Bouncers

In recent years, the expansion of night-time leisure has emerged as a key indicator of post-industrial urban prosperity, attracting investment, creating employment and re-generating the built environment. These leisure economies are youth-dominated, focusing upon the sale and consumption of alcohol. Unprecedented numbers of young people now flock to town centres that are crammed with bars, pubs and clubs, and the resulting violent disorder has over run police resources that remain geared to the drinking patterns and alcohol cultures of previous generations. Post-industrial re-structuring has spawned an increasingly complex mass of night-time leisure options through which numerous licit and illicit commercial opportunities flow. Yet, regardless of the fashionable and romantic notions of many contemporary urban theorists, it is alcohol, mass intoxication and profit rather than 'cultural regeneration,' which lies at the heart of this rapidly expanding dimension of post-industrial urbanism. Private security in the bulky form of bouncers fills the void left by the public police. These men (only 7 per cent are women), whose activities are barely regulated by the State, are dominated by a powerful subculture rooted in routine violence and intimidation. Using ethnography, participant observation and extensive interviews with all the main players, this controversial book charts the emergence of the bouncer as one of the most graphic symbols in the iconography of post industrial Britain.

ISBN 0199288003   Pages 323 ISBN13 9780199288007 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Oxford University Press   Weight (grammes) 424 Imprint Oxford University Press   Published in Oxford Format Paperback   Series title Clarendon Studies in Criminology Publication date 30 Jun 2005   Height (mm) 215 Library of Congress 2005440975   Width (mm) 139 DEWEY 363.2890941   Spine width (mm) 19 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Professional / Scholarly

1		Let the good times roll : liminality and the night-time economy		13
2		After-dark 'fun' and its control in the industrial city		53
3		Post-industrial Manchester : from cotton to Carlsberg		71
4		Tommy Smith's story : four decades on the door		109
5		A word at the door : bouncers on their work		119
6		Manners maketh the man : licensing 'door supervisors' and the discourses of professionalism and safety		165
7		Market force : class, violence, and liminal business on the night-time frontier		211
8		Night futures : the marketization of license and control		245
9		Big people, dirty work : a conclusion		269

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