ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a covert participant observational study of door supervisors, or
bouncers as they are more traditionally called, in the leisure and entertainment sector
of Manchester, England. The fieldwork was conducted between January and June
1996. Similar to Westmarland’s experience of police work (Chapter 2), the research
involved substantial physical threat to the researcher. However, unlike Westmarland’s
experience, mine was a covert study, carried out without the knowledge of bouncers,
club and pub owners and customers. This chapter discusses my experience of physical
threat and highlights the ways in which bouncer/researcher relationships were
enhanced by shared experience. However, at the same time there were important
ethical issues involved in the research. The implications of the covert nature of the
research are still ongoing and I have deliberately allowed some years to pass between
the completion of the fieldwork and publication, as I feared recrimination by the door
community if my research role was discovered. The experience of threat continuing
after the fieldwork is completed and when one may be working in totally unrelated
research areas is not uncommon or indeed new. Wallis’s (1976, 1977) experience of
studying Scientology followed him for years after the work was completed. This
chapter contributes a recognition of the need to be aware of the longer-term
consequences of research upon researchers themselves in terms of physical risk and
threat.
