The everyday world of bouncers: a rehabilitated role for covert ethnography

Abstract

The focus of this article is on the everyday world of bouncers in the night-time economy of Manchester, England. The structure of the article is to contextualise my covert passing in this demonized subculture followed by explorations of the everyday world of bouncers through the related concepts of door order and the bouncer self. A part of the article is an examination of the management of situated ‘ethical moments’ during the fieldwork and, more generally, critical reflections on emotionality, embodiment and risk-taking in ethnography. I also reflect on the retrospective and longitudinal nature of my fieldwork immersion, and both the data management challenges and possibilities this brings. Covert ethnography can be a creative part of the ethnographer’s tool kit and can provide an alternative perspective on subcultures, settings and organisations. By overly frowning upon the apparent ethical transgressions of covert research, we can stifle and censor the sociological imagination rather than enhance it. My call is for a rehabilitation of covert research.

Illegal or unethical? Situated ethics in the context of a dual economy

“…Reflexivity then often emerges only when we bump into the limits of context and we are forced to do something different than what we planned at the outset. Thus, in order to reconnect their ritualized guidance with complex field realities (Calvey, 2018), review boards and ethical committees should give more attention to reflexivity as a tool to analyze the situated ethics of the research process as a whole, rather than a rigid focus on legality that is supposed to protect and benefit research participants (Hessler et al, 2011).…”

“…Arguably, ethical reflexivity attains another dimension when researching the illicit as it involves particular (legal) risks that could have potentially significant consequences both for researchers as for the participants (Dekeyser and Garrett, 2017; see Adler, 1993;Calvey, 2018). Even when not explicitly researching the illicit, a researcher can suddenly find herself in an illegal situation.…”

Just ‘students, old timers, and sammies’? Exploring the role of stewards and private matchday security in the plural policing of Scottish football

“…Contributing to this literature on the role and function of private security Phillip Hadfield (2008) in particular has focused upon nightclub security personnel in the UK – ‘bouncers’, in British parlance – as a hitherto hidden element of the private governance of ‘security’ and the wider network of ‘nodes’ that govern the night-time economy. Hadfield’s account here draws together seams from his previous collaborative research (see Hobbs et al, 2002, 2003; Hobbs, Lister et al, 2005; Hobbs, Winlow et al, 2005; Lister et al, 2001; Winlow et al, 2001); a collective body of work that has inspired and informed similar work in the UK (Calvey, 2019; Monaghan, 2004; O’Brien et al, 2008) and in other jurisdictions (see Kupka et al, 2018; Mbhele and Singh, 2019; Roberts, 2007, 2009; Søgaard, 2014); opening up a new and vibrant seam in criminological research. Yet whilst ‘bouncer ethnography’ has found a place within the study of private security, the parallel role of event security, and particularly the role of matchday stewards in providing security at football events, has received comparatively less academic attention.…”

“Being on both sides: covert ethnography and partisanship with bouncers in the night‐time economy”

“…What could be broadly described as 'choreographed bravado' (Calvey, 2019). These all helped form collective trust relationships (Calvey, 2019) and types of fictive kinship (Nye, 2000), necessary for doing the mundane tasks and troubles of bouncing work. My martial arts background also served as a passport into this world.…”