Bandage, Sort, and Hustle
Ambulance Crews on the Front Lines of Urban Suffering
by Josh Seim
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Pub Date Feb 04 2020 | Archive Date Jun 15 2020
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Description
Drawing on field observations, medical records, and his own experience as a novice emergency medical technician, sociologist Josh Seim reimagines paramedicine as a frontline institution for governing urban suffering. Bandage, Sort, and Hustle argues that the ambulance is part of a fragmented regime that is focused more on neutralizing hardships (which are disproportionately carried by poor people and people of color) than on eradicating the root causes of agony. Whether by compressing lifeless chests on the streets or by transporting the publicly intoxicated into the hospital, ambulance crews tend to handle suffering bodies near the bottom of the polarized metropolis.
Seim illustrates how this work puts crews in recurrent, and sometimes tense, contact with the emergency department nurses and police officers who share their clientele. These street-level relations, however, cannot be understood without considering the bureaucratic and capitalistic forces that control and coordinate ambulance labor from above. Beyond the ambulance, this book motivates a labor-centric model for understanding the frontline governance of down-and-out populations.
Advance Praise
"Stunning analysis of the Emergency Medical System (EMS), its frontline workers, and patients. . . . A great source for highlighting how well-intentioned labor processes within seemingly benevolent occupations can further marginalize people and reproduce social inequalities."—British Medical Journal, Medical Humanities
“This hard-hitting ethnography takes readers into the working world of ambulance crews, painting a sharp portrait of those charged with picking up the bodies left to writhe in America’s gutters. Weaving fresh theoretical insights with firsthand experience, Josh Seim offers an exciting new lens for understanding urban governance, labor, and inequality.”—Forrest Stuart, author of Down, Out, and Under Arrest: Policing and Everyday Life in Skid Row
Available Editions
EDITION | Other Format |
ISBN | 9780520300231 |
PRICE | $29.95 (USD) |
PAGES | 272 |