Stakeholder Dynamics at the Intersection of Property and Fire: Conflict, Cohesion and Communicative Practices

This study explores the role of property in shaping stakeholder conflict and cohesion within the context of wildland fire. We draw together aspects of disaster literature, social psychology and property rights to evaluate stakeholder discourse about fire events. Of particular importance is the function of discourse in responding to the changing material conditions which occur during wildfire events – like other disasters, fires rupture taken-for-granted notions of property and its boundaries. We contend that much of the social conflict or cohesion during disasters is contingent upon stakeholders’ communication of property and what is damaged during the event. To explore these dynamics, we analyze public discourse from newspapers covering two significant fires from the 2006 fire season – the Columbia Complex fire in southeast Washington and the Day Fire in southern California. We find that property is a salient force in these dynamics and that public land is less important because of its “non-property” status, that fire is constructed as an active agent threatening property, and that stakeholders’ adoption of different cultural values has much to do with the incidence of conflict or cohesion between groups involved in fire management.