Burly ‘Bouncers’, Cardboard Cutouts and Physical Violence: An Ethnography of Nightclub Security Work

This chapter explores the workers’ variable bodily capital alongside normative limits to their physical violence. Concrete studies of fairly precise areas of social life, including research on nightclub security staff, similarly forge links between the sociologies of masculinities, violence and the body. The chapter gives some appreciation of the vexing situations that doormen and a few doorwomen may find themselves in and thus why the ability to ‘physically handle oneself’ is a marker of occupational competency. It then explores the degree to which physical violence by and to bodies is normalized and routinized bodily labour among door staff in their risk environment. The chapter explores constructions of competency among door staff in Southwest Britain and contributes empirically to studies on ‘bouncers’, and in furthering an embodied sociology. It highlights some implications of this study for social research and policy. It also presents the possibilities of cross-fertilization which an embodied and empirically grounded sociology promises.