A momentary lapse of identity and control: straddling male collaborations with professional instruments

Journal of Men's Studies, The, Spring, 2009 by Jennie Olofsson

One world, it's a battleground One world, and we will smash it down One world ... one world.

(From the song "The Dogs of War," Pink Floyd [19871 A Momentary Lapse of Reason)

In 1949, thirteen fire fighters perished in an explosive fire in Mann Gulch, Montana (Maclean, 1992). Under similar conditions, fourteen fire fighters lost their lives forty- five years later, in 1994, in South Canyon, Colorado. Totally, twenty-three men and four women died when retreating from the enraging flames. The extent of these tragedies could however have been lessened if the fire fighters would have discarded their tools when trying to escape (Weick, 1993, 1996). Despite explicit orders to discard their heavy equipment, which impeded their movement (Maclean, 1992, pp. 71, 273), the dead fire fighters were found still clutching their instruments.

Why did theses fire fighters fail to discard their tools? Weick (1993, 1996) probes this dodging reluctance, claiming the disasters in Mann Gulch and in South Canyon constituted "an unsuspected source of [how to understand] vulnerability in organizations" (1993, p. 633). Weick (1996) stresses ten reasons as crucial for understanding the failure to drop the tools, of which this study seeks to pinpoint four of them; control, skill at dropping, failure, and identity (p. 306-ff).

This article's overarching interest concerns men operating in male-dominated working sites. More specifically, it seeks to disclose how fire fighters might identify with, and ascribe meaning to the equipment being utilized (1) as well as to the community of practice within which they operate. Apart from Weick's (1993, 1996) articles, previously published material concerning the tragedy in Mann Gulch has been investigated. Additionally, interviews with retired fire fighters from a local fire brigade in Sweden have been conducted. These diverse materials provide a foundation for this article.

Methodologies

In addition to ethnographic studies of the written material connected to the disasters in Mann Gulch and in South Canyon, interviews with retired fire fighters in Lulea, a small town in the Northern parts of Sweden, are conducted in the autumn of 2008. Gathering once a week at the local fire-rescue department, the retired fire fighters repair old trucks and work on the aging equipment. Listening to these men relate their stories the interviewer studies how their narration serves to enact and reproduce fire fighting as a male assignment, and how their discussions allows for a scrutiny of masculinity as conveyed and negotiated collectively (Meuser, 2007). Considering homosocial activities as ordered and enacted in a variety of ways (Moser, 2006), the study ascribes particular interest to how utilized equipment contributes to moulding mundane undertakings, on a discursive--as well as on a practical level.

Using interviews with retired fire fighters in Lulea, Sweden, Weick's articles (1993, 1996) as well as Norman Maclean's (1992) tribute to the perished at the Mann Gulch disaster; Young Men & Fire--this study offers additional understandings of homosocial communities; not only as spatially and symbolically ordered (Meuser, 2007), but also as materially contingent. Spatial settings are crucial for establishing and maintaining a masculine identity (Meuser). At the same time, these settings are mediated by artifactual utility. Homosocial communities adopt material forms in that they are embodied, and also deployed in artifactual utility.

Theoretical Points of Departure

As stated above, this study intends to disclose the intimacy between men, homosocial practices, and their equipment. The theoretical ambition is therefore to intersect and merge voices from masculinity studies and actor-network theory (ANT). Following theorist John Law (1992); the actor-network approach is "a theory of agency, a theory of knowledge and a theory of machines" (Law, 1992, p. 389, emphasis in original), which is why the theoretical merge between masculinity studies and ANT inspire a tempting collaboration worth pursuing. Male dominated working sites are acknowledged as built in specific material practices and locations (Moser, 2006). Constituted by chains of actors (2) (Latour, 1999), these communities have a variety of implications in that they are also coded masculine. Hence, in order to scrutinize different performances of masculinities and homosocial activities, the study stresses the importance to also interpret the collaborations between human and material assets.

Local differences within the socio-technical network (3) of fire fighters and sets of equipment allow the researcher to discern nuances of how to perceive gendered interaction between human and technological artifacts. In order to disclose male communities of practices as vulnerable and tentatively enacted, actor-network theory endorses future research within masculinity studies as it pinpoints the employed equipment as salient to homosocial practices. As Law (1992) suggest; "social agents are never located in bodies and bodies alone" (p. 384). Rather, agents stretch out into a network of material, bodies, instruments, and information. The notion of materiality is thus of pivotal interest when scrutinizing homosocial communities as mediated by artifactual utility.