Search

Background: In a culture of preloading and late-night licenses, alcohol-related violence remains a persistent problem for police and public health. Understood as a ritualized 'micro-social' interaction (Collins 2009a, 2009b), entry into bars and clubs is a particular flashpoint for violence between bouncers/door staff and customers., Methods: A police-led initiative to deter excessive drunkenness and preloading using hand-held breathalysers (the #RU2Drunk scheme) was investigated from the perspective of security and bar staff using the devices. Interviews (n = 18 + 12), a focus group with security staff (n = 22) and a focus group with a security company (n = 3) were conducted in two seaside towns in the South-West of England, UK. A qualitative thematic analysis was conducted., Findings: Door staff emphasised the normality of 'determined drunkenness' and associated violence in their working lives. Breathalyser use appeared to disrupt the 'ritual' of the violent encounter by reconfiguring it into an interaction between customer and technology. This depersonalized the judgement about who was 'too drunk' to enter the venue, with the more discretionary nature of who to breathalyse hidden from customers. Other door staff found it less useful and saw it as a challenge to their authority and expertise. At a managerial level there was concern about the transfer of responsibility for policing the night time economy (NTE)., Conclusion: There is potential to reconfigure the violent encounter for door staff using breathalyser devices. However, this is more likely to succeed where other structural limits (e.g. restrictions on late licenses) are in place, and as part of wider policy initiatives to reconfigure the alcohol-saturated NTE leisure scene., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Abstract: Bouncers (also referred to as “doormen,” “door staff,” “security personnel,” etc.) have received a great deal of attention in the available research on barroom aggression. All too often, researchers blame bouncers for provoking and escalating aggressive episodes in bars rather than functioning in a capacity that controls or prevents such incidents. The primary aim of this review paper is to provide an overview of the available research on bouncers and barroom aggression. Specifically, research on barroom aggression that implicates bouncers as one of possibly several environmental predictors of such incidents, as well as a growing body of research that provides a more focused exploration of the role of bouncers in barrooms and their impact on aggression, is examined and evaluated. Attempts to address problem bouncers and suggestions for future research are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper explores the emerging role of women who work as ‘bouncers’, or doorstaff, in the night-time economy and examines how the cultural capital of the female bouncer is connected to the methods utilized to control licensed premises. It is drawn from a study that combined ethnographic observations and interviews in five major UK cities which explored a diverse range of issues such as gendered bodies, femininities and violence; the changing needs of the night-time economy in the UK and the experiences of women engaged in ‘non-traditional’ occupations. In this paper, we draw on interview data with one particular category of female door staff; women who share similar histories of exposure to violence and violent cultures, and we examine how their experiential knowledge of violence equips them with the resources to ‘work the doors’. Our attention focuses on this group of women, who we refer to as ‘The Connected’, and examine how they are ‘doing gender’ when they negotiate violence ‘on the door’ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Door supervisors or ‘bouncers’ are charged with privately policing Britain's night- time leisure economy, sometimes using ‘normal’ force to ensure order inside and at the entrances to urban licensed premises. Using ethnography generated in Southwest Britain, this article explores the lived realities of legal risk among these predominantly male workers. As well as empirically charting interrelated factors associated with the imposition, amplification and avoidance of legal risk, this article supports an embodied, non-dualist approach to socio-legal study. Such an approach, in rethinking unhelpful dichotomies (for example, mind—body, reason—emotion, victim—oppressor, conformity—deviance, order—disorder), incorporates the ‘lived body’ and ‘sex-specific corporeality’ when exploring legal risk, violence and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on male interpersonal violence with regards to club doormen from Great Britain. Significance of interpersonal violence to society; Analysis of the discourse of violence; Views of several doormen regarding violence.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]