‘I’d say it’s around me’: Introducing field analysis into bouncer ethnography – the case of a Czech city

Abstract

Bouncers have recently attracted the interest of criminologists, some of whom have utilized Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts to grasp the sociocultural realities of bouncing. The present study continues this line of enquiry, aiming to demonstrate that bouncer ethnography will benefit from yet another of Bourdieu’s concepts, that of the field. A study of bouncers in a Czech city is utilized to argue that (1) field analysis is a valuable analytical framework for ethnographic research in this context, (2) it allows relationships both among bouncers and between them and other relevant agents to be explored, (3) it has the potential to investigate these relationships without criminalizing them, and (4) it provides a framework for comparative studies of bouncing in different contexts.