Risk a Lot to Save a Lot: How Firefighters Decide Whose Life Matters,

Abstract

Firefighters make life‐or‐death decisions based on shared understandings of whose lives matter. Drawing on three years of participant observation as a volunteer firefighter and 30 semistructured interviews, I examine tensions surrounding the value firefighters place on their own lives and the lives of the public they serve. There is a tension between firefighters and their officers over the value of a firefighter's life. Firefighters tend to be cavalier in their willingness to endanger their own lives in high‐risk situations, while fire officers feel responsible for protecting the lives of their crew. A second tension exists between prejudiced individuals and an institutional culture of public service. Some firefighters harbor individual prejudices, which are at odds with an institutional culture of egalitarian service. Fire service, state, county, department, crew, and peer cultures suppress individual prejudices. This case study suggests that deep integration into an institutional culture of public service mitigates discriminatory behavior. Instead of evaluating discrimination among first responders as an individual‐level trouble, bias and its associated dysfunctions can be reframed as a social issue to be ameliorated through cultural reform.