Care in a Flammable World: Wildfire Risk Management and Learning to Live (better) with Fire

Abstract

This thesis explores the kinds of care that make life possible in an increasingly flammable world. Focusing on Sonoma County, California – an epicentre of the intensifying wildfire crisis in the Western United States – it asks: What does it mean to approach wildfire risk management through care? What forms does care take in wildfire risk management? How is care being mobilised, sustained, or withheld as people learn to live (better) with fire and fire-prone landscapes? And what happens when we take care seriously as a way of navigating and enduring such unsettled conditions?

Building on feminist and post-humanist care theorists, I move beyond associations of care as feminised, domestic, unpaid, or low-paid labour, or as confined to moments of disaster response or recovery. Across six research papers, I examine how care surfaces in wildfire risk management activities, everyday rhythms, and long-term efforts to coexist with fire and landscapes that burn. I show how care emerges through varied temporalities, materialities, participants, affects, and practices – many of which are not (always) visible, proximate, remunerated, human, or emotionally expressive. While these surfacings of care are not without complexity, tension, or ambivalence, I argue that care is central to how life is navigated, sustained, and held onto amid the uncertainties of an increasingly flammable world.

This thesis is grounded in six months of ethnographic fieldwork in Sonoma County. I employed a methodology combining participant observation, storytelling interviews, photo go-alongs and document analysis to attune to the mundane, ordinary, and often overlooked relations of care. Throughout, I approached research as an act of care in itself – rejecting detachment in favour of being entangled, implicated, and at stake in the fiery world I was researching. I listened, observed, participated, questioned, responded, and remained attuned and responsible in ways shaped by care. Recognising that caring research does not end in the field, I also analyse, write, and present this thesis – with care – opening space for visual data, narrative experimentation, and the centring of participant voice.

Ultimately, this thesis argues for care not as a moral or sentimental ideal, but as a vital, contested, and often under-recognised force shaping how people live (better) with fire and landscapes that burn. Care is central to making communities safer, reducing wildfire risk, minimising disruption to everyday life, and building toward more liveable, flourishing futures in the face of the wildfire crisis.