Collective memories and professional ideals: Teachers’ experiences of a disaster
Introduction
Disasters affect people and communities in multiple ways, from disruptions of social life and the rhythm of everyday life [1] to causing personal and material damage. When the disaster has passed, remembrance begins. Experienced collectively, disasters are also remembered collectively [2]. Serving as a vehicle for retrospectively making sense of insecurity, fear and loss [[3], [4], [5]], and constituting a social glue among members of the affected communities, collective memory is key to disaster recovery [[6], [7], [8]]. Yet, how disasters are experienced and managed by professional groups lacking emergency management training, has been less problematized.
This paper explores teachers’ memories of a forest fire in 2014, as they became frontline disaster workers. It draws on interviews with teachers in a small, rural village in Sweden, affected by the largest forest fire in living memory. As residents in, or near, a community close to the fire the teachers experienced the fire as citizens in their roles as family members and neighbours. Here, recognizing the significance of social cohesion and group solidarity within affected communities for disaster recovery is essential [9,10]. Against this background, particular attention was directed towards exploring memories of social interaction through the theoretical concepts of Gemeinschaft [11] and Therapeutic community [12,13]. In addition to the social dimension, the disaster was experienced and remembered from a professional perspective. Specific attention was thus directed towards exploring professional responsibility, ideals and organizational support. Two key contributions can be drawn from this study. Firstly, findings provide substantial understanding of community in a small village in disasters and post-disaster recovery processes by demonstrating the role of solidarity in disaster memories. Here, the usefulness of the theoretical concepts of Gemeinschaft and Therapeutic community are illustrated. Second, the article contributes to understanding disaster memory related to habitual routines of work experiences through retrospective narratives of professional responsibility and organizational support, illuminating narratives of success as well as tensions due to diverging levels of support.
The article is structured as follows. The next section details literature on theoretical understandings of social organization in the context of disasters and post-disaster community; individual reactions, sensemaking and professionalism of teachers; and post-disaster memory work, which constitutes the epistemological approach of this article. After describing the research context, data and methods, the findings are presented. Related to the specific focus on the social dimension, personal memories of sensory impressions, sensemaking and emotional solidarity are explored. Linked to the focus on work, memories of the work-place and professional ideals are outlined, illustrating how norms and values of professionalism among teachers remained unaffected throughout the disaster. The article concludes with highlighting and discussing the main conclusions.
Section snippets
Disasters, social organization, and post-disaster community
Experiences of disasters are, by most people, dealt with through rational, constructive, and pro-social acts [14]. Disaster survivors tend to demonstrate solidarity and help others in need (see Refs. [15,16]. Previous research has drawn attention to the emergence of such social post-disaster solidarity within affected communities [9,10]. Such community response following a disaster has been described in terms of therapeutic communities, which refer to transformed social structures due to
Research context
Large parts of the Swedish Midwest consist of forest, mainly owned and worked by forestry companies, while other parts of the forest and land have been inherited in families for generations. In addition to constituting a financial resource, it is also has social significance as it is used for jogging, orienteering or hunting, and for picking mushrooms or doing picnics. The fire that altered the forest beyond recognition occurred two years before the interviews were conducted. During work with
Personal memories – sensory impressions and group solidarity
When accounting retrospectively for their experiences, the participants searched their memories to give as correct information as possible and tried to illustrate their recollections with an example of a specific situation, while sometimes struggling in remembering details. This raised curiosity about what brings back disaster memories. Searching the memory for information connected to the forest fire in large parts took place in parallel with sensory experiences:
That Monday, it was kind of …
Conclusions
This article has explored teachers' memories of a forest fire in the Swedish Midwest in 2014. There are two key themes to draw from this study. Firstly, exploring the role of kinship and group solidarity in memories of the non-work sphere, this paper provides more substantial understanding of social structures of small village in disasters and post-disaster recovery processes. Secondly, it illustrates teachers’ memories of professionalism and how interlinked norms and values remained intact
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Swedish Research Counsil for Sustainable Development (FORMAS) [grant number 2014–01885]. The author would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for the time and effort taken in providing insightful and constructive comments to the author.
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