Danger on the doors: Bodily risk in a demonised occupation

Abstract

Social scientific attention has recently focused upon the private regulation of Britain's burgeoning night-time economy by door supervisors or 'bouncers' as they are more commonly known. Contributing ethnography to this literature, this paper explores bodily risk among doorstaff in Southwest Britain. The commonly perceived association between doorwork and high levels of violence renders this a demonised occupation yet doorstaff may also be in physical danger when policing urban nightspots. Centrally, this participant observational study--grounded in the phenomenological 'foreground' or lived experience of risk-explores bodily danger within the door supervisors' routine night-time contexts. Interrelated social, cultural and economic factors associated with the attenuation, minimisation or avoidance of physical harm are also noted. Describing voluntary and other-imposed occupational health risks, including physical violence and illicit drug-taking, furthers an appreciative understanding of why doorstaff may simultaneously be in danger and dangerous. More formally, this paper, in underscoring the importance of the 'lived body', also supports recent theoretical calls for an embodied sociology. Sociological reflection on health, risk and society, it will be argued, must be grounded in the inescapable corporeality and emotional vicissitudes of actual flesh and blood bodies less it ride roughshod over complex social reality.