"You've Come a Long Way. And Now This Is Your Retirement": An Analysis of Performance in Fire Fighting Culture

Abstract

ALTHOUGH ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL forces in recent folklore theory, the ethnography of performance approach to cultural events has not produced a large body of field-based studies.1 In an effort to test this approach with ethnographic materials, this paper examines a retirement dinner in urban fire fighting culture. In addition to describing the dinner itself, I will explore aspects of the relationship between the activities of the participants in the dinner and the day-to-day experiences and patterns of interaction in the fire fighting culture as a whole. A basic premise of this approach is the isomorphic relationship between the actions, performances, and symbols employed in the dinner, and other aspects of fire fighting culture, viewed as merely more condensed, dramatic forms. The dinner and verbal roast described and analyzed here are viewed as a vehicle for change in a highly conservative occupational culture. The retirement dinner is a.liminal event in which (as Turner states) all previous standards and models (in the culture) are subjected to criticism, and fresh new ways of describing and interpreting sociocultural experience are formulated (Turner 1974:15). This criticism is based on the tension within the culture between the cultural ideals held by the participants in the dinner and the actual reality of their work experience.2 It is this tension between the dayto-day reality and cultural ideals that lies at the heart of this analysis and the retirement dinner itself.