn for like 25 days, and Mother Nature basically put it out, with rain. And that was the only thing that could do it”.

3.5.1.3 Safety First

Finally, wildland firefighters and pilots attempted to salvage their self-esteem by pointing to organizational imperatives for firefighting safety that mandated the scope of

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their efforts. When asked to give a chronology of the fire’s progression, a supervisor in the air tanker program said the following:

The lightning strike hit sometime at 2 in the morning, or something like that, and it was already going nuts when they spotted it. So they put a tanker request in at 5 in the morning. Well we’re bound by Canadian aviation regulations and fire reality that if we started flying at 5 in the morning those airplanes are done at 5 at night. Twelve hour days...and that’s a safety thing, and I agree with it. So we didn’t launch until about 8 in the morning, which gave us until 8 at night, which is fine.

Safety was also invoked to ease the frustration of losing. As Lionel explained, “When we start losing on a grander scale it is tough, it’s really frustrating, but the most important thing for us is staying alive”. While it was frustrating to lose, this supervisor, and many of the firefighters working under him, made it known that safety trumped winning at any cost, “We don’t burn people for trees, well that’s a pretty harsh statement. What we’re saying is we don’t put people in jeopardy for any resource or any value. Public safety, our crew safety, is paramount.”

3.5.2 Minimizing Losses

Another identity-maintenance strategy was to diminish the importance or value of the resources that were destroyed by the fire. This was primarily exercised by wildland firefighters, pilots, and heavy equipment operators, who made numerous remarks like,

“they’re just homes”, “they can replace most of their possessions”, “in the long run they’ll be further ahead financially”. Sherry, who earlier remarked that “you feel kind of crappy” when houses burn, agreed that it was difficult to lose houses, but immediately followed with, “But even then, it’s just a house. It’s just a house. You may not have got your pictures out, but guess what, your family has doubles”. However, she soon

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countered with, “But then again your whole families’ houses might have been burned”, suggesting that this strategy did not entirely ameliorate her sense of loss. One firefighter even went so far as to say that houses are “just another fuel type”. He went on to transfer the blame onto homeowners, “Houses burn, yes they do. We didn’t build them there, somebody else did. We didn’t make them combustible. They chose not to clean out their back yard…” Comments such as these were rooted in firefighters’ irritation with public apathy and the accompanying lack of fire prevention measures, but also provided a way of mending identities that were jeopardized by losing valued resources.

A number of wildland firefighters and pilots also minimized the loss of trees.

Kathy, a wildland firefighter explained, “It’s trees, and it’s not really worth losing a life of someone for a tree”. She disclosed that watching a house burn really “hits home”, but rationalized the loss of trees by pointing to Mother Nature, “I mean like I said earlier it’s a tree. I mean I, you know, I feel bad when a tree goes up but it’s like that’s Mother

Nature’s way of cleaning up. You know, like lightning has been here way before we have”.

3.5.3 Shifting Focus

Lastly, firefighters from all groups salvaged their identities by transferring attention from losses to more positive fire outcomes. For example, a number of structural firefighters and administrators felt that the fire was a “proving ground”; one in which their skills and experience were put to the test and where they came out standing. This was especially true for recent hires or those that had transferred to new positions. Eight new firefighters were hired by the Kelowna fire department in 2003, and they were only

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on the job for 10 days when they were called into duty. Mike noted that “initiation by fire” was beneficial because it allowed him to gain the trust and respect of his colleagues.

Firefighters from all groups, suggested that things could have been worse by pointing to the fact that there were few serious injuries, and no lost lives. The exception, of course, were pilots, as they lost three of their comrades that summer. Trevor, the structural firefighter who earlier noted that he and his colleagues felt guilty about losing houses, pointed out that while the devastation caused by the fire was great, most importantly, there were no deaths:

Not much left of the houses actually. I’ve never seen a house burn down so hot….even the cement foundation, it’s overheated and it actually turned into almost like a dust….It was that hot. I mean there was nothing left….The biggest thing is it’s a miracle that nobody got hurt, and nobody died.

This theme was echoed by a wildland supervisor who emphasized that despite the difficult circumstances his employees sustained very few injuries:

Through the whole thing last year, another part of my job was making sure that everybody was still focused in on that [safety] side of our business. Yes it’s serious, yeah we’ve lost a sawmill, yeah we’ve lost a bunch of houses, unfortunately we lost some pilots. We worked probably 3 or 4 million man hours last year and we had hardly any major injuries at all.

Firefighters also directed attention to the resources that were saved because of their efforts. Even Charlie, the structural firefighter who earlier said that losing was like getting “kicked in the nuts”, managed to put a positive spin on things, “It took probably a week to put it into perspective and realize that you know, yeah okay we lost all those, but if we hadn’t been there it would have been like 2000 houses would have been burnt. That whole hillside would have been burnt”. One supervisor in the Kelowna fire department stressed that they worked hard to turn a negative into a positive by encouraging

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firefighters to focus on successes. This strategy did not work for everybody however.

Mark explained:

Everybody goes, oh don’t think about the 200 and [pauses], I try to forget about that, the 200 and some odd houses that were lost. Think of the thousands of houses you saved. Well yeah, whatever. That’s not the point. The point is we lost houses, and we don’t lose houses.

Like their structural counterparts, wildland firefighters highlighted their success at preventing losses. Tom, underscored the “saves” that his group made, “You know there was a lot of fires…that we did catch that had a lot of potential to be just as catastrophic.”

However, he and his colleagues bemoaned the fact that while they had some major successes, the public never heard about them.

3.6 Discussion

While firefighters could have focused solely on the resources that were saved as a result of their work, firefighting occupations interpret success narrowly, leaving little room for definitions that include the loss of resources. As a result, firefighters felt like they lost the battle against the fire. I posit that identity work is the key to understanding how they endeavored to rescue their identities from this symbolic challenge. In an attempt to regain their dignity, and (re)construct credible occupational selves, firefighters engaged in a great deal of identity talk. These strategies included shifting responsibility by placing blame for the losses on other groups, pointing to uncontrollable forces, invoking safety constraints, minimizing losses, and shifting the focus to positive outcomes.

Notably, wildland firefighters and pilots had a wider repertoire of identity talk, than did structural firefighters or loggers. They utilized all of the strategies outlined

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above, and were the only two groups that invoked safety mandates and minimized losses.

This is likely due to the fact that they have had to deal with criticism in the past, and as a result, have more comprehensive identity work strategies. Wildland firefighters and pilots practiced identity work to deal with credibility issues that were magnified by losing, whereas structural tried to avert a credibility crisis that could have resulted from losing.

3.6.1 The Case of Women Firefighters

I argue that losing challenged men firefighters’ gender identities, because like the presence of competent women firefighters, losing destabilized the association between firefighting and exemplary masculinity. As we saw, women also performed identity talk in order to repair their self esteem and regain a sense of a competent occupational self.

This raises an interesting question—were their gender identities threatened as a result of losing? It is possible, given that they demonstrate firefighting competence by practicing appropriate workplace masculinity. As I observed in the previous chapter, both Kathy and Sherry constructed gender on masculine terms—Kathy implicitly, by discursively neutralizing gender, and Sherry more explicitly by positioning herself as more competent at symbolically masculine tasks than most of her male colleagues.

It seems clear that their occupational identities were in need of repair, based on their identity work strategies. While it is possible that their gender identities were also challenged by losing, I speculate that this was not the case. First, I propose that the link between gender identity and work is weaker for women than for men. Kathy and Sherry may have had to demonstrate exemplary masculinity at work, but they still had the option

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of doing femininity (or alternative masculinities) outside of work. Men, on the other hand, do not—there are sanctions for men who do not do masculinity “properly” (both at work and outside of work). In addition, men have few other ways to define their identity than by the paid work they do, but this is less true for women (Martin 2001). If the link between occupational and gender identity is less salient for women, it is possible that their occupational identities could be imperiled but not their gender identities. I submit that this was the case for Kathy and Sherry. In contrast, for their men colleagues, losing undermined both their occupational and gender identities. Findings presented in the next chapter suggest that women firefighters’ gender identities were not endangered by the events surrounding the fire in the same way as their co-workers, as they did not employ similar strategies of self.

If women firefighters practiced identity work solely to rescue their occupational selves, could this also be true for men firefighters? In other words, perhaps their identity talk had nothing to do with rescuing masculinity. Again, this is plausible, but not probable. First, there is plenty of evidence in the literature to suggest that masculine and occupational identities are entwined (Cheng 1996; Collinson and Hearn 1996; Meyer

1999; Ouellet 1994; Pierce 1995; Prokos and Padavic 2002), so it is likely that when one is undermined so is the other. Second, men navigated the status hierarchy that became apparent during the fire in a way that suggests their masculinities were threatened. I discuss this in more detail in the following chapter.

3.6.2 Consequences of Identity Work

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Firefighters’ attempts to rescue their individual identities came at a cost—their

identity work, specifically, finger pointing, created and reinforced divisions between

occupational groups that excluded the possibility of larger solidarities that could have

come about as a result of the fire.26 On a practical note, this raises questions about

firefighters’ ability to work together in the future, not only to undertake fire prevention

measures, but in the event of another interface fire (which many believe is well within the

realm of possibility). On the positive side, identity management strategies may have

helped firefighters’ regain their dignity and self-esteem, although I cannot say with

certainty that this was the case. Many appeared to have come to terms with losing,

however, a sizeable minority were still troubled when I spoke to them a year after the

fire. Some became emotional during our interviews, and others explained that it was still

difficult to talk about the fire. I also heard about numerous others who did not fare well

in the aftermath of the fire. For example, firefighters noted that some of their colleagues

left their jobs (i.e. took early retirement, or went on to other jobs), were on stress leave, or

were having marital difficulties.

Firefighters’ identity talk was an attempt to rescue individual occupational

identities (and for men, their masculinities). The degree to which they were successful at

this is not certain, however it is clear that only one group—structural firefighters—was

able to rescue their collective credibility in the face of losing. This is especially

compelling given that this same group fell short in their duty to protect the most highly

valued resource—homes.

26 In a similar vein, Sherman (2005) maintains that workers’ strategies of self act against formation of collectivities.

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What is missing in much of the literature on identity work is the issue of power

(Roschelle and Kaufman 2004). This is likely because research most often examines individual identity management strategies, rather than how groups rally to protect their identities. However, as Schwalbe and Mason-Schrock (1996) propose, “the study of identity work can move beyond concerns for the situated self-presentations of individuals…[to] how people who share an identity collaborate to protect it” (p. 128).

The extent to which groups are successful at claiming and protecting identities has to do with their location in the power structure of society (Schwalbe and Mason-Schrock

1996). It is only by theorizing power relations, specifically contestations for gender hegemony, and collective identity management strategies in the form of boundary work, that we can explain how non-structural firefighters lost credibility in the wake of the fire while structural firefighters gained ground. In the next chapter I show how this occurred.

I also demonstrate how the collective work of the media provided structural firefighters with a “status shield” (Smith and Kleinman 1989 cited in Tracy and Scott

2006) that enabled them to avoid criticism for the losses in ways that other firefighters could not. The relative effectiveness of stigma management strategies are bound to macro-level discursive formations (Tracy and Scott 2006), such as heroism and occupational prestige, that enable certain presentations of self to take hold. As we shall see, structural firefighters had a number of important advantages on this front.

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CHAPTER 4

GENDERED STRATEGIES OF SELF: NAVIGATING HIERARCHY AND

CONTESTING MASCULINITY

As the previous chapter makes clear, there was a collective sense of failure among firefighters. Yet structural firefighters were granted more prestige, recognition and rewards than other groups, even though all of the firefighting groups worked diligently to put out the fire. This created a great deal of inter-group tension. In addition, structural firefighters were able to translate the social capital generated by the fire into material rewards.

In this chapter I discuss how the status hierarchy developed, and how firefighters responded to these inequities. Specifically, I focus on the “strategies of self” (Sherman

2005:133) that firefighters invoked to secure power and prestige in the face of this hierarchy. For example, in an effort to position their own group as superior, firefighters often attempted to undermine the credibility of firefighters from other groups. Notably, even firefighters with relatively high status engaged in these practices. I also explain how the hierarchy enabled some of those who failed to emerge as victors. I argue that we

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cannot fully understand firefighters’ strategies for negotiating this hierarchy, nor the consequences of their actions, without examining masculinity dynamics; something that previous research on boundary work and the comparative self have yet to examine.

Why did structural firefighters receive so much more prestige and status, when it was clear that all of the firefighters played an important role in extinguishing the fire?

There are a few obvious things that we can point to. First, structural firefighters protect homes, and homes are more highly valued than trees. In addition, structural firefighters were the last line of defense for the city of Kelowna—people turned to them in their time of need. Third, since 9/11, structural firefighters have been portrayed as heroes, especially in the media. There are also some less obvious things that might explain why they got more recognition. The way that the firefighting efforts were organized enabled the media and the public greater access to structural firefighters. This resulted in more media coverage for structural firefighters, and this coverage portrayed structural firefighters in a very positive light. Structural firefighters were held up as heroes.

Moreover, if we look closely at the heroism rhetoric we can see they were also depicted as exemplars of masculinity.

Structural firefighters had some advantages over other groups; they had perhaps better opportunities to gain resources and rewards. But these opportunities had to be secured. In order to fully understand how they translated these opportunities into material rewards we need to take a close look at their narratives—their talk about the fire—and how their discourse positioned them as deserving. Specifically, the deserving nature of their narratives rested on claims to hegemonic masculinity. Non-structural firefighters responded to this hierarchy by contesting structural firefighters’ claims. They

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also portrayed themselves as worthy of merit by claiming exemplary masculinity.

However, other factors were against them, and in the end their attempts were largely unsuccessful. It is no accident that firefighters from all groups tried to depict themselves as the most manly because in fact the battle was over masculinity, and it is the ability to claim hegemonic masculinity that has implications for the allocation of symbolic and material rewards.

Non-structural firefighters were attempting to rescue their dignity because they felt unsupported and abandoned by the media and the public; they had marginal standing on the status hierarchy. Structural firefighters had to justify the praise they received since they felt that they had not actually won the battle against the fire. As one rookie explained, “It was hard to believe that the public was behind us at that time. Because we hadn’t done our job—I didn’t feel.” Structural firefighters were at the top of the status hierarchy, but they had to prove they deserved it. There were also gender dynamics involved in this hierarchy that explain why structural firefighters were so anxious to prove that they were in fact deserving of the accolades they received. As I outline below, ones’ position at the top of gendered status hierarchies is always contested; ascendancy is never guaranteed, therefore a great deal of effort is required to maintain positioning.

4.1 Literature

Michèle Lamont’s (1992; 2000) research on working and upper-middle class men in the United States and France sheds some light on the firefighters’ inter-group dynamics. Extending Gieryn’s (1983) concept of boundary work to include the identity process by which people differentiate themselves from others (Lamont, 1992), she finds

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that actors use a comparative self to situate themselves as superior vis-à-vis other groups.

In particular, Lamont argues that working class men define their worth and dignity using a moral ‘measuring stick’ to draw boundaries between themselves and those to whom they feel superior (Lamont, 2000). For example, among American working class men, she finds that work ethic, a “disciplined self”, protection, and responsibility are venerated and used to draw distinctions.

4.1.1 Strategies of Self

Building on Lamont’s work, Rachel Sherman (2005; 2006) examines boundary work and the notion of a comparative self in an occupational context. As noted earlier, she explores how interactive service workers in luxury hotels manage to maintain dignity and power while performing service work that positions them as subordinate in relation to socially and materially privileged hotel guests. She finds that workers use strategies of self—comparisons and judgments of guests and co-workers—to place themselves at the top of symbolic hierarchies. In drawing these symbolic boundaries, workers are able to effectively portray themselves as superior to those whom they provide service. Finally,

Sherman finds that the strategies workers use to construct superior selves are often fluid

(i.e. dependent on context), and contradictory (e.g., workers constituted guests as inferior through both critique and empathy).

Sherman’s (2005, 2006) and Lamont’s (1992; 2000) work makes an important contribution to the literature on boundary work; particularly how the self is shaped by class and produced through boundaries and differences. Sherman’s findings also suggest that individual identities are defined in opposition to a number of possible “Others”

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encountered in the workplace (i.e. co-workers and guests). However, she does not examine the group dynamics involved in this symbolic boundary work, a point to which I return below.

This work also goes a long way toward explaining how low status workers cultivate a positive sense of self in response to status inequalities. However, Sherman’s framework does little to explain why firefighters who were at the top of a status hierarchy, and held up as heroes for their efforts, attempted to situate themselves as superior in relation to their firefighting colleagues, nor why they were able to secure material rewards as a result of their actions. To address these issues, we must incorporate theorizing on masculinity; specifically, the notion that hegemony implies an active struggle for dominance (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005), and the assertion that masculinities are collective—they are “sustained and enacted not only by individuals, but also by groups, institutions, and cultural forms like mass media” (Connell 2000:217).

Herein lies the key to understanding why firefighters with high status construct superior selves—ascendancy is never guaranteed, therefore they must continually work to maintain their status vis-à-vis other men and prove that they are, in fact, appropriately masculine and, therefore, superior. Further, the collective work of the media and structural firefighters translated the symbolic claim to masculinity into material rewards.

4.1.2 Synthesis: Gendered Strategies of Self

In order to make sense of how workers navigate status hierarchies we must theorize gender. Lamont (2000) sows this seed in her research on working class men, noting that historically dominant conceptions of masculinity are embedded in the moral

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standards of hard work and protection that her participants used to evaluate themselves and others. I make a stronger claim, arguing that the actual work of constructing and maintaining boundaries and superior occupational selves (i.e. the process) is an inherently gendered one. Because hegemonic masculinity is relational and contested, it requires actors to draw boundaries and create superior selves that delineate “us” (superior men) from “them” (marginalized Others). Further, while Sherman’s (2005) idea of flexible, contradictory strategies of self is consistent with theorizing on masculinity (e.g. see

Connell and Messerschmidt 2005), she does not examine how gender is embedded in the accomplishment of boundary work and selfhood. In this chapter, I build on Lamont’s

(1992; 2000) and Sherman’s (2005; 2006) work by considering how gender is implicated in the process of boundary work and comparative strategies of self.

Finally, consistent with the notion that masculinity making is both an individual and collective effort (Connell 2000), I argue that firefighters’ gendered strategies of self, and accompanying boundary work, is simultaneously an individual and group level process. Sherman (2005) notes that when workers engage in strategies of self they create symbolic boundaries that differentiate them from others. Strategies of “self” implies that this work is accomplished solely by individuals, however, a collective effort is required to successfully create and enforce symbolic boundaries between those who are in—those who can legitimately claim a particular self—and those who are out (Schwalbe and

Mason-Schrock 1996). Sherman does not investigate this group dimension of boundary work, however I demonstrate that communal work (including the work of the media) was in fact required to effectively (re)enforce boundaries that delineated who could successfully claim to be the most competent and masculine firefighters. Gendered

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strategies of self incorporates both gender, and the collective effort (via boundary work) required to make effective identity claims.

I begin by outlining how the status hierarchy between firefighters developed, which allows me to situate the micro-level processes of boundary work and superior selves within the broader workplace institutional structures and culture in which they occurred (Fuchs Epstein 1992). In particular, I examine how the firefighting efforts were organized and the role played by the media in cultivating the hierarchy. Media analyses are routinely undertaken by gender scholars from a broad range of fields, because a considerable body of research indicates that the ways in which the media frame events has implications for the social construction of gender, especially in the aftermath of tragedy or disaster (e.g. see Drew 2004; Grewal 2003; Projansky 1998).

After discussing how the social hierarchy developed during the fire, I examine how firefighters negotiated the hierarchy and the ways in which their strategies of self were gendered. Finally, I reflect on the broader implications of these findings, including the personal costs to the firefighters involved, and consequences for the long-term allocation of material resources.

4.2 Social Hierarchy

Over the course of the fire and in the weeks and months that followed, a hierarchy became apparent—one in which City of Kelowna firefighters received more recognition, rewards, and status from the media and the public than other firefighting groups. This generated a great deal of animosity between firefighters. While largely unsolicited, I heard numerous disparaging comments that were often, although not exclusively, directed

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at the City of Kelowna firefighters, especially the fire chief, who was a favorite target. In addition, firefighters from all groups made a concerted effort to frame their own work group as superior (i.e. the ones who put themselves in the most danger, worked the hardest under the most difficult conditions, were the most skilled, did the best job etc.), while simultaneously positioning other groups as inferior. The following quote from

Greg, a veteran forestry firefighter who was a supervisor during the fire, is representative of comments I heard from many of his colleagues. Greg revealed his frustration at what he felt was unfair recognition of the City of Kelowna firefighters, and a lack of praise for forestry firefighters and equipment operators who were “really” the ones who took on the most important and dangerous firefighting tasks:

I think the role, and what was accomplished by our people, on the ground, doesn't get the attention that it deserves. And I think that has a real psychological impact on our firefighters, and our equipment operators. I think that the glory all goes to the [structural] fire departments....Our guys are out there and I'm not just saying this, this isn't biased, this is my personal observation from the first 10, 12 days of the Okanagan fire….Our staff, our crews, the forest service crews, were the last people out, after the fire department had left. Our guys were the ones who held and maintained that fire guard on the south side. It wasn't the [Kelowna] fire department who did that. It was our staff that did that, our firefighter personnel who held the line. It was our staff who risked themselves in injury, in maintaining that line. It was our front line folks and equipment operators that put in that [fire] guard, that worked through the heat and the dust, and the hot and the dry. It's our people who do all of that. Those equipment operators chug away, day and night sometimes, 24 hours a day, and they get very little recognition. The glory all goes to the [Kelowna] fire department. And that in itself has a huge impact to the morale. And somehow the credit has to go where it rightfully belongs.

Two processes contributed to the formation of the hierarchy—the structural organization

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of the firefighting efforts, and the media coverage of the fire. I discuss each of these in turn below. This is followed by a discussion of firefighters’ strategies for managing the hierarchy.

4.2.1 Access and Reward: The Structural Organization of Firefighting

During the fire there were several staging areas set up where firefighting crews were organized and given instructions before heading out to the fire zone. The staging areas for the heavy equipment operators and wildland firefighters were on the outskirts of the city, as these sites were in close proximity to the areas where the wildland firefighting crews were working (usually deep in the forest, especially at the beginning of the fire).

Pilots were dispatched from regional airport bases. The wildland firefighters’ command post was set up at the Okanagan Mountain Park headquarters, located in a small town about 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Kelowna. In contrast, the structural firefighters were located at the main fire hall, right in the heart of the city. The main fire hall was also where the Emergency Operations Center was situated. This center housed many administrative personnel who were part of the firefighting efforts and, as a result, attracted a large number of reporters. The geographical location of the main fire hall and the fact that structural firefighters fought the fire within the city limits meant that they were much more accessible to reporters, both on and off duty. These institutional arrangements facilitated relationships with the media that resulted in more coverage for structural firefighters.

As Greg noted, “The people that [the media] interview, because they're readily available, are the people in the fire department, in the halls.” Many other non-structural

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firefighters also pointed out that because structural firefighters were accessible to the media, they received a great deal of coverage. For example, Bob, a 30-year veteran with the forestry service, pointed out:

You know [the media] could go to the number one fire hall, and they could corner some fireman and they could see the trucks and all of that. You know we tried to make the fire line available to media people but it was all, you know you gotta watch for safety there too, right? So we had escorted tours at different times, and different times we’d take them up and let them take some pictures from the air or whatever…I mean it wasn’t as open as the fire hall was sort of thing.

Bob notes that safety concerns were another obstacle that made gaining access to wildland firefighters more difficult. If reporters wanted to interview wildland firefighters they had to go to the staging area, which was out of town, or to the fire zone, which was not always feasible due to safety issues.

Because the main fire hall was also more accessible to the public, most of the donations to the firefighting efforts arrived there. Structural firefighters received everything from truckloads of food to cases of cold beer. In contrast, two heavy equipment operators remarked that they were not provided with any food, even when they were on duty for 12 hours or more. In addition, at the main fire hall volunteers were on hand to provide free massages, make sandwiches, and provide moral support.

Meanwhile most of the wildland firefighters and pilots were stationed in base camps far from the center of the city.

Lionel, an air attack officer who supervised pilots during the fire, revealed that he and his crew members resented the structural firefighters because of the special treatment that they received:

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And I know that there was a, lots of ah, you know, ‘well those poor [structural] fire guys’. They’re kind of oh yeah, poor babies, you know. They’re getting back rubs, they’re getting beers. We can’t have any beers on base. You know, we don’t get any of that stuff. And there’s no recognition. So a certain amount of, what do you call it, dissention? Oh yeah, the poor structural guys.

The general sentiment of the non-structural firefighters was that structural firefighters received preferential treatment in a number of areas. The organizational arrangements of the firefighting efforts were directly related not only to the amount of resources and support available (or not available) to the different groups of firefighters but to the amount of media exposure that each group received.

4.2.2 The Making of Heroes

Based on newspaper accounts, it appears that structural firefighters (especially the fire chief) did receive considerably more print media coverage than any other groups or individuals who were involved in the firefighting efforts. Technical fire information was obtained both from forest service information officers and the chief of the Kelowna fire department. However, the large majority of firefighter personal interest stories were about structural firefighters; most often the Kelowna fire chief. While there were several articles about wildland firefighters, equipment operators and pilots, for the most part they appeared near the end of the fire. For example, over two weeks after the fire started, one headline in the Kelowna Daily Courier exclaimed, “Unsung Heroes: Heavy equipment operators have put their lives on the line fighting the Okanagan Mountain blaze, but respect has been hard to find” (Poulsen 2003). Even the army, brought in to provide

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support services to the front line firefighters (such as putting out hot spots and performing mop up duties) received a relatively large share of media coverage.

Chris is a crew leader employed by a wildland firefighting contract company, and his perception of the media coverage is consistent with this finding. He noted that, as a result of the unequal coverage, the public gave more credit to the structural firefighters than the wildland firefighters. He also commented that as a result of these events the forestry service eventually hired more media relations people:

And [the presence of additional media relations people] I think came directly out of Kelowna, for the most part. Because of the war between the structural and the forestry. Because of the huge battle, and we saw who won in the hearts of the people because there was the media again. And it wasn’t, it was all the media on them, and then none of the media on [us], so if you only hear one side of the story, you’re going to vote what?

According to Chris, structural firefighters not only fared better than wildland firefighters in terms of media coverage, they won another important battle—the recognition, support, and adoration of the public. Chris was not alone in his sentiments, as numerous other wildland firefighters were also critical of the coverage provided by the media.

Conversely, a number of structural firefighters complained that they received, and continue to receive, more attention than they desire. Several mentioned that they were

“hounded” by reporters, and one veteran called the event “the fire that never goes away” in reference to the donations that continued to arrive at the fire hall and the praise still directed their way even one year after the fire. Another explained that while he appreciated the public support it was also overwhelming, “After a while you just, you know, you feel like if one more stranger comes up and hugs me I’m gonna drop kick

‘em”.

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4.2.2.1 The media as reputational entrepreneurs: firefighters and

heroic masculinity

The goal of the news media is to create and retain reader interest (Altheide 2001).

One way to accomplish this is through human interest stories, which are designed to attract readers and retain their loyalty. Successful human interest stories create

“collective attention” and encourage “shared identification” among audience members

(Fine and White 2002:57). Both during the fire and in the weeks that followed, the print media covered numerous human interest stories about firefighters. Both of the local newspapers drew on dominant cultural discourses and symbols of heroism in these stories. Many framed firefighters as heroes, either explicitly (through the use of the word

“hero”), or implicitly (by referring to firefighters as “courageous”, “selfless”, etc.). In addition, the Daily Courier printed pull-out posters that read “Thanks for being Our

Heroes!” and urged readers to “show your gratitude and display this poster in your window”. The media have been involved in the business of hero making for more than two centuries (Houchin Winfield 2003), and this event was no exception.

Again, many of these stories involved the Kelowna fire chief, and to a lesser degree, the structural firefighters who worked for him. Perhaps, in light of the valorization of structural firefighters as heroes in the wake of 9/11 (Langewiesche 2002;

Lorber 2002), which occurred only two years prior to the fire, it was strategic for the media to portray structural firefighters as heroes. The media want to generate and retain interest and they are only successful to the extent that their readers identify with the principal characters and settings (Fine and White 2002). People tend to selectively

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perceive information, focusing on details which most readily fit into the frames of reference they are familiar with (Fisher 1997). Consequently, the media may have favored the structural fire department because they recognized that their audience would identify more readily with structural firefighters as heroes, while wildland firefighters, being a more diverse group, including more women and First Nations firefighters, would not fit quite so readily into a heroism frame. This situation was not lost on wildland firefighters; a number noted that they “can’t compete” with structural firefighters, because they don’t have “shiny red trucks” or “Gerry Zimmerman’s”.

In an effort to promote readers’ direct identification with characters, the media acted as “reputational entrepreneurs”—that is, they shaped the reputations of structural firefighters in ways that benefited their own interests (Fine 1996:1162). Here we can also see how demographic differences between wildland firefighters and structural firefighters played a role in the status hierarchy through the workings of the media.

Embedded in the heroism rhetoric, were hegemonic constructions of masculinity.

It is no secret that media representations enforce and reproduce culturally dominant gender norms, symbols, ideologies and stereotypes (Dworkin and Wachs 2000; Howard and Prividera 2004). Since the use of conventional categories and familiar roles conveys stability, this may be especially true during times of crisis (Lorber 2002). In addition, the media have a vested interest in supporting culturally dominant conceptions of manliness, because they want readers to connect with the characters in their stories, as noted above.

Following are several examples that illustrate the ways in which the media implicitly championed hegemonic masculinity in their coverage of the fire. Two days after Black Friday, one headline declared, “Hard Fought Battle: For every home lost,

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firefighters saved two, says weary fire chief” (Plant 2003). The body of the article was punctuated by references to the danger that firefighters placed themselves in (“the fire prompted fierce firefighting that could have turned deadly”), including injuries sustained.

It also relayed an incident where firefighters were “trapped” by the flames; however the reporter was quick to note that “once [the] flames died down, the men fought their way back in and put out spot fires”. Several days later, Capital News, reporting on the story of the trapped firefighters printed the following headline, “Training and Experience Kept

Trapped Firefighters Calm” (Watters 2003). Another headline in the Daily Courier exclaimed, “Hot Stuff: Studly forest fire point men are not just a couple of hosers”

(Seymour 2003). These are only several examples of many where the media implicitly referenced culturally dominant ideals of masculinity such as strength, aggression, courage in the face of danger, heterosexuality, and stoicism. As in other tragedies, the media used this event to protect and articulate dominant gender narratives (Projansky 1998). The media’s own boundary work evoked and perpetuated the parameters of manhood, which ultimately provided a context of support for the dynamic reproduction of hegemonic masculinity.27 Here we can see how the collective actions of the media worked to

(re)inscribe symbolic boundaries around hegemonic masculinity, which ultimately allowed the gendered strategies of self invoked by structural firefighters to take hold. I elaborate on this process in the following section.

27 I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for this idea.

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On the whole, the public appeared to embrace the new heroes. They enthusiastically participated in a yellow ribbon campaign, posted signs of gratitude around the city, attended public events to honor firefighters, supported a number of fundraising causes, and donated a generous amount of time and money to the firefighting efforts.

Wildland firefighters, on the other hand, often expressed mixed emotions about the hero atmosphere that permeated the town, as they did not feel that the praise was necessarily directed at them (despite the fact that there were some signs and media stories that targeted non-structural firefighters). When asked how he felt about seeing the signs,

Josh, a 22-year old wildland firefighter in his third season as a crew member remarked:

Um, yeah, we saw [the signs] every time we drove in. And, like here at the [forestry] base there’s somewhat, there’s some animosity between us and the KFD, the Kelowna fire department….Like because they stopped the fire when it was all in the houses, they kind of got the glory. And it’s like we all know, we couldn’t do anything when it’s in that kind of [forest conditions]….So it was kind of like, well we did all this work and, despite our efforts, this is going to happen and you can’t stop it. You know we had posters and stuff but as it started kind of slowing down we were kind of you know, we were back to doing our job and those guys are still kind of in the glory.

So, according to Josh, not only did the structural firefighters receive more credit because they were battling house fires, they stayed in the limelight when the wildland firefighters went off to fight forest fires in other areas. As Josh and his colleagues were largely overlooked in the media coverage of the fire, perhaps it is not surprising that they were somewhat skeptical about the heroism messages that permeated the local media. It is also possible that the placement of the signs signalled that they were directed at structural

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firefighters, as one wildland firefighting supervisor mentioned that signs were erected in front of the structural firefighters’ fire halls and other locations where structural firefighters could be expected to see them.

In contrast, most of the structural firefighters seemed to recognize that the heroism narrative was directed at them. One rookie firefighter, Jeff, maintained that being called a hero was a great “morale booster”, however he noted that “I don’t think there’s anyone who wants to be called a hero or anything, like it’s just, you know that’s what we’re paid to do.” All of the structural firefighters denied being heroes and gave the trite answer that what they did was just “part of the job”. This strategy is consistent with the sociology of heroism literature, which suggests that performing a risky or gallant act alone does not qualify one as a hero. Heroism is a socially conferred status—to be regarded as a hero one must be recognized and labeled as such by others (Lois 2003) (as the media did in this case). Social convention may have precluded structural firefighters from self-identifying as heroes, but their narratives often revealed an implicit perception that they perform courageous, if not heroic, acts in the work that they do everyday.

Following are statements from three veteran firefighters who denied being heroes:

If somebody goes in to save a child or a mother or a grandmother then that’s the risk that we run. We pull people out of burning buildings. We did it the other day, where we pulled a guy out, maybe 5 months ago, out of a burning building, right. Risking their [sic] lives, it’s what we do, right?

Those people that are in that burning building, the only chance they have is you. The only chance they have for survival is how efficiently and how professionally you do your job. If they’re not already deceased. But you know if they’re viable, or if there’s something, if they’re save-able then you’re their only chance.

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It’s nice to be recognized, but I don’t know what the definition of hero is. We, the guys out here, do really dangerous, successful, heroic deeds nearly every day.

So while the structural firefighters claimed to reject the hero label, a hero-like narrative was woven into many of their accounts of their regular duties.

The heroism rhetoric that was disseminated through the local media exacerbated the hierarchy among firefighters, as it favored the fire chief and other structural firefighters. In addition, the hierarchy was perpetuated by the perceptions of the firefighters themselves. Many wildland firefighters seemed to believe that the media praise was directed solely at the structural firefighters and their chief. Structural firefighters, while denying that they were heroes, viewed their job as one that requires selfless acts on a regular basis.

4.3 Contesting Credibility

In navigating the status hierarchy that was exacerbated by the organization of the firefighting efforts and the media coverage of the fire, firefighters constructed boundaries in an attempt to distinguish their group from other groups. Obviously, occupational boundaries between firefighting groups were in place long before the fire. There were also status differences between wildland and structural firefighters before the fire began.

For example, a high ranking administrator in the forestry department mentioned that in years past some structural fire departments were reluctant to receive forest fire training from wildland firefighters because they were “seasonal” workers and viewed as less professional. In addition, wildland firefighters, loggers, and pilots do not have the same cultural capital as structural firefighters, because structural firefighters have been granted

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heroic status by the media and the public in the wake of 9/11. My argument here is that the hierarchy was exacerbated, rather than created, by the events surrounding the fire, and that firefighters responded by strengthening and reinforcing these boundaries by undermining the competence of those outside of their occupational group.

They accomplished this by adopting a measuring stick of firefighting competence that was variously deemed to include: remaining calm in a crisis, using aggressive tactics, controlling emotions and exterminating fire (the latter two criteria falling under the more general category of “repudiating the feminine” below). Firefighters drew on these criteria to demonstrate that their group was superior to other firefighting groups. Because these standards are analogous to culturally dominant ideals of masculinity, undermining firefighting competence simultaneously undermined the masculine integrity of the targeted group. These strategies are indicative of the importance of hegemonic masculinity to firefighters, as workers often judge members of other groups to be deficient in respect to the criteria they value most (Lamont 2000).

Firefighters’ gendered strategies of self not only reinforced occupational boundaries, but created boundaries that delineated the difference between “us” (the competent firefighters and “real” men) and “them” (inferior firefighters and subordinate men). Again, we can see how firefighters worked to position firefighters from other groups as (inferior) Others. Ultimately, these tactics were attempts to erode the credibility of the firefighting group to which they were directed. In the following section,

I provide examples of firefighters’ narratives in order to demonstrate these social dynamics. Note that these individual narratives contain group referents (i.e. “we”,

“they”, “us”, “them”), which serve to remind us that while individuals engage in

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strategies of self in an effort to construct superior selves, these tactics also work to demarcate and enforce boundaries between groups.

4.3.1 Calm and reliable in crisis

According to Josh, the young wildland firefighter who remarked earlier that the structural firefighters “got all the glory”, the wildland crew leaders were calm under pressure, while the structural firefighters fell apart:

We had some [crew leaders]…who have both seen huge fire. But nothing like this. And they were just rock solid. They said no worries, get in [the vehicles], we’ll get you all through. Everybody else was panicked. Like the Kelowna Fire department was just wiggy.

One of the crew leaders that Josh was referring to, Chris, explained that there were two occasions when he instructed structural firefighters to leave an area for safety reasons and, due to their ignorance of forest fire behavior, they resisted. However, according to

Chris, there were other times when they “took off” when it was safe, which resulted in the loss of houses:

There were times when the structure guys again…the times they would leave an area when it was safe, and then homes would go. And you’d say, ‘well, where the hell did they go?’ So then you get on the radio and you start telling them, no you guys, it is safe there. I know what the fire is doing, I know where it is, and I know what it’s going to do. If you’re there right now you can save a couple. But no, of course they weren’t.

Structural firefighters used similar tactics to portray wildland firefighters in an unflattering manner. For example, this structural firefighter seemed to genuinely delight in relaying a story where wildland firefighters apparently pulled back from the front line of the fire while the structural firefighters stayed:

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And I remember we were up in the Rimrock area when the fire broke through….So we’re sitting there, and we know it’s coming because you can hear it, the heat, the wind, the smoke, the dust, everything. The forestry guys you know they’re all in there. And then all of the sudden we heard these whistles. And that’s an emergency signal for the forestry to get the hell out. So all of these whistles, you can just hear them going right across the mountain side, and we’re kind of listening and then we’re like what the hell is that? And it looked like rats jumping off a burning ship [chuckles]. These guys were running as hard as they could out of the forest, by us, and down the hill and they’re gone. And we’re sitting there going, I think it’s coming. You guys ready? Oh yeah!

Mark’s narrative positions his group as the competent firefighters—the “real” men who stayed to fight the fire. In contrast, according to Mark, the wildland firefighters ran away when things got bad. This implies that the structural firefighters were brave while the others were not. Structural firefighters, rational, fearless, and calm under pressure, were ready to take on the fire, and ultimately, as Mark noted later on in the interview, it was these men who put it out.

Mark’s narrative is especially potent when placed in the context of the occupational culture of structural firefighting; a culture in which running away is a reprehensible act. An upper level administrator confided that it was difficult when structural firefighters had to retreat from the fire (presumably for safety reasons), because they felt like they were running away, “They had to pull out of [the fire zone]. And that’s like running from something. And they’re not used to running from anything. You know, like, even when it makes common sense it just doesn’t happen that often.” In fact running away is so scorned that one firefighter ended up on stress leave as a result, “You know I’m not even privy to all of it, but I’m sure some of them ran, you know….Like I know one that did. And he went off on stress leave. Like he just couldn’t live with

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himself, eh? And I don’t know if he’ll ever be the same.” Given this occupational imperative, claiming that wildland firefighters ran away, as Mark did, is a serious insult that directly undermines their credibility, both as firefighters and as men.

4.3.2 Aggression and Risk Taking

Greg, the supervisor who earlier criticized the media coverage of the fire, explained that it was actually his people who put themselves in harm’s way:

While the fire department did a great job on the structure side of it, and I don’t want to take anything away from anyone, anywhere on the structural side, but when it came to the actual front line of those fires and the people who put themselves at risk, it was our people under there.

In this passage Greg discursively positions his crew (and himself, by association) as the real firefighters—the ones who put themselves at risk, and got the job done. One wildland firefighter went public with this claim, stating that structural firefighters

“disappeared” when the blaze was burning near his property: “I hate to be cynical, but I don’t have a good word to say about them. You need passion and adrenaline to fight a fire. Their tolerance of risk was minimal” (Poulsen 2003). The Kelowna fire chief vehemently denied these accusations, and after an internal review, an upper-level manager from the Ministry of Forests issued an apology, which was reported in the local media. Many structural firefighters also talked about the perils associated with their job, however they tended to view risk and danger as an everyday part of their job, as their discourse about heroism indicated. In both cases, the implication is that firefighting competence requires taking risks, and (implicitly) those who are willing to take those risks are the most masculine.

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4.3.3 Repudiating the Feminine

Firefighters also accomplished competence negatively; that is, they inferred that

other firefighters were incompetent by associating them with characteristics stereotypically associated with femininity. Undermining masculinity is often achieved by implying that the person in question has qualities associated with femininity (e.g. see

Iacuone 2005). This tactic is apparent in all of the following narratives, however the discourse varied by occupational group. It is well established that masculinity construction is intertwined with the occupational settings in which men labor (Cheng

1996; Collinson and Hearn 1996; Meyer 1999; Pierce 1995; Prokos and Padavic 2002).

Therefore, since each group of firefighters worked in different occupations, they

sometimes used disparate discourses to distance themselves from, or liken others to,

femininity.

One veteran firefighter, Richard, who had recently moved into an administrative

position, explained the differences between structural and wildland firefighters in the

following way:

[The wildland firefighters’] job is more containment. Structural firefighters are aggressive, we don’t take loss very well. Forestry firefighters are more tactical, they’re more like army guys. They’re willing to take some losses to get some gains, if that makes sense to you? I mean they’re willing to give up a 100 acres of wildland and burn it themselves to stop the fire. Where we would never burn the house down to save another house. We would try and save that house and we would try and save the other house. That’s the mental make-up of a structural firefighter versus a forestry guy, right. Forestry guys are like, okay, we’ll build a guard here of dirt, and then we’ll burn all this off so it doesn’t come here, right. So we’ll sacrifice some, to get some. Where structural firefighters are not about sacrificing anything.

Here structural firefighters are portrayed as aggressive, uncompromising, and unwilling

to lose, and forestry firefighters as less aggressive (maybe even passive) and prepared to

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lose (at least some of the time). Clearly this rhetoric positions structural firefighters as better firefighters, while equating the “mental make up” of wildland firefighters with characteristics typically associated with femininity, such as passivity (Adler, Kless and

Adler 1992; Gonick 2006). Richard points to firefighting tactics specific to each occupation and uses these as resources to construct the competence and masculinity of structural firefighters as superior to that of wildland firefighters. It is worth noting that while Richard compares wildland firefighters to “army guys”, who are typically associated with aggressive masculinity (Jeffreys 2007), the comparison suggests otherwise in this case because the army were largely cast as support workers brought in for the ignoble job of mop-up duty.

Several forestry firefighters’ accounts pointed to the mental state of structural firefighters, and an emotional display by the fire chief, in a way that challenged their masculinity. In a well publicized statement to the media the fire chief broke down in tears while relaying the events of Black Friday. On numerous occasions wildland firefighters mentioned this event even though I did not inquire about it. The chief’s emotions, or “crocodile tears” as several called it, were depicted in a derogatory manner.

In a similar vein, one of the heavy equipment operators ridiculed structural firefighters who took stress leave or were otherwise having difficulty dealing with the fire. As emotions (except perhaps anger) are equated with femininity (Bird 1996; Rubin 2004),

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they are something to be disparaged. Wildland firefighters’ accounts revealed disdain for public displays of emotion, and their caustic remarks called into question the fire chief’s masculinity.

4.4 Discussion

These findings indicate that the status hierarchy that became evident over the course of the Okanagan Mountain Park fire was due, at least in part, to the structural organization of the firefighting efforts and the ways in which the media covered the fire.

The central location of the main fire hall, and the fact that structural firefighters fought the fire within the city limits, meant that they were more accessible to the media and, in turn, received more favorable media coverage. The media cultivated narratives imbued with representations of hegemonic masculinity and heroism. Heroism did not appear to resonate with wildland or structural firefighters; however the narratives of structural firefighters were often imbued with hero-like imagery.

In an effort to maintain their place at the top of the hierarchy, structural firefighters reinforced the boundary between themselves and other groups by discursively positioning Others, especially wildland firefighters, as less competent and, implicitly, as less manly. Wildland firefighters, equipment operators and pilots attempted to secure their place at the top of the hierarchy using similar tactics. These strategies were attempts to diminish the credibility of the out-group in question.

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Firefighters could have told different stories; could have drawn on different

explanations for some of these events.28 For example, structural firefighters could have argued that wildland firefighters were younger and less experienced, or even less professional, to explain their apparent lack of aggression. Similarly, wildland firefighters could have pointed out that structural firefighters simply have different training and responsibilities, which could explain why they may have been uneasy in some situations.

Instead, firefighters used narratives that implied directly, and indirectly, that their group was the most competent, in terms of firefighting and masculinity, while those from other groups were less so. Notably, women firefighters did not invoke masculinity narratives to undermine the competence of other firefighters. However, as noted in Chapter Three, they did engage in identity work in response to losing, such as finger pointing, and minimizing losses. This suggests that their occupational identities were threatened, but not their gender identities.

Previous research on boundaries can explain why non-structural firefighters used these strategies of superior self—they were attempting to rescue their dignity, power, and self-esteem in light of the fact that they were on the lower end of the status hierarchy. As

Lamont (2000) explains, “By subordinating social status to what they perceive to be the

‘real’ value of a person, workers create the possibility of locating themselves at the top of the hierarchy” (p. 111). What was most notable in my study was that structural firefighters, who had relatively high social status, also employed strategies of superior

28 This is especially true since I did not query firefighters about the competence of other firefighting groups. In fact, it was a topic that I tried to avoid. There were several lawsuits in the works at the time, and I had promised gatekeepers that I would not “point fingers” or place blame in my research.

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self. The fact that structural firefighters used these strategies at all, provides evidence to support Connell’s (1995) claim that hegemonic masculinity is not statically reproduced, but rather, always contested. If hegemonic masculinity was a given, these tactics would not be required for those with the most power and status. However, because the positions at the top of the gender hierarchy are never secure, even those with power (in this case, structural firefighters) are compelled to engage in practices that refute the integrity of those they perceive as “Others”. It is only by theorizing gender—masculinity dynamics that involve active struggles for dominance, and the constant need to “prove” masculinity—that we can explain why firefighters responded to the status hierarchy in the ways that they did.

We also saw that gendered strategies of self are not only used individually to construct superior selves, they are collective efforts that serve a collective end—that is, defining and imposing boundaries between groups. The boundary work of the media, which bounded the parameters of heroism and manhood, enabled structural firefighters’ claims to competence and hegemonic masculinity to take hold. If it appears that groups are essentialized as a result of strategies of self and boundary work, it is because that is precisely their intent. Essentializing is “the making of doctrinal claims that certain good or bad traits inhere in all who share an identity” (Schwalbe and Mason-Schrock

1996:124). Each group of firefighters attempted to demonstrate that their group was populated by exemplars of masculinity and firefighting competence because they wanted to show that their members were all of a certain character and quality, while others were not.

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Firefighters did not appear to be cognisant of their boundary work and strategies of self, but as Sherman (2005) insightfully observes, ‘strategy’ does not necessarily imply an intentional or explicit act (referring to Bourdieu 1990); rather, strategies may be functional to the worker’s interest in establishing superiority. Further, boundaries may be reinforced in the unnoticed habits and language of everyday life (Fuchs Epstein 1992).

Despite the possible lack of intention, the effects of boundary work and strategies that elevate one’s own status at the expense of others are no less harmful. First, boundaries based on real or perceived differences result in inequality (Fuchs Epstein 1992).

Sherman (2005) maintains that the luxury hotel workers in her study unwittingly legitimated inequality between themselves and hotel guests, because their strategies established guests’ entitlement to their labor as legitimate. Similarly, the gendered strategies of self utilized by firefighters had the unfortunate effect of reinforcing hierarchies between groups. Ironically, rather than challenging inequities, firefighters’ strategies sustained the very disparities that those at the bottom of the hierarchy were so incensed about—namely, that they did not get the respect and recognition that they felt they deserved.

Second, symbolic “credibility contests” (to borrow Lamont and Molnár’s

2000:179 term) involving claims to hegemonic masculinity have symbolic and material implications for inequality. Symbolically, those who embody hegemonic masculinity are given honor, prestige, and authority (Connell 1995). Materially, those who best exemplify this ideal are granted political and material resources. For example, men at the top of the gender hierarchy earn, on average, higher salaries than women (and marginalized men), and are more likely to have political power; resources which can then

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be used to further their own agendas. In other words, there are material rewards for those

who win symbolic battles. Groups that can claim hegemonic masculinity are able to use

their status to gain material resources. In this case, structural firefighters were able to

convert their collective social capital into material rewards. With the help of their union

representative, the fire chief, and the media, the structural firefighters successfully rallied

the public and city hall and secured a pay raise less than one year after the fire.29

Firefighters deliberately referred to the fire and their status as heroes to argue that they deserved a salary increase.30 The fire chief, who became a local and national celebrity,

also reaped many rewards. He was featured on the cover of a prominent national

magazine, received an honorary degree and numerous gifts and awards, was invited to do

public speaking engagements all over the country, and was asked to run for political

office (which he declined).

Importantly, there were also costs associated with being on, or striving for, the

top. Research indicates that hegemonic masculinity comes at a personal cost to men who

wholeheartedly embrace it. For example, impoverished emotional relationships

(Kaufman 2001; Rubin 2004), dysfunctional sexual relations (Gerschick and Miller

2001), risk taking (Courtenay 2000; Iacuone 2005), and negative health outcomes (Sabo

2004) have been linked to hegemonic masculinity construction. Barrett (1996) also

29 The wildland firefighters’ organization also received some resources (such as more crew positions) as a result of the fire. However, I was told by a number of people that these were primarily resources that had been cut in recent years and had simply been reinstated.

30 Some firefighters expressed discomfort with this strategy, but it was one that the group utilized nonetheless.

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posits that strategies to elevate one’s own status at the expense of others result in a catch-

22 that does not bode well for establishing a stable sense of masculinity:

Preoccupation with differentiating self and discounting others creates an enduring sense of subjective insecurity. This persistent sense of fragility and precariousness generates a greater need to display worth. Such defensive posturing—differentiating self by out-performing others, validating self by negating others—is not only unlikely to lead to the achievement of a secure identity, it creates the very social conditions that drive men to strive for a chance to demonstrate exceptionality (p. 141).

Consistent with these findings, many firefighters noted that the fire and its aftermath was a difficult experience. In addition, there were long-term consequences for some. Several were on stress leave at the time of the interviews, at least one firefighter resigned, one senior member retired shortly after the fire, the fire chief retired two years later (at the age of 56), some were having marital difficulties, a number were on medication to reduce stress, and a least two senior firefighters were diagnosed with post- traumatic stress disorder. There were also a handful of firefighters who chose to leave their jobs a year or more after the fire, citing the fire as one reason for their decision. It appears, in the words of the fire chief, this fire did have a "bad effect" on many of the firefighters. I suggest at least some of these bad effects were related to the gendered strategies of self that firefighters employed in their efforts to attain superior status and reinforce occupational and symbolic boundaries.

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CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

The purpose of this study was to investigate how workers respond to challenges on the job that threaten their identities. In order to study this phenomenon, I undertook a case study of catastrophic wildfire, as the events surrounding the fire created two assaults on workers sense of self—failure and status inequality. I explored the tactics that firefighters used to rescue their dignity and self-esteem, and (re)construct credible occupational selves in the face of these challenges. Further, I examined the consequences of their strategies for interpersonal relations, and gender and work equality.

I began by assessing the context in which firefighters’ labor, proposing that we must consider workplace gender dynamics to understand why firefighters’ reacted to the events surrounding the fire in the ways that they did. I argued that while firefighters’ occupations are highly masculinized, they are also sites of contested masculinity. The presence of competent women firefighters’ served to undermine the connection between hegemonic masculinity and firefighting, but the ways in which men and women firefighters’ practiced gender at work also functioned to reinforce this link. Given that masculinity dynamics are conflict ridden, fluid, and contested (Connell, 1995), these workplace tensions placed men firefighters’ occupationally-based masculinity under siege.

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While firefighters were engaged in this symbolic battle over masculinity, a fire started in the tinder-dry forest of Okanagan Mountain Park, and despite firefighters’ best efforts, consumed thousands of hectares of trees and over 250 homes. As illustrated in

Chapter Three, firefighters’ took the losses personally, and engaged in a great deal of identity work in an effort to repair their identities as competent firefighters. I also argue that while they were trying to save homes and forest from the flames, men firefighters were engrossed in a rescue of equal significance—salvaging their masculinities. Their gender identities were under fire not only because of the losses, but the presence of capable women firefighters at work.

In Chapter Four we saw which group was most successful at this task. There was a collective sense of failure among firefighters, yet in the end, some of those who

“failed”—namely, structural firefighters—emerged as victors; they were granted more prestige, recognition, and rewards than firefighters from other groups. Non-structural firefighters engaged in identity work because they felt like they lost and were largely abandoned by the media and the public, while structural firefighters had to prove that they were, in fact, worthy of such praise in light of the substantial losses. Firefighters from all groups did identity work by claiming exemplary masculinity, while discursively positioning other groups as less so. In the end, the organization of the firefighting efforts, the media’s boundary work, and structural firefighters’ gendered strategies of self (and accompanying boundary work), enabled City of Kelowna firefighters to win the symbolic battle over masculinity and reap material rewards that others did not. By theorizing gendered strategies of self, and the group dynamics involved in boundary work, we can

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more clearly see the processes through which workers’ efforts to negotiate status hierarchies are translated into differential costs and rewards. This is unexplored in

Sherman’s (2005, 2006) research, and identity work more broadly.

5.1 Credible Selves

Contested masculinity at work, losing the battle against the fire, and unequal prestige and status compelled firefighters to engage in identity work in order to regain their dignity and self-esteem. But firefighters’ identity work also served a broader purpose—it was an attempt to signify to themselves and others that they were competent firefighters, and appropriately masculine men. In essence, firefighters endeavoured to construct credible selves. Credible is defined as, “capable of being believed; believable” or “worthy of belief or confidence” (Dictionary.com 2007). These definitions imply that credibility is a socially conferred status. Like heroism (Lois 2003), and masculinity

(Kimmel 1994), an audience is required to grant credibility—it cannot be bestowed upon oneself. Selfhood is a question of both how one sees oneself and how one is seen (akin to

Cooley’s (1902) notion of the “looking-glass self”), therefore, credible selves must be recognized and labeled as such by others.

McCall and Simmons’ (1978) identity theory calls attention to the way that identities are negotiated in interactions. They highlight the importance of establishing congruence between actors’ desired and expected role identities, and conclude that “a working agreement can be said to exist when the…presentation of self by one party is not in conflict with the role imputed him by the other” (p. 139). Their primary focus is on how actors validate one another in one-on-one encounters. My findings suggest that

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additional forces are at work in the negotiation and validation of identities. That is,

successful identity claims require the support and approval of parties that exist beyond

immediate interactions between actors. Here I am referring to the ways in which the

media and the public validated structural firefighters’ identity work in ways that

facilitated their quest for credible selfhood.

In order to accomplish credibility, firefighters had to demonstrate occupational

and gender competence. For example, for wildland firefighters, winning, modesty, hard

work, safety, remaining calm in a crisis, and repudiating femininity signified proficiency

at work and masculinity. Also, as indicated by the findings in Chapter Four, attaining

credible selves entailed subverting the credibility of other firefighting groups. In short, to

regain a credible sense of self firefighters had to indicate to themselves, and their

audience (i.e. media, public, employers, co-workers etc.) that they were competent,

masculine firefighters.31 They accomplished this (with varying degrees of success)

through individual and group identity work. Credible selves are the desired outcome;

individual identity work (of the sort found in Chapter Three), in addition to gendered

strategies of self, and associated boundary work (Chapter Four), are the processes

through which this result is attained. A visual summary of the findings are presented in

Figure 5.

31 In a similar vein, Sherman (2005) posits that maintaining a hierarchy of competence “depended not only on workers’ actual knowledge and position, but also on the willingness of others to support their self-conceptions (p. 137).

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Figure 5. Summary of findings.

5.2 Consequences of Constructing Credible Selves

The fire precipitated a physical battle to control it, and intensified a symbolic battle over claims to firefighting competence and masculinity. Actors will go great lengths to demonstrate a valued identity (Holyfield and Jonas 2003), because serious consequences can ensue from establishing or failing to establish identity claims

(Schwalbe and Mason-Schrock 1996). A successful identity claim signifies a credible self to the actor and the audience. On the flip side, inability to claim an identity may be hazardous to one’s self because the (self) presentation becomes unbelievable to the actor and their audience. This has social-psychological consequences—if we cannot construct credible selves, we risk an inauthentic self—a self that is not fully a self because it is one that is not believable.

A credible sense of self was at stake at the social-psychological level, but there were also social consequences that flowed from firefighters’ attempts to achieve

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credibility. Firefighters’ identity management strategies, and boundary work by the media, created and reinforced divisions between groups, effectively thwarting solidarities that could have developed due to the fire. This may not bode well for inter-group cooperation and firefighting effectiveness on future fires.

Lack of cohesion was a negative outcome for all groups, however those that were unable to effectively claim firefighting competence and exemplary masculinity (i.e. non- structural firefighters) faced further penalties. First, as noted in Chapter Four, they were denied many of the symbolic and material rewards that structural firefighters received.

Second, losing valuable resources and the symbolic battle over credibility, resulted in a full-fledged credibility crisis for non-structural firefighters (especially wildland firefighters and pilots) and their respective organizations. In the aftermath of the fire they faced a great deal of public criticism. Like many of his colleagues, Ken, a supervisor in the air tanker program disclosed that the people in his organization, from upper-level managers to the crews on the front line, were denounced on a number of fronts:

We went into a two month nightmare of bad weather, extreme fire behavior, and tons of pressure from, not only being put on by ourselves to win, but also by tons of other people out there that were questioning why we weren’t winning. And why we couldn’t do more. And how come the planes aren’t doing that… And that pressure was being felt right down to the kid on the [fire] line with a Pulaski.

As Ken points out, workers on the line were keenly aware of the criticism directed their way. For example, Josh, an initial attack crew member, lamented, “They always say you could have done more”.

If the credibility of non-structural firefighters was under siege solely because valuable resources were lost to the flames, structural firefighters would have been subjected to the same criticism. Rather, quite the opposite occurred—they escaped public

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condemnation,32 were held up as heroes, and showered with praise and rewards. This

suggests that what really mattered for the outcome of this credibility contest was the

ability to declare firefighting competence and superior masculinity—in other words, the

capability to claim credible selves. From a Goffmanian (1963) perspective, structural

firefighters were discreditable in the wake of the losses, while non-structural firefighters

were discredited.

Attaining credible selves requires not only individual identity work, but collective

boundary work, as we saw in Chapter Four. Failure to attain credible selves due to

unconvincing identity claims, may have consequences for occupational groups, as this

makes boundaries tenuous and potentially permeable. It opens up the possibility that

previously spurned and excluded Others may be eligible for group membership. If it

appears that current group members do not possess the requisite qualifications, it seems

less certain that the characteristics in question are actually required for group

participation. In which case, Others (who ostensibly do not posses these traits) may be

newly eligible for membership. Wildland firefighters were relatively unsuccessful in

their quest to affirm exemplary masculinity, therefore it is plausible that new possibilities

were created for those who were formerly passed over on the basis of gender (and

potentially sexuality) to infiltrate their ranks. In contrast, structural firefighters, with the

help of the media, successfully defended the masculine boundaries of their occupation,

32 As I noted in Chapter Four, there was one incident where a wildland firefighter publicly criticized the structural fire department, but the story was quickly quashed and an apology issued. In addition, the structural fire department was being sued by several insurance companies, suggesting that this group believed firefighters to be negligent. However, non-structural firefighters were subjected to far greater critical commentary.

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which may make it difficult for non-traditional aspirants to join their organization in the future.

The broader issue of the causes of sex segregation in the marketplace is explored in-depth by Charles and Grusky (2004). They point to cultural beliefs about gender essentialism (e.g women are more competent than men in serving, nurturing, and social interaction) as a primary culprit in the “hypersegregation” (p. 27) of the sexes in manual and non-manual work. Charles and Grusky further argue that these widely held cultural beliefs about gender differences are ideologically compatible with liberal egalitarian norms that espouse equal opportunity for men and women in the marketplace:

Essentialism supports gender-typical identities and behaviours and thereby preserves horizontal sex segregation in modern labor markets. With the rise of formal equality, women increasingly enter higher education and the paid labor market, but they do so in ways that are consistent with their essentialist preferences, with the essentialist sanctions imposed by others, and with the essentialist prejudices of employers. It follows that sex segregation in the modern period is shaped by ‘different but equal’ conceptualizations of gender and social justice (p. 27).

In a dynamic similar to that theorized by Charles and Grusky, firefighters strategies of Othering (via discourses of essentialism33) co-existed with narratives about gender equality. I demonstrated that while firefighters claimed their workplaces were gender neutral sites, most were very much engaged in the business of Othering (of course, some were also on the receiving end of Othering). In Chapter Two, I showed how firefighters constructed their identities through associations of difference, disparaging feminine and hypermasculine Others. In Chapter Three, I demonstrated that, in the process of rescuing their identities, firefighters engaged in identity management

33 As Hill Collins (2000) points out, racial and gender essentialism are intimately intertwined with Othering. Black Women are constructed as the Other based on binary thinking that positions them as opposite and inferior to, and fundamentally different from White and Male. 147

strategies (e.g. finger pointing) that situated some firefighters as less competent Others.

Finally, in Chapter Four, we saw how firefighters undermined the competence, masculinity, and credibility of firefighters from other groups by positioning them as the

Other. So firefighters simultaneously attempted to set up Others as different and inferior, at the same time that they claimed the existence of workplace equality, and most did not appear to see the tensions inherent in their narratives. If Charles and Grusky are correct, firefighters’ Othering strategies will continue to contribute to the maintenance of sex segregation in their workplaces and occupations, although this may vary by the degree to which they are successful in defending the masculine boundaries of their occupations, as noted above.

5.3 The Issue of Intention

It is worth revisiting the issue of intention introduced in Chapter Four, where I noted that firefighters did not appear to be cognisant of their identity work. This implies that their strategies may have been unintentional and, if so, raises the question of whether they were really doing identity work (Schwalbe and Mason-Schrock 1996). Therefore, a point of clarification is in order—lack of awareness does not necessarily mean lack of intention. Schwalbe and Mason-Schrock (1996) propose that acts must have been intentional at one time to be considered identity work, but these same acts may also, and often do, “slip beneath conscious awareness” (p. 119) to become a matter of habit.

Sherman (2005) suggests that strategic, as she uses the term, does not mean intentional or explicit, but simply functional to workers’ interests in establishing superiority. Like marginalized contract researchers (Allen Collinson 2004), midwives (Foley 2005), and

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contract workers (Padavic 2005), firefighters wanted to regain a modicum of dignity.

Further, they wanted to demonstrate credible selves by presenting themselves in a positive light. I submit they were keenly aware that the loss of resources could tarnish

(or in the case of non-structural firefighters, further tarnish) their reputations. They attempted to accomplish these goals through identity talk—although they would not have labelled it as such. Put another way, firefighters intentionally attempted to regain their dignity and self-esteem, and portray themselves favorably, and their identity work was functional toward that end.

Firefighters deliberately worked toward these objectives, however, it does not necessarily follow that the outcomes of their actions were intentional, as identity management strategies can lead to unintended and potentially negative consequences

(Padavic 2005; Roschelle and Kaufman 2004). We should not lose sight of the fact that this was a very difficult experience for firefighters. They were trying to come to terms with the unprecedented loss of resources, and cope with the accompanying public and media attention. Unfortunately, some of their strategies were self-defeating or had negative consequences for other groups. In Chapter Three and Four, we saw that in the process of trying to regain their dignity and a sense of credibility, firefighters entrenched boundaries between groups that undermined solidarity. Further, “defensive posturing”

(p. 141) of the kind found in Chapter Four, likely reinforces insecure masculinity (Barrett

1996). Finally, the identity talk and boundary work of structural firefighters and the media contributed to the credibility crisis experienced by non-structural firefighters, and the relatively meager symbolic and material resources awarded to these groups.

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5.3.1 Intention and Power

The issue of power is linked to a consideration of intention, because intention implies freedom to act. However, actions are constrained and/or enabled in social, material, and cultural contexts that permit some actions and not others (Connell 1995;

Messner 2002). This means that some groups have more power to create the symbolic resources that make identity management strategies possible and effective (Schwalbe and

Mason-Schrock 1996). In Chapter Four, we saw how the media created the symbolic resource of heroic masculinity, which enabled the identity work of structural firefighters to take hold in ways that ensured their credibility. The fact that structural firefighters were able to secure a pay raise less than one year after the fire, from the very municipality in which hundreds of houses burned to the ground, provides a macro-level illustration of their victory and power. This outcome, and the gendered identity work leading up to it, provides a clear illustration of power dynamics; specifically, the active struggles for dominance inherent in hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1995).

5.4 Contribution to the Literature

This project is a novel contribution to research and theorizing on work, identity, and gender. First, while the sociology of work has examined how workers cope with various challenges to their identity (such as marginality), it has not explored how workers respond when their identities are challenged due to failure. This is important because, as we saw in the case of firefighters, failure eroded self-esteem, created inter-group animosity, and, for some, generated mental health problems. Hodson (2001) examines four situations that deflate worker morale and create conflict—overwork;

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mismanagement; limits on autonomy; and contradictions of employee involvement— postulating that these undermine workers’ dignity. I argue that failure is another such situation, but this topic has received little to no attention in the sociology of work literature. My research contributes to this literature by showing the deleterious effects of failure on workers’ selves, the ways in which workers respond to this threat to identity and dignity, and the outcomes that result from their actions.

Second, I developed the notion of credible selves to account for workers responses to identity challenges. This concept synthesizes ideas from previous research and theorizing on identity work, boundary work, and gender. It incorporates individual identity work, gendered strategies of self, and the accompanying collective practices— boundary work and masculinity making—that make credible selves possible (or problematic). Further, it emphasizes that selfhood is as much about convincing an audience of credibility as it is oneself. Using this framework, we can more clearly see the processes through which workers’ efforts to contend with identity challenges may be translated into differential costs and rewards, something unexplored in work and organization theory to date.

5.5 Challenges, Limitations, and Future Research

I claim that firefighters, in their quest for credible selves, attempted to undermine the masculinity of firefighters from other groups by associating them with femininity.

However, they did not state directly that other firefighters were effeminate. This is partly due to social desirability, as firefighters were probably at least marginally aware that this would have been insulting to me. But it is also because gender, like race (McIntosh

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1990), operates to structure inequality in a mostly invisible fashion. Therefore, gender may be at work even in the absence of overt name-calling. As a result, I often had to rely on implied meanings as evidence that firefighters were “doing gender” (West and

Zimmerman 1987). For instance, firefighters inferred the Other as sissies, through gendered emotional and behavioral indirects (e.g. fearful behavior, displays of emotion, passivity). I used these instances of implicitly gendered discourse as evidence that gender was in fact at work.

A second limitation was that due to time and budget limitations I was only able to examine print media coverage of the fire, however, it is possible that television coverage of the fire differed. To overcome this shortcoming, I plan to obtain newscasts on the fire from the local television station, to compare to the newspaper accounts that I examined.

This data triangulation (Berg 2001), will allow me to further refine my media analyses.

In addition, my data do not permit a definite conclusion as to whether firefighters did, in fact, regain credible selves through their identity work. I can only presume that they were still struggling one year after the fire because they were still engaging in identity management strategies in our interviews. This raises the question of whether workers ever come to terms with failure and, if so, how they do so. Answers to these questions lie in a longitudinal approach—something that I hope to undertake in the

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future. Longitudinal research would also shed light on whether non-structural firefighters’ unsuccessful identity claims eroded their occupational boundaries and enabled more non-traditional applicants to join their ranks.

Finally, future research should examine how race, class, sexuality, and other systems of social inequality intersect with gender (Hill Collins 2000) to shape identity management strategies. Earlier I noted that demographic differences between firefighting groups had consequences for the ways in which the media covered the fire. However, race and class differences also likely shape how group members evaluate themselves as workers and as gendered beings, and, in turn, how they construct differences between themselves and other groups. My sample was limited to mostly white, middle-class men, however future research with a more diverse sample could provide insights into this process.

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APPENDIX A

DATA, METHODS, AND ANALYTIC STRATEGY

A.1 Project Design

A.1.1 Case Study

This project is a qualitative case study of the Okanagan Mountain Park fire.

Specifically, it is what Stake (2002:437), calls an "instrumental case study" where a case is chosen to advance understanding of some outside interest:

A particular case is examined mainly to provide insight into an issue….The case is of secondary interest, it plays a supportive role, and it facilitates our understanding of something else. The case still is looked at in depth, its context scrutinized, its ordinary activities detailed, but all because this helps the researcher to pursue the external interest (p. 439).

The external interest that I am pursuing is workers’ response to identity challenges— specifically, how they (re)gain dignity and self-esteem and the consequences of their actions.

While my findings will not be generalizable (at least in the empirical sense34) to other settings, a qualitative case study is suitable for theoretical generalization, which

34 Empirical generalization is based on a logic whereby generalizations from an analysis of one empirical population to another, wider, population are made, on the basis that the study population is statistically representative of that wider population (Mason 1996).

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aims to explain a set of issues or processes that are central to a developing body of theory

(Mason 1996). As Stake (2000:448) notes, case studies are of value for "refining theory

and suggesting complexities for further investigation". My aim is to augment research on

identity management and gender in work contexts.

A.1.1.1 Sampling Within the Case

Local, national, and international newspapers provided extensive coverage of the

fire. Following Cornwell, Curry and Schwirian (2003), key informants were identified

through these newspaper articles, which were retrieved from online archives. I made a

list of names of people who were mentioned in each article and noted their title, and who

they worked for, if available. I also checked the Ministry of Forests Protection Branch35 website for key contacts and made inquiries with personal contacts that lived in the area.

I created a list of key informants based on names that were mentioned frequently and/or in multiple sources. Contact information for participants was obtained on the internet and through personal contacts. In addition, key informants in the Protection Branch and

Kelowna Fire department provided contact information for their colleagues. Once I obtained contact information for key informants, I contacted them by e-mail and/or phone and asked them to participate in the study. I also asked for names of additional

35 The Protection Branch is a division of the Ministry of Forests. The Protection Branch is responsible for fighting forest fires (among other things).

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firefighters who were then contacted for interviews.36 After I began data analysis, I

interviewed new participants and contacted previous participants for follow-up questions.

During the early stages of this process I was directed to two gatekeepers. The

first was the fire chief for the City of Kelowna. The City of Kelowna fire department was

involved in a lawsuit with a number of insurance companies and, as a result, firefighters

were instructed not to talk publicly about the fire. Before interviewing any of the

structural firefighters I had to meet with the fire chief to explain my project and provide

him with a list of questions that I planned to ask. As well, he asked to see the list of

names of people who I was hoping to interview. After our initial meeting he directed me

to his secretary who provided me with contact information for the structural firefighters.

The second gatekeeper was a Protection Branch fire information officer who requested

that all requests for interviews be directed to him. He then contacted the people that I

wished to speak to. He also recommended a number of people to interview.

I discovered that there are pros and cons to working with gatekeepers. On the

positive side, I interviewed a number of people who likely would not have participated

without gatekeeper encouragement. For example, there were two cases where my initial

e-mail request went unanswered, but with the help of the gatekeeper I secured an

interview with both participants. I developed an especially good rapport with the

Protection Branch information officer and heard him encouraging people to participate on

36 This technique is commonly called snowball sampling. Snowball sampling involves beginning with one or more people, often known to the researcher, and asking them to provide names of other people who have the desired characteristic(s) the researcher is looking for.

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a number of occasions. In addition, one structural firefighter, who later admitted he was evading my calls, received a call from the fire chief who suggested that he do an interview.

On the negative side, working with gatekeepers raises issues around anonymity.

Participants were never promised that they would not be identified—only that I would do my best to remove identifying information and that their information would remain confidential. But because both gatekeepers knew who participated in the study, some people may have been discouraged from participating, either because they were uncomfortable with the anonymity issue or because the gatekeeper did not feel they were good ambassadors for the organization.

Within each case study there are choices to make about persons, places and events to observe (Stake 2000). Initially I planned to focus exclusively on firefighters (defined as those whose job was to stop, contain, or slow the advance of the fire). This included firefighters who fought on the front lines of the fire and their supervisors.

Although all of these men and women are defined as firefighters for the purposes of this study, their occupations differ. Four groups of firefighters are included in this study: wildland firefighters, structural firefighters, pilots, and heavy equipment operators.

Wildland firefighters fight forest fires. There are two types of wildland firefighting crews. Three-person initial attack crews are usually the first firefighters on the scene of new, relatively small forest fires. They access the fire by truck, helicopter, or aircraft, depending on the location and accessibility of the fire. Initial attack crews set up water

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pumps, remove fuel from the fire’s path, and dig fire guards37 to control or extinguish the

blaze. Twenty-person unit crews are dispatched to larger fires where significant long

term resources may be needed to fight the blaze. They are responsible for containing the

blaze, which includes tasks such as establishing water pump and hose lines, digging fire

guards, removing fuel from the path of the main fire using chainsaws and burning, and

securing the fire’s perimeter (Ministry of Forests Protection Branch 2006e). Pilots fight

forest fires from the air. Helicopter pilots bring equipment to the fire line in slings,

and/or drop water or fire retardant from buckets or belly tanks. Air tanker pilots fly

various types of planes, which are used to drop fire retardant. An air attack officer flying

in a smaller "bird-dog" or lead aircraft directs each group. The air attack officer assesses

the fire, leads the air tankers to their targets, and dictates their drop strategy (Ministry of

Forests Protection Branch 2006f). Heavy equipment operators work closely with

wildland firefighters and pilots to contain forest fires. Equipment such as bulldozers,

skidders, and feller bunchers are used to build roads and fireguards, transport water, and

fall trees. Finally, structural firefighters are responsible for extinguishing structural (i.e.

building) fires. They primarily use fire engines (that pump water through hoses), ladder

trucks, and water tenders, which keep water supplied to the fire engines.

Newspaper accounts revealed that a number of people in administrative positions

also played key roles in the event. For example, it became clear that relations with the

media had implications for the ways in which gender was constructed. As a result, I

chose to interview two media relations people from the Ministry of Forests Protection

37 Fire guards separate the fuel from the fire, which halts or slows the fire’s advance. This involves cutting, scraping, or digging a swath of ground clear of all combustible materials.

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Branch (both of whom were wildland firefighters prior to entering media relations).

However, the majority of the sample is firefighters and their supervisors. The sample

size for each group reflects the fact that wildland firefighters were the largest group

fighting the fire, followed by structural firefighters, heavy equipment operators and pilots

(although the proportions are not directly comparable). The final sample is also a result

of participants’ accessibility and theoretical and snowball sampling. See Figure 1 in

Chapter One for a summary of sample characteristics.

A.2 Sample Diversity

Initially, I planned to include firefighters from a range of socioeconomic, racial

and ethnic backgrounds, age groups, and years of service, in order to obtain a diverse

sample. When data generated from a sample reflect a broad range of experiences, the

ability to make theoretical generalizations based on the research findings is increased

(Mason 1996). However, the firefighters who fought on the Okanagan Mountain Park

fire are relatively homogenous in terms of racial, ethnic, and gender diversity.38 This is

especially true for structural firefighters and heavy equipment operators, the large

majority of whom are white men. In addition, all of the pilots that I spoke to are white

men, although I was told that there are two women employed on a contract basis.

Wildland firefighters are a more diverse group, as there are a number of Native39 crews

38 In terms of sexuality, most of the firefighters who were interviewed appeared to identify as heterosexual, as many mentioned wives or girlfriends in the interviews. However, as sexuality is often invisible (especially in homophobic environments), I cannot say with certainty that all of the firefighters were heterosexual.

39 “Native” crew is the term utilized by the forestry service to denote crews that primarily comprise First Nations peoples. 159

working for the forest service, and there are more women working as wildland firefighters. Each season the Ministry of Forests Protection Branch hires approximately

850 fire fighters; roughly 35 percent are Native and 20 percent are women. Like structural firefighters, pilots, and heavy equipment operators, the majority of wildland firefighters are white.

These groups also vary on several important dimensions. For example, wildland firefighters are largely composed of seasonal workers. Most are employed by the government Protection Branch of the Ministry of Forests, however, some are employed by private companies (these crews are called contract crews). Structural firefighters (not including volunteers40) are employed full-time, year round, while heavy equipment operators and pilots most often work on a contract basis during the fire season. Wildland firefighters are typically university students, or other young people who have different jobs in the off-season. Heavy equipment operators usually work in the construction, logging, or forest products industry, and structural firefighters often have a background in the trades.

A.3 Data Collection

To document the newspaper coverage of the fire, I did archival work at the

Kelowna library. I examined all of the fire related articles in the two major local newspapers, The Kelowna Daily Courier and Capital News, from August 20th to

40 I attempted to arrange interviews with two volunteer firefighters but was unsuccessful.

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September 25, 2003. I also retrieved articles from electronic news sources, using

“Kelowna” and “fire” and/or “mountain park” as keywords. I read each article and made note of the themes that emerged.

Between June and December 2004 I traveled to British Columbia to do field work on three separate occasions. The trips ranged in length from one week to five weeks. I did observations at a number of sites including four City of Kelowna fire halls, three

Protection Branch offices, and two air tanker bases, in the Kamloops Fire Centre, and one helicopter base. I also toured the fire zone by car and boat.

While observing, I did informal interviews with a number of people involved in the fire fighting efforts (e.g. from unit crew members to fire center dispatchers), however in-depth interviews were used to gather the majority of data. After completing 40 interviews I reached relatively high theoretical saturation (Strauss and Corbin 1998); that is, the last few interviews provided little new knowledge and the data generated from those interviews fit into the existing themes that I had identified.

I chose to focus on interviews because I was primarily interested in the ways in which identities are (re)constructed through discourse. As Snow and Anderson (1987) demonstrate, talk can be used to construct, assert, and maintain desired identities.

Wetherell and Edley (1999) and Connell and Messerschmidt (2005), maintain that masculinities exist not as settled character structures, or types, but as positions in discourse—ways that actors situate themselves through discursive practices. Like

Weatherell and Edgley (1999), I am wedded to the notion that selves are produced through, rather than simply described by, language. As they explain:

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We chose discourse as a site for investigating men’s identities because we are persuaded of the central role discursive practices play in the constitution of subjectivity. That is, what it means to be a person, the formulation of an internal life, an identity and a way of being in the world develop as external public dialogue moves inside to form the ‘voices of the mind’ (p. 337).

While talk plays a central role in the creation of self, it can also provide knowledge of social life. According to an interactionist perspective (e.g. see Miller and

Glassner 1997), discourse that emerges in the interview is situated in social worlds that exist outside of the interview context—participants draw on cultural narratives to explain their actions and make them understandable to others. Therefore, interactionist researchers are able to learn about and produce authentic accounts of respondents' social worlds by studying narratives that emerge in the interview. In sum, studying discourse allows the researcher to better understand the social world of the participants.

Discursive practices shed light on social worlds and highlight the symbolic dimension of hegemonic masculinity, but discursive research cannot stand alone because gender relations are also constituted in, and shape, non-discursive practices, such as waged labor, sexuality and child care (Connell 2001; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005).

In an effort to capture some of the non-discursive practices that shaped firefighters’ experiences, I examined elements of the structural and cultural context in which the fire occurred by analyzing the organization of the firefighting efforts and the ways in which the media framed the event and the people involved in it.

Besides providing a window into the self, and knowledge of participants’ social worlds, interviews allowed me to gather data from a larger number of firefighters than methods like participant observation, thereby improving the reliability of my comparisons (Lamont 2000) between firefighters from different occupational groups. On 162

the other hand, a limitation of this method is that participants may not reveal all of their practices and behaviors in interviews; consequently, I cannot know for certain whether firefighters’ behavior differed from their interview talk. In-depth behavioral information could be more readily obtained by a participant observation approach (Lamont 2000;

Sherman 2005). This was not feasible in my study due to the dangerous nature of the work, however I attempted to minimize this limitation by conducting observations at all of the sites that I visited. While I waited to begin interviews, during “down time” between interviews, after interviews were completed, and while touring firefighters’ work sites I was able to observe interactions between workers, as well as some of their daily work routines. I was constantly observing while on-site and was able to gather a substantial amount of additional data this way, from meal time routines to leisure activities. Of course, these are not the same kind of in-depth observations that one might acquire while doing participant observation, but they provided some useful insights nonetheless.

I utilized photo-elicitation techniques in many of the interviews using pictures of the fire and destroyed homes in order to facilitate discussion. Similar to Curry (1986) and Harper (2000), I found that respondents not only described what was in the picture but often went on to discuss more abstract concepts, such as what the image meant, or did not mean, to them. This was especially common when I showed pictures of the hero signs that Kelowna residents had erected around the city.

Participants were asked to choose a location where they felt comfortable doing the interview. As a result, the interviews took place in a wide variety of settings including coffee shops, outdoor parks, workplaces, and homes. However, the majority of 163

interviews were conducted at the participant's place of work. The interviews lasted from just over 30 minutes to two and a half hours, with the typical interview lasting from one to one and a half hours. All of the interviews were done on an individual basis, except on one occasion where four structural firefighters strongly preferred a group interview.

After completing 40 interviews I reached relatively high theoretical saturation (Strauss and Corbin 1998); that is, the last few interviews provided little new knowledge and the data generated from those interviews fit into the existing themes that I had identified.

Each interview was recorded using a digital audio recorder. After each interview

(or several interviews, if they occurred back to back) I prepared a research memo describing the context of the interview (e.g. setting, comments made by the interviewee before and after the interview, etc.) and any observations or preliminary interpretations of important material. I imported the audio files from the interviews and research memos into a qualitative software package (HyperResearch), which I used to store, organize, and code the data. This software supports audio, visual, and text files. Passages of dialogue that I identified as representative of particular themes were transcribed into text.

A.3.1 Perspectives on Interview Data

While it is possible to choose from a variety of methodological approaches to interview data, the method chosen depends upon the researcher's epistemological standpoint. Positivist approaches to interviewing view subjects as passive "vessels of answers" (Holstein and Gubrium 1997:116). Interviewers direct questions to a subject who, in turn, provides the interviewer with “true" facts and feelings. This approach provides interviewers with a host of interview techniques in order to minimize bias in the 164

respondent's answers (Holstein and Gubrium 1997). For example, interviewers are directed to ask questions in a neutral manner, so as not to sway the respondent in one direction or another. Researchers may also be concerned with the effect of the interviewer’s gender on respondent’s answers (Padfield and Proctor 1996; Williams and

Heikes 1993).

The goal of positivist interviewing is to provide an interview setting that allows the respondent to provide an undistorted "mirror reflection" of the reality that exists in the social world (Miller and Glassner 1997). Holstein and Gubrium (1997) maintain that this traditional perspective is based on the assumption that the respondent is a passive rather than an active producer of knowledge. They advocate an alternative perspective where interviews are social encounters in which knowledge is constructed through interaction.

Interview responses are viewed as products of the interaction and subsequent meaning construction that occur between interviewer and respondent:

Both parties to the interview are necessarily and ineluctably active. Meaning is not merely elicited by apt questioning, nor simply transported through respondent replies; it is actively and communicatively assembled in the interview encounter. Respondents are not so much repositories of knowledge…as they are constructors of knowledge in collaboration with interviewers (Holstein and Gubrium 1997:114, emphasis original).

Holstein and Gubrium (1997) argue that interviewers should acknowledge, and capitalize upon, the contributions of both the interviewer and the respondent in the production of interview data. The interview is an occasion not only for discovering or conveying information, but also for constructing it. From this perspective, understanding how the meaning-making process unfolds in an interview is just as important as the questions asked and the answers given. Consistent with this approach, Holstein and

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Gubrium advocate "active" (Holstein and Gubrium 1997:120) interviewing in which the subject's interpretive capabilities are activated by an active interviewer. The active interviewer provokes responses and activates respondents’ knowledge about issues relevant to the research agenda. Ultimately, the goal is to enable the participant to expand their thoughts on a particular topic in new and previously unexplored ways.

According to Holstein and Gubrium, “the objective is not to dictate interpretation, but to provide an environment conducive to the production of the range and complexity of meanings that address relevant issues, and not be confined by predetermined agendas"

(Holstein and Gubrium 1997:123).

Adherents of positivist interviewing assert that if interviews are done in an unbiased manner, respondents will provide answers that reflect "reality". On the other hand, the work of Holstein and Gubrium (1997), taken to its purest social constructionist extreme, suggests that interviews cannot provide knowledge about a reality existing beyond the interview since, in the interview process, researcher and participant create narrative versions of the social world that are context-specific. There does exist a position that provides some middle ground between the positivist and the pure social constructionist position. Miller and Glassner (1997) advocate an interactionist approach in which research starts from the belief that people create and maintain meaningful social worlds. Knowledge of social worlds is achieved through "intersubjective depth" and deep "mutual understanding" (Miller and Glassner 1997:106). According to this perspective:

Research cannot provide the mirror reflection of the social world that positivists strive for, but it may provide access to the meanings people attribute to their experiences and social worlds. While the interview is itself a symbolic

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interaction, this does not discount the possibility that knowledge of the social world beyond the interaction can be obtained (Miller and Glassner 1997:100).

Narratives that emerge in interview contexts are situated in social worlds that exist outside of the interview context—participants draw on cultural narratives to explain their actions and make them understandable to others. Therefore, interactionist researchers are able to learn about and produce authentic accounts of respondents' social worlds by studying narratives that emerge in the interview. In sum, studying narratives allows the researcher to better understand the social world of the participants (Miller and Glassner

1997). The perspectives put forth by these authors open up several possibilities for data analysis that contrast with traditional positivist approaches. I outline these various approaches below.

A.3.1.1 The Interviews

The interview format chosen for this project is consistent with the work of

Holstein and Gubrium (1997). For example, the interview was not structured in such a way as to reduce “bias” as positivist researchers suggest. Rather, the interview contained open-ended questions that addressed general themes. In addition, new issues and questions that arose during the course of the interviews were explored with participants in what Holstein and Gubrium would call an "active" way.

Each interview began with a general discussion of the respondent's occupation and their employment history. These questions were designed to provide some context on firefighters' work organizations as well as the ways in which they construct occupational and gender identities at work. Following this, respondents were asked to

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recount their involvement in the events surrounding the fire. These questions revealed the social relations between (and among) groups, as well as how firefighters did gender in the context of the fire. We also discussed how this event was framed by the media, particularly the theme of heroism. Finally, respondents were asked to reflect on the bigger picture—whether their lives had changed as a result of the fire, what they learned about themselves from the experience, etc. Near the end of each interview I gave respondents an opportunity to add any comments that they thought were important and/or to clarify or expand on any topics that we discussed in the interview. Here participants were quite forthcoming and often raised issues or concerns that did not come up earlier in the interview. At the end of the interview I asked participants a number of demographic questions, such as marital status, age, level of education, etc.

The interview guide was modified several times over the course of the study.

After the first round of interviews it became apparent that some themes were too abstract

(especially those that focused on masculinity) and, as a result, participants had difficulty answering questions about them. Therefore, I re-framed the issue and asked about stereotypes of firefighters and whether participants felt that these stereotypes were accurate. In addition, when it became apparent that relations between groups of firefighters were strained, I incorporated this theme into the interview guide.

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A.4 Feminist Methodology and Practice

Feminist social scientists have developed distinctive principles of inquiry that depart from the positivist ideal of the detached, value-free scientist (Oakley 1981; Taylor

1998). Therefore, feminist research practices differ from traditional social science in a number of important ways. While there are variations between schools of feminist thought and research, generally feminist social scientists: (1) attempt to create equal and democratic relationships between researchers and participants, (2) acknowledge and validate participants’ everyday knowledge, (3) focus on gender and gender inequality, and (4) have an agenda for political change (Armstead 1995; Taylor 1998)

A.4.1 Reflexivity

In addition, one of the central tenets of feminist social science is the notion of reflexivity—recognition that the social location, standpoint, and interests of the researcher are imposed during the research process. These not only define the questions to be asked, but shape observations, interpretations, and representations of data (Hertz

1995; Taylor 1996). As Taylor (1998) notes:

The objectivity assumption—or the notion that there is an independent reality to be known separate from the subjective knower—is integral to the textbook definition of science. The equivalent epistemological presumption in feminist- based inquiry is reflexivity, which is the idea that subjective experience, including actions and feelings that derive from the researcher’s own social location, influences the production and interpretation of research (p. 368).

As a feminist researcher I have a theoretical agenda grounded in studying gender relations. The research process including research design, research questions, data collection, analysis, and interpretation are informed by this agenda (McCorkel and Myers

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2003) and are taken up with the assumption that gender relations infiltrate all areas of social life (Armstead 1995). In addition, this research is based on the premise that gender relations are power relations—in all areas of social life, men and women do not enjoy the same opportunities nor do they face the same constraints (Agarwal 1997; Eichler 1981).

We live in a society in which most men posses more power than most women in workplaces, institutions, families, and government organizations. Therefore, doing feminist research necessarily involves an examination of the relationship between individual choices and unequal power relations at a societal level. As a result, my examination of identity work involves situating its construction within a social context in which men, as a group, enjoy more privileges, power, and rewards than women, as a group.

Self-reflexivity—the acknowledgement of the researcher's location of self in relation to research participants—also plays an important role in feminist methodology.

My story, as a researcher, is the story to which feminists have drawn attention in their call for greater self-reflexivity. As Hertz argues:

Whereas in the past, sociologists were instructed to ignore or obscure their story in searching for "the story", it has become increasingly obvious that [the researcher's story] must be examined closely if we are to better understand and more accurately depict how we know what we know (Hertz 1995:442).

I recognize that my own social position, as a white, heterosexual, middle-class woman, is thoroughly implicated in the methodological decisions that I have made during the course of this research project. In addition, as a feminist, a disaster survivor, and someone who grew up near the city of Kelowna, I project a great deal of myself onto this topic.

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A.4.2 A Feminist Researcher Interviewing (Mostly) Men

My position as a feminist woman interviewing men in male-dominated occupations presented a number of challenges. Here I will outline some of those challenges, how I chose to handle them, and some of the personal and professional dilemmas that arose along the way.

A.4.2.1 Disclosure and Reciprocity

My work is influenced by feminist research principles that value openness and reciprocity between the researcher and the research participant (Campbell and Wasco

2000; Hertz 1995; Oakley 1981; Taylor 1996; Taylor 1998). Following Holstein and

Gubrium (1997), interviews are conceptualized as a process of knowledge construction and collaboration. Using this framework in past research projects (i.e. undergraduate honors thesis, and master’s thesis) afforded me the opportunity to disclose my thoughts on various topics to the participants whom I was interviewing. Self-disclosure of this kind changes the dynamics of the interview (Hertz 1995). Specifically, the interviewer shifts from a neutral questioner to a participant, while participants are given the freedom to ask questions of the interviewer. As a feminist researcher I was more comfortable participating in interviews in which there was, at least to some degree, a mutual exchange of feelings and ideas, as this seemed to minimize (but not eliminate) the power imbalance that often favors the researcher in the interview process.

Unfortunately, I found that feminist principles of disclosure and reciprocity did not translate easily into my interviews with men firefighters. Because all of the men I interviewed work in male-dominated occupations, characterized by ideals of hegemonic

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masculinity, I felt I could not disclose that I was a feminist researcher interested in studying gender, work, and identity construction. I believe this would have limited my chances of gaining access to participants and threatened rapport once I did enter the field.

Like (Arendell 1997), I chose not to disclose my feminist status unless asked directly, which I never was. I explained the study to gatekeepers and participants in very general terms, saying that I was interested in learning more about the personal experiences of firefighters who fought on a large wildlfire. The gatekeeper with the Protection Branch and a number of other participants assumed that I was studying stress (which I was interested in, to a certain extent).

Because I was “undercover” in terms of my feminist identity and research agenda, my opportunities for feminist praxis were limited. Like Armstead (1995), whose status as an academic limited reciprocity with working-class clerical workers, my status as a feminist restricted the degree to which I could reciprocate with participants by disclosing my thoughts and feelings, both during interviews and in interactions outside of the interviews. This caused some personal anxiety, as I felt uneasy about being deceitful. In addition, I genuinely liked many of the people that I met, even thought we likely didn’t see eye to eye on gender and other political issues. Some were funny, some were sincere, and most were thoughtful. I also empathized with them on some issues, and truly felt bad for them when they cried or struggled to hold back tears. It’s possible that some of my feelings were misguided—when researchers feel indebted to participants and believe that they are kind and generous because they allow themselves to be studied, it may be hard to view them in a negative light (Daniels 1983; Neff Gurney 1985). Even if this is the case, at minimum all participants agreed to help me, were generous with their time, and had

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little to gain from doing so41. Therefore, I felt indebted to them and was perturbed about

not being totally truthful.

When I did engage in self-disclosure it wasn’t to try and change the power

dynamics of the interview. Rather, I revealed personal information when I thought it

would help me gain access to a site, a participant, or important information. For

example, some aspects of my personal history, such as the fact that I was in a natural

disaster and that I lived near Kelowna for a number of years, positioned me as an insider.

I used this information when “selling” my project to gatekeepers, when soliciting

participants, and when commiserating with firefighters on certain issues. However, I was

also an outsider because I am a woman and an academic. On many occasions I

highlighted that I was an academic who was largely uninformed about the occupation of

firefighting in order to draw out information from participants about their jobs. I used the

fluidity of my insider and outsider status (Mullings 1999), and corresponding self-

disclosure, to my advantage; however, I did not use self-disclosure in an explicitly

feminist way.

A.4.2.2 Rapport

As noted above, one of the reasons that I chose not to reveal my feminist identity

and research agenda was because I felt that it would have hindered rapport with

participants. I knew, like Neff Gurney (1985), Lee (1997) and others, that in order to do

this project at all I had to earn the trust of the men in my study, because they had the

41 Several participants did mention that it felt good to talk about the experience, and one wildland firefighter said it was “the best critical incident stress management” session that he’d ever had. However, I sensed that it was difficult for the majority of participants to relive their fire experiences. 173

power to freeze me out. When I entered the field I assumed that my status as a feminist would be largely disparaged by these men. Having completed the fieldwork, I feel certain that this would have been the case.

My attempts to develop and maintain rapport caused personal discomfort on a number of occasions. For example, I sometimes agreed with sexist remarks although they were obviously offensive. Usually my “agreement” was implicit; I simply did not say anything in response to these comments. On a number of occasions it was more explicit, such as when I nodded my head or laughed. And on two separate occasions I did not challenge men who made homophobic remarks. One structural firefighter, talking about a training program in an occupation that employed mostly women, remarked that there were three and a half men enrolled, as one man was gay. While my rapport maintenance strategies seemed to work, I was upset that I was complicit in some participants’ overtly sexist and homophobic constructions of gender.

In her study in a male-dominated workplace, Neff Gurney (1985) also faced a number of self-doubts:

I often wished I were a more militant feminist who could lecture the staff on their chauvinism and insensitivity and change their attitudes toward women. Instead, I was always the polite and courteous researcher who tolerated much and said little. I occasionally wondered if I was betraying my beliefs and values, but I allowed it to continue.

I faced these same dilemmas and wondered if my passivity in response to these issues simply reified negative stereotypes about women and gay men. In the end, like Arendell

(1997), I attempted to make myself feel better by deciding that I’d save my critical analysis for the written products.

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Despite these challenges I did attempt to incorporate feminist principles of equality and reciprocity into the interviews in a number of ways. First, when I sensed that a participant wanted to get something off their chest, I listened until they were finished. I commiserated with them when I felt it was appropriate by saying, “I can see why you’d be upset about that”. Unfortunately, sometimes these lengthy diatribes meant that, due to time constraints, I was unable to ask some of the questions that I wanted to.

Second, because I wanted participants to thoughtfully respond to my questions, I attempted to reciprocate by listening to participants speak about issues that they felt were important, even when they seemed tangential to the research project. Third, I also tried to let interviewees have some control over the way that the interview unfolded. I did not prevent participants from going off on tangents; however I did try to circle back to the question at hand after they had a chance to speak. Finally, I gave each participant a chance to add any comments that they wished near the end of the interview.

A.4.2.3 Interviewing Men

From a dramaturgical perspective (Goffman 1959), “the self is an imputed character brought into being by expressive behavior and an audience’s interpretation thereof” (Schwalbe and Wolkomir 2002:218, emphasis original). As a result, a masculine self may be both threatened and/or constructed in the interview context. To the extent that men can successfully portray themselves as rational, in control, and autonomous, the performance of masculinity is culturally credible. To the extent that the interviewer controls the interaction, does not affirm masculinity displays, or asks questions that put the masculine portrayal of self in doubt, the interview may threaten

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masculinity. When respondents’ masculinity is threatened they may employ a number of strategies in an attempt to save face, such as trying to control the interview situation, limiting disclosure of emotions, and exaggerating rationality, autonomy, and control

(Schwalbe and Wolkomir 2002).

Schwalbe and Wolkomir (2002) suggest a number of strategies for dealing with threats to masculine identity in interviews, some of which I put into practice. As I mentioned above, I did not disclose my feminist identity and complete research agenda, because I thought it would intimidate and possibly anger many participants. Also noted above, I tried to give participants some control over the interview process. Interviews are potentially threatening to the masculine self because the interviewee must relinquish control (Schwalbe and Wolkomir 2002). Therefore, giving participants some control over the interview process, such as where to have the interview (which I did), may alleviate some of these feelings.

Another technique that allows participants to feel some power and control is to put them in the position of the expert. In many interviews I made sure to tell participants that I knew very little about firefighting. This positioned the interviewee as the expert and me as the “ignorant” investigator (Lofland 1995) who was interested in learning more about the occupation of firefighting. I wanted participants to know that they had expert knowledge that I did not have and needed their help to understand. I thought this strategy was especially important given my status as an academic, as we are often viewed as having ‘expert’ knowledge.

Like other women interviewing men (Lee 1997; McKee and O'Brien 1983; Neff

Gurney 1985) I was very conscious of the way I dressed. I wanted to convey competence 176

without being threatening (Arendell 1997). In the region where the fire took place very few professionals wear suits, rather many people dress in business casual attire. I chose to dress in a similar manner, and carry my school bag, rather than a briefcase, as I didn’t want to appear overly formal. I was especially careful not to wear anything that could be construed as “sexy”, as inappropriate “sexualizing” is a way that heterosexual men may reassert control when being interviewed by women (Schwalbe and Wolkomir 2002). In retrospect, I realize that these strategies were as much about ensuring that the men participants did not feel threatened as they were about making me feel comfortable interviewing men. I was also mindful of my body language during the interview, making sure that I appeared relaxed and casual. I wanted to portray a casual style, as I thought that some of the participants might view academics as “stuffy” and unapproachable.

Therefore, I also focused on making the interview less formal and more conversational in style.

As noted above, I also used photographs of the fire as an elicitation device. This tactic aids men participants in disclosing their emotions, because it provides a concrete stimulus for emotionality (as opposed to expressing emotions in the absence of a stimulus, which may be viewed as overly emotional and therefore unmanly) (Schwalbe and Wolkomir 2002).

A.4.2.4 Challenges

While Schwalbe and Wolkomir’s (2002) strategies may be useful for obtaining

“good data” (p. 206), they also create dilemmas for feminist researchers. My attempts to make the interview encounters non-threatening, created a number of practical and moral

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problems. First, I discuss power and control issues. This is followed by a discussion of the moral dilemmas that are created as a result of these tactics.

Much of the feminist writing on interviewing assumes that the interviewer has more power than the interviewee (Lee 1997), likely because the discussion is often about white, middle-class women interviewing marginalized women (e.g. see Armstead 1995).

As a result, much of the literature suggests strategies for minimizing these power differences. The power dynamics in my interviews with men were not so straightforward. For example, I likely had some degree of power by virtue of my status as a middle-class academic; one who has the ability to represent participants in ways that

I view as appropriate. However, as a white woman I do not enjoy the same privileges and rewards as the majority of men in my sample who are white and middle-class. I did not feel like I was all-powerful in the interviews. Rather I often sensed there was implicit jockeying for control. In addition, my attempts to make the interview non-threatening and apply feminist principles of reciprocity sometimes backfired when participants asserted too much control. On one occasion, an administrator in the structural fire department pretty much directed the entire interview, dictating which topics we covered and when the interview was finished. Another structural firefighter, whom I was interviewing while we drove through burned neighborhoods, provided numerous unsolicited driving “tips”. More commonly, I was interrupted while asking questions or making comments during interviews. This occurred in interviews with all four groups of firefighters, although I did find that the youngest participants, who were wildland firefighters, were much less likely to do so.

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The limited literature on women interviewing men suggests that these occurrences are not uncommon (e.g. see Arendell 1997; McKee and O'Brien 1983). Perhaps this is not surprising. As Arendell (1997) notes, “The norms of the situation of the research interview did not override or displace those of a gender stratified society; gender work was ever present and predominant” (p. 363). Interviews are situated in a broader social context characterized by unequal gender relations and, as a result, the ways in which gender gets done in interviews reflects the social context in which the interviews occur.

Attempts to make the interviews non-threatening created a moral dilemma because I worried that some of the strategies further marginalized women. When I invoked the naïve researcher role, in order to position participants as experts, I wondered whether this simply reinforced negative stereotypes of women as largely incompetent and unknowledgeable when it comes to “men’s” work. I was also concerned about power and control over the interview process. Giving men some control over how the interview unfolded, and the conditions under which it took place, may have simply reinforced norms of gendered interaction in which men often have more power and control. There are no easy answers to these dilemmas, and they remain unresolved issues in this study.

However, in the interests of reflexivity I felt it was important to make them visible and to do more than discuss them superficially. In the end, I hope that while these interview strategies caused me some personal discomfort, they resulted in quality data, a point I discuss further below.

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A.5 Data Analysis and Interpretation

A.5.1 Approaches to Grounded Theory

Grounded theory refers to both a research method and theory generated by the method. It is primarily used to develop theories, which are “grounded” (i.e. closely connected to and developed from data). This is primarily an inductive approach, although contemporary applications allow for some deduction. I elaborate on this further below. Grounded theory was originally conceived by Glaser and Strauss (1967) and was developed within a positivist paradigm. Glaser and Strauss viewed this method as a rigorous, valid and reliable approach to theory building using qualitative data.

Researchers were instructed to approach the field and their data as “blank slates” by removing, to every extent possible, all previous conceptions, values, and beliefs

(Charmaz 2000). During data analysis researchers were to look for concepts and categories that were presumed to be inherent in the data. The job of the researcher was to allow them to emerge.

While much grounded theory is still rooted in this positivist paradigm, Charmaz

(2000) argues that grounded theory can be removed from its positivist underpinnings to create a more dynamic, and open ended approach to social science research. Charmaz links grounded theory methods to a constructivist paradigm. In contrast to positivism, which adheres to the notion of one, “real” objective reality that can be discovered and analyzed, constructivism views reality as constructed through social interaction. This results in multiple subjective realities, rather than one objective reality. The goal in constructivist work is to begin to understand how multiple realities are constructed and

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the meanings that participants give to their realities (Campbell and Wasco 2000; Charmaz

2000). Charmaz notes that constructivists distinguish between what is “real” and what is

“true”. Constructivists are not looking for what is “true”—one universal and immutable truth. Rather they analyze socially constructed “realities” without viewing them as universal and unchanging. The constructivist approach recognizes that the categories, concepts, and subsequent theories developed in grounded theory come about as a result of the interactions between the researcher and the participant(s), rather than being inherent in the data.

Charmaz also discusses sensitizing concepts—background ideas that inform the overall research problem and offer ways of seeing, organizing, and understanding experience. She posits that it is acceptable to use sensitizing concepts as a starting point for thinking about data, but they are likely to be reformulated during the coding process.

She stresses that data should not be molded to sensitizing concepts.

In contrast, Berg (2001) outlines Strauss’ (1987) recent development of grounded theory, which highlights the deductive possibilities in grounded theory. Strauss notes that grounded theory has been misinterpreted as a strictly inductive method, and argues that induction, deduction and verification are all important components of this approach.

Grounded theory should be grounded in existing theoretical frameworks, at the same time it is able to generate theory (Strauss 1987 in Berg 2001). In Berg’s (2001) study of

Jewish affiliational categories he took precisely this approach. As he interpreted his data, he grounded his emergent categories in both broader theoretical frameworks and in the data generated in his study. Berg (2001) acknowledges that because grounded theory is

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primarily focused on theory building, it is necessarily more inductive, however he argues that induction should not be done at the expense of deduction.

I drew primarily on contemporary applications of grounded theory to guide my data analyses and interpretations. I began with open coding (Strauss and Corbin 1998) whereby I listened to each interview and developed codes to summarize data. This was followed by axial coding (Strauss and Corbin 1998) where I evaluated which codes

“hung together” and which did not. Codes that were related were developed into categories. To facilitate this process I developed code maps using Cmap software

(http://cmap.ihmc.us) and produced reports in HyperResearch to explore potential relationships between codes. During the initial coding, I practiced the constant comparative method (Glaser 1992; Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss 1987) by alternating coding between cases from different groups of firefighters. For example, I coded an interview from a structural firefighter, followed by a wildland firefighter, and a heavy equipment operator and so on, in order to get a sense of the similarities and differences across groups. The themes that emerged and the comparisons across participants from different groups allowed me to discern patterns that emerged from the data.

Next, consistent with Berg’s (2001) approach, I turned to the literature as a way to think about and organize the themes generated from the initial coding process. For example, my initial trip to the field revealed that there was a great deal of antagonism between groups of firefighters, a finding that was largely unexpected. I drew on the theoretical literature on gender as a way to begin thinking about what the original themes meant. I also turned to the literature on identity and boundary work as a way to think about and organize the themes generated from the initial coding process. These were

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used as sensitizing concepts. While concepts in the literature were useful tools for making sense of the data, I was mindful to remain open to the emergence of new themes as the data analysis proceeded.

I also analyzed media coverage of the fire to determine whether it was consistent with firefighters’ accounts—a process known as data triangulation (Berg 2001). In the interests of clarity, I have presented my approach as a linear one. In reality, the process was more recursive in nature; I moved back and forth between stages allowing what emerged at one stage to guide my analytic strategy for the next stage, and so on.

A.5.2 Writing as a Method of Discovery

The data analysis and interpretation occurred simultaneously with the writing process. I used the practice of writing to discover more precisely what I wanted to say about the themes and categories that emerged in the data analyses. As social scientists we are taught not to write until we know what we want to say, until our points are organized and outlined. However, conceptualized differently, the act of writing can be used for sense making and analysis (Richardson 2000). As David Karp notes:

You learn through the process of writing. You might have a scenario about how this thing is going to go, but once you get into the writing and actually begin to use the data to tell the story, you see that maybe the story is going to be slightly different, or it doesn’t quite work the way you first thought about it…So, for me, the actual act of writing tells me what I have to write (David Karp in Nagy Hesse- Biber and Leavy 2005:368).

A.6 Issues of Quality in Qualitative Research

There are many competing claims as to the ways in which quality should be assessed in qualitative research (Seale 1999), as the approach taken to enhance the quality

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of qualitative research depends, to a large degree, upon the paradigm from which a particular researcher is working (Patton 1999). According to positivist perspectives, quality in qualitative research can be assessed in terms of reliability and validity.

Qualitative researchers working within a positivist paradigm use the concepts of validity and reliability to judge the quality of qualitative research. Validity results from the successful application of procedures designed to eliminate bias. Reliability occurs when frequently repeated data collection leads to the same data and results. In this context, interview questions are deemed reliable if they consistently produce the same results in different situations, or at different times (Holstein and Gubrium 1997).

While this is one approach, the “crisis of legitimation” has called into question the usefulness of applying criteria based in the positivist paradigm to qualitative data (Denzin and Lincoln 2000:17). As a result, some researchers (e.g. see Flick 1998; Holstein and

Gubrium 1997; Mason 1996; Seale 1999; Silverman 1993) have suggested that the concepts of reliability and validity, as they are traditionally conceived, are not directly applicable to the assessment of the quality of qualitative research. In the case of reliability, it is unreasonable to expect that answers given by a respondent on one occasion will correspond with answers given on another occasion, as the circumstances of knowledge production differ from interview to interview (Holstein and Gubrium

1997). In terms of validity, the issue of bias is a concern only if one believes that there is some pre-formed, untainted response that the interviewer may somehow contaminate:

In the vessel-of-answers approach, the image of the subject is epistemologically passive, not engaged in the production of knowledge. If the interviewing process goes 'by the book' and is non-directional and unbiased, respondents will validly give out what subjects are presumed to merely retain within them—the unadulterated facts and details of experience. Contamination emanates from the

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interview setting, its participants and their interaction, not the subject, who, under ideal conditions, serves up authentic reports when beckoned to do so (Holstein and Gubrium 1997:117).

Plummer (2001) posits that removing bias would require a researcher that has no face from which to give expression, a participant that has complete knowledge of their experience, and one who is not influenced by the interview situation. This disembodied

“truth” would be odd indeed. Further, it is precisely these sources of “bias” that are used by researchers and participants to construct meaning and realities in the interview setting

(Plummer 2001). If meanings are created through interaction between interviewer and respondent, and are continually being assembled and modified during the interview process, the concept of bias is no longer a meaningful concept (Holstein and Gubrium

1997). Finally, feminist efforts to eliminate the distance between researcher and participant lead away from issues of bias, to calls for strongly reflexive accounts of the researcher’s own part in the research to increase credibility and believability (Olesen

2000).

Silverman (1993) notes that although traditional notions of reliability and validity may not apply to qualitative research, we cannot afford to ignore these concepts altogether. For example, field research that ignores validity tends to have an "anecdotal quality" (Silverman 1993:153). This problem can be overcome by using analytic induction which involves searching for negative cases that are expected to contradict the researcher's hypothesis (Patton 1999; Silverman 1993). In this way, researchers can demonstrate that the explanation that they have developed has been tested against alternative explanations. Mason (1996) notes that hypothesis testing is only one reason to use analytic induction. If a researcher is able to demonstrate that they have considered,

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and found wanting, alternative explanations for the issue at hand the rigor of their analysis and the potential for saying it has a wider theoretical resonance is greatly increased (Mason 1996).

Silverman maintains that there are more appropriate methods for establishing the

"reliability" and "validity" of qualitative research than positivist approaches imply.

Researchers can use multiple methods of data collection and analysis in order to increase quality; a strategy known as triangulation (Patton 1999). For example, the reliability of interview data can be improved by comparing analyses of the same data by several researchers (Patton 1999; Silverman 1993). Researchers can also triangulate by using different data sources (Healy and Perry 2000) or theories (Patton 1999). In addition, providing an audit trail in which researchers keep records of how data have been interpreted increases reliability (Devers 1999; Patton 1999).

Another technique used by researchers to assess the quality of their work is

"respondent validation" (Mason 1996:151). This method involves providing participants with extracts of the researcher's data analysis and interpretation and asking them to provide input on whether they feel that they have been fairly represented. Mason notes that this approach can be problematic:

Given that qualitative researchers are likely to be trading in social science interpretations, based on social science conventions, there is no reason to suppose that research subjects who are unfamiliar with these will have either interest in them, or knowledge about how they operate (Mason 1996:152).

As a result, depending upon the nature of the research question and the type of data analysis, participants may not have the tools required to establish an informed opinion

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about the researcher's interpretation of the data (Mason 1996), or simply may not have the time or motivation to do so (Armstead 1995).

Finally, it has been argued that qualitative social scientists should resist the urge to generate an overarching set of criteria for judging good quality research (Seale 1999).

Seale suggests that the practice of doing research should not be expected to conform to a particular philosophical position. Rather, researchers should draw on the discourses and skills developed in various paradigms as resources. Referring to quality, Seale argues:

"Quality" is a somewhat elusive phenomenon that cannot be pre-specified by methodological rules, though their reconstitution as "guidelines," to be followed with intelligence and knowledge of the particular research context, may assist us in moving toward good quality work. A major threat to quality is in fact the idea that research must be carried out under the burden of fulfilling some philosophical or methodological scheme. Practicing social researchers can learn to do good work from a variety of examples, done within different "moments," without needing to resolve methodological disputes before beginning their work. At the same time, the quality of qualitative research is enhanced if researchers engage with philosophical and methodological debate (Seale 1999:471-472).

Consistent with Seale's approach, the methodological decisions made during this research process were informed by this debate, and the methods chosen were used as guidelines for conducting the research. However, as social research is a "craft skill" (Seale

1999:465), in large part learned through experience, these decisions were not made definitively prior to beginning the research, but rather the issues were engaged with in an ongoing fashion throughout the research process. An important part of this engagement is the use of research memos. This involves recording the steps through which interpretations are made (Mason 1996). This enables the researcher to explain how interpretations of the data are reached and to demonstrate how the data were pieced together when formulating interpretations.

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A.6.1 Approaches to Quality Utilized in this Study

A.6.1.2 Research Memos

To increase the quality of the data analysis I used research memos in a number of ways. First, as Mason (1996) recommends, research memos were used to record the ways in which I arrived at the interpretations that arose from the data analysis. This was greatly facilitated by the HyperResearch annotation feature, which allowed me to attach research memos to audio segments. This provided an audit trail of sorts. An audit trail does not necessarily have to be used for the purposes of replication, as some post- positivists suggest (Berg 2001), nevertheless, it is important to keep track of how concepts were connected, and why particular conclusions were privileged over other conclusions so that they may be incorporated into the final paper. Second, after analyzing each interview I referred back to the research memo I had prepared immediately following the interview to see if the current analysis was consistent with any preliminary interpretations I made. I also coded the research memos and included them in the reports that I ran in HyperResearch.

A.6.1.3 Negative Cases

I used an additional analytical practice as a way of checking that my interpretations were consistent with participants' accounts. As themes emerged I searched for cases that did not fit. Those that did not fit were discussed in the findings or used as the basis for new themes or categories for analysis. Finally, in an effort to ensure

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that the participants were represented in a fair manner I employed two additional strategies. First, whenever feasible, I used participants' own words in order to illustrate that my interpretations were consistent with what the participants said. Secondly, I provided as much context as possible when presenting quotations as a way of demonstrating to the reader that a particular quote was part of a greater whole. However, this strategy was limited by considerations of confidentiality.

A.6.1.4 Deception and Rapport

Researchers who utilize qualitative interviews as a method of data collection may sometimes question whether participants are misleading them. This may be an especially pressing issue when the subject matter is sensitive. Interviewing men can present an additional challenge because, in an effort to construct a credible masculine self, they may exaggerate traits consistent with hegemonic masculinity, such as rationality, autonomy, and control (Schwalbe and Wolkomir 2002). Despite my attempts to make the interview as non-threatening as possible, I have no way of knowing for certain that the people who participated in this study were being open with their thoughts and feelings. However, I have reason to believe that, for the most part, they were. Importantly, I feel I developed a good rapport with most of the participants. This is evidenced in the interviews, which contain many examples of heartfelt accounts of the events surrounding the fire. On a number of occasions participants cried, or were on the verge of tears, when relaying their stories. In addition, several participants noted things like, “I probably shouldn’t say this but…”, or “this is confidential, right?”, and one participant explained that what he was telling me would probably get him fired. These comments suggest that I was privy to

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“inside” information. I was also invited to a number of social outings (skiing and a fundraiser event), offered a plane tour of the area, and invited along on a helicopter ride

(which I accepted). As the quality of the interaction between the participants and myself was high I have no reason to believe that they were being deceitful but, again, there is no way to know for sure.

So, generally speaking, I felt that I developed a good working rapport with participants from each group. However, I also encountered several occasions where participants were particularly tight-lipped during interviews. One was a rookie structural firefighter who gave relatively short, superficial answers; a behavior known as

“minimizing” (Schwalbe and Wolkomir 2002). Before the interview even officially began I knew by his body language that he intended to keep me at arms length (he had his arms crossed, and his legs were crossed and propped up on his desk). He seemed to loosen up once we got going, but it wasn’t the same kind of in-depth conversation that I had with some of his colleagues. I think that part of the issue was his status as a rookie.

He was at the bottom of the status hierarchy in his fire hall, and was closely monitored by more senior firefighters. In fact, our interview was interrupted by a senior member checking in to see how everything was going. He also mentioned that because he was a rookie he had managed to evade interviews with the media. On several other occasions participants were not very forthcoming in the interview, but talked freely once I turned my audio recorder off. As the study progressed I got better at sensing when participants were holding back and was usually able to adjust my behavior, or the interview environment, in ways that seemed to lessen their anxiety and facilitate the flow of conversation.

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A.6.1.5 Respondent Validation

I have decided to use a modified version of respondent validation in this study. I have not solicited participant feedback to date, however I will be relocating to Kelowna in the near future and will re-establish contact with some of the key informants. I plan to turn this research into a book, and would like to obtain some feedback from participants.

However, because participants were not aware of my role as a feminist, nor my complete research agenda, I will not solicit their feedback on all sections of the written report.

A number of participants asked to me to share the final results. Like other feminist researchers I feel that it is important to share research with the people who make it possible. Therefore, I promised to provide these participants with a synopsis of the results, and plan to include as many of the findings as possible. However, because this is a synopsis, I will likely only include descriptive information, rather than my feminist, social scientific interpretations of what the information means. Finally, while the participants have knowledge of the day to day lived experience of the fire, the interpretations presented in this dissertation move from the talk of daily activities to the abstract language of social science. Therefore, Mason (1996) would argue, and I tend to agree, that these participants may not be the best qualified to judge the quality of the work, at least from a social science perspective.

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