TY - JOUR
T1 - Regulating Unruly; Bodies: Work Tasks, Conflict and Violence in Britain's Night-Time Economy
T2 - Work tasks, conflict and violence in Britain's night-time economy
AU - Monaghan, Lee
PY - 2002/9
Y1 - 2002/9
N2 - Security work in urban licensed premises is a risky occupation in Britain's fast expanding liminal night-time economy. Sociologically, little is known about this masculinist work, including those embodied strategies used by doorstaff or 'bouncers' to regulate 'unruly' bodies in and around commercial space. Using participant observational data generated in south-west Britain, this paper describes how the door supervisors' routine work tasks (largely comprising requests and demands) provide the conditions of possibility for hierarchical conflict and (near) violence between themselves and (potential) customers inside and at the entrances to licensed premises. Besides providing a thick description of this work and the phenomenology of physical violence, the paper supports recent theoretical arguments for an explicitly embodied sociology. Centrally, the paper maintains that bodies matter and that an empirical, interpretative sociology cannot ignore the corporeal dimensions of social life if it is to arrive at an adequate understanding of everynight tensions and conflict.
AB - Security work in urban licensed premises is a risky occupation in Britain's fast expanding liminal night-time economy. Sociologically, little is known about this masculinist work, including those embodied strategies used by doorstaff or 'bouncers' to regulate 'unruly' bodies in and around commercial space. Using participant observational data generated in south-west Britain, this paper describes how the door supervisors' routine work tasks (largely comprising requests and demands) provide the conditions of possibility for hierarchical conflict and (near) violence between themselves and (potential) customers inside and at the entrances to licensed premises. Besides providing a thick description of this work and the phenomenology of physical violence, the paper supports recent theoretical arguments for an explicitly embodied sociology. Centrally, the paper maintains that bodies matter and that an empirical, interpretative sociology cannot ignore the corporeal dimensions of social life if it is to arrive at an adequate understanding of everynight tensions and conflict.
KW - Embodied sociology
KW - Masculinities
KW - Private security
KW - Risk
KW - Violence
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0036717153&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/0007131022000000572
DO - 10.1080/0007131022000000572
M3 - Article
C2 - 12227842
AN - SCOPUS:0036717153
SN - 0007-1315
VL - 53
SP - 403
EP - 429
JO - British Journal of Sociology
JF - British Journal of Sociology
IS - 3
ER -