Managing Emotions, Intimacy, and Relationships in a Volunteer Search and Rescue Group

In this article, the author examines interpersonal emotion management during crisis situations. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with a volunteer search & rescue group, she shows how rescuers managed victims’ & families’ intense emotions during searches & rescues, which led them to form unusually rapid & intimate bonds with strangers. A case involving the search for a suspected suicide victim is included. The author concludes by discussing the effects of interpersonal emotion management on victims’ & families’ selves & on their relationship with rescuers. (84 refs)