Paper Short Abstract:

Dutch firefighting is both ‘gevaarlijk’ (‘dangerous’) and ‘veilig’ (safe). Rather than opposite ends of a single register, this pair has a much more complicated link in this practice. Our ethnographic findings play with common tropes to describe 'clean' and 'toxic' through.

Paper Abstract:

We set out to learn about how toxicity is dealt with in Dutch firefighting. This, it turns out, is both ‘gevaarlijk’ (‘dangerous’) and ‘veilig’ (safe) – a surprise to us, who naively assumed that these terms present opposite ends of a single register. But as firefighters perform ‘veiligheid’ not as the property of a situation but rather as a constant practice, they articulate a much more complicated link between danger and safety. In firefighting, danger and safety emerge tightly together – and not as two extremes that overcome each other. Rather, one begets the other and makes it necessary. ‘Gevaar’ needs to be performed so firefighters can be ‘veilig’: most accidents occur in situations where there is little danger. This link, however, must be performed well: in the face of mounting danger, safety practice can still fail, as in the case of a firefighter who feels unsafe with her current team, and fears things may go wrong when danger looms. Meanwhile, which ‘gevaar’ is mounting is not trivial: shifting measurements mean shifting dangers; as ‘danger’ morphs, so does what is done with it. All this to say: rather than opposite ends of a register, ‘gevaar’ and ‘veiligheid’ seem caught in each other. Sounds complex? That is because this case may stretch what is possible to articulate in the common terms, logics, tropes to describe ‘clean’ or ‘toxic’ through. So this is what we come to present: some blazing-hot complexities of valuing in firefighting practice.