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Bandage, Sort, and Hustle: Ambulance Crews on the Front Lines of Urban Suffering
What is the role of the ambulance in the American city? The prevailing narrative provides a rather simple answer: saving and transporting the critically ill and injured. This is not an incorrect description, but it is incomplete.
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.
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.
- GenresSociology
272 pages, Paperback
Published February 4, 2020
4 people are currently reading
77 people want to read
About the author
Josh Seim
3 books2 followersJosh Seim is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 6, 2025
interesting concept, think extended-case ethnography isn't my thing though. less compelling when we are given the theory and explained why it is the best choice then all evidence is made to fit it. liked the stories though and the conclusion wrapped things up nicely. could definitely tell it was written by a dude-bro though haha
March 7, 2025
*Read for SOCY4931* (and my prof wrote this book so eek must be sparing with my review)
This book was a really cool ethnography on ambulance workers (EMTs, paramedics, and their supervisors/management). I think this book contributes a lot to the field in terms of methods. Seim actually became an EMT during the course of his research, and I think that really helped inform the work and makes the results more compelling.
What I didn't like about this book is that I think sometimes it's a little too academic and in the weeds. I wish it was more journalistic, but at times it seems to force a theory onto things that seem self-explanatory or just within the bounds of human nature. Overall worth the read if you're interested in ambulances/the health care system, but if not, I'd pass.
This book was a really cool ethnography on ambulance workers (EMTs, paramedics, and their supervisors/management). I think this book contributes a lot to the field in terms of methods. Seim actually became an EMT during the course of his research, and I think that really helped inform the work and makes the results more compelling.
What I didn't like about this book is that I think sometimes it's a little too academic and in the weeds. I wish it was more journalistic, but at times it seems to force a theory onto things that seem self-explanatory or just within the bounds of human nature. Overall worth the read if you're interested in ambulances/the health care system, but if not, I'd pass.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews