‘Common-Sense’ Research: Senses, Emotions and Embodiment in Researching Stag Tourism in Eastern Europe

Abstract

The article reflects on the experience of conducting participatory research with all-male premarital stag tour groups in Krakow, Poland. The research therefore concerns the performative and embodied aspects of hegemonic male behaviour that are encouraged and enacted by the British men who take part in such tours. Vital to the process of gaining an ethnographic insight into the highly gendered leisure spaces of the stag tourism phenomenon was a willingness to centre sensory, emotional and embodied data in the research process. Methodological reflections, therefore, recall the effects of conducting research in a setting mediated by the consumption of alcohol and collective drunkenness and pervaded with sensory (the thump of nightclub bass speakers, the drunken cheers of stag group participants, the smell of vodka) and emotive (feelings of elation, amusement and disgust) stimuli. Particular importance can be given to the benefit of mutual ‘common-sense’ experiences in building rapport between researchers and their participants. Such insights are of considerable epistemological value. In closing the article it is suggested that learning to recognise and work with such aspects of the research process is vital in developing effective research competencies.

Queer youth, intoxication and queer drinking spaces

“…Since the early 1990s, researchers have examined the development and expansion of the nighttime economy (Anderson 2009; Chatterton and Hollands 2003; Hadfield 2006; Measham and Moore 2009; Moloney et al 2009; Rief 2009; Thurnell-Read 2011). While the social options for queer people have expanded within this nighttime economy and nightlife scenes (bars and clubs) continue to play a central role (Buckland 2002; McCall 2001; Rief 2011; Trocki et al 2005), researchers today have suggested that venues catering to the queer communities may be in decline (Brown 2014; Ghaziani 2014; Kelly et al 2014; Podmore 2013).…”

Assessing the Level of Popularity of European Stag Tourism Destinations

“…Some authors describe stag party tourism in the context of alcohol abuse (Andrews 2005, Bell 2008), whereas Rohrer (2006 calls participants of such travel "drunken invaders" (p. 1). Other authors analyse this type of tourism in relation to its associations with sex tourism (Boazman 2010, Hubbart, Mhowell 2008, or describe the behaviour of stag party tourists sociologically (Elbridge, Roberts 2008, Kinnaird, Hall 1994, thurnell-read 2011.…”

“…The development of urban tourism (including stag party tourism) in Europe accompanied the deregulation of the aviation market in the mid-1990s, resulting in the development of low cost airlines (Dunne et al 2010, Graham, Shaw 2008, Thurnell-Read 2011. Due to low ticket prices and a developed network of connections offered by particular airlines, travelling to many cities of the continent has become available to the majority of potential tourists.…”

Potential of city break clubbing tourism in Wrocław

“…Along with the accession, low cost carriers appeared on the aviation markets in these countries. Due to the increased communication availability, in a very short time, cities such as Bratislava, Budapest, Krakow, Riga and Tallinn, become important clubbing centers on the continent (Thurnell-Read, 2011).…”

“…New types of travel are becoming more important in the tourism market, in addition to the still popular trips to the so-called warm countries. The new forms include slum tourism, stag tourism, dark tourism, alcotourism and sex tourism (Durr, 2012;Hesse, Tutenges, 2011;Robb, 2009;Thurnell-Read, 2011). Looking at these changes, it can be said that besides the well known scheme of travel, often presented as 3xS (sun, sea, sand) and consociated mainly with carefree holidays at a resort hotel (necessarily all inclusive), a new scheme based on the cognitive function of tourism has emerged.…”