Readership: Criminologists, sociologists, students of urban studies, police studies, and political scientists. Practitioners in the fields of planning, policing, and other related areas.
Dick Hobbs, Professor of Sociology, University of Durham, Philip Hadfield, ESRC funded Researcher, Department of Sociology, University of Durham, Stuart Lister, Research Fellow, University of Leeds, and Simon Winlow, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, University of Teesside
Review(s) from previous edition"Hobbs is without doubt Britain's most insightful and penetrating criminological ethnographer, and he uses his skill to provide an extremely useful service...my advice to all interested academics and students is to get a copy, read it, and keep it as a principal guide book to take with you on your theoretical excursions into the subject of professional crime. - International Journal of Sociology and Law
"His book contains the thrills of voyeuristic participation in a world of almost untramelled opportunities for hedonistic pleasure, with the frisson of realisation that burgalries and robberies are the price we pay as victims. This book conveys a fascinating if disturbing sense of the complex, messy lives of those in the bad business." - Times Literary Supplement
"Dick Hobbs has succeeded at every level...this is a very good book. It is written with confidence and gusto, in a way which makes the subjects ... come to life." - New Law Journal
"Dick Hobb's research has always traversed the large distance between the criminal and the criminologist and his writing the even larger gap between the novelist and the academic. This has meant that his books are as full of characters as facts and of wry comment as dry analysis and Bouncers is no exception." - The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice
"... a comprehensive account of bouncers: their occupational culture, their role in the alcohol fuelled expanding night-time economy and the failure of all strata of regulation to contain the violence which is endemic within it." - The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice
"... may be read and enjoyed at a variety of levels ... may also be read with profit by those interested in richly-woven descriptions of the life of doormen, their adventures, their sense of chivalry and of 'rough justice', and the legal and extra-legal codes that govern their conduct ... a serious social study that charms and enthrals." - Law Society Journal
"... a pioneering and exciting study that opens up for police researchers, criminologists, urban ethnographers and sociologists a fascinating look into the night-time economy..." - Theoretical Criminology
1: Let the Good Times Roll: Liminality and the Night-Time Economy 2: After-Dark 'Fun' and its Control in the Industrial City 3: Post-Industrial Manchester: From Cotton to Carlsberg 4: Tommy Smith's Story: Four Decades on the Door 5: A Word at the Door: Bouncers On Their Work 6: Manners Maketh the Man: Licensing 'Door Supervisors' and the Discourses of Professionalism and Safety 7: Market Force: Class, Violence, and Liminal Buiness on the Night-Time Frontier 8: Night Futures: The Marketization of License and Control 9: Big People, Dirty Work; A Conclusion
