ABSTRACT
Emerging studies on private security work in Britain's night-time economy explore important sociological themes such as masculinities and violence. Centrally, it explores the door supervisors' variable bodily capital alongside normative limits to their violence. Here physicality is central to the practicalities of doorwork, risk management and the embodiment of dominant and subordinate masculinities. Within doorwork culture, embodied typifications such as 'hard men', 'shop boys' and others are related to assessments of possible violence against doorstaff, the delineation of boundaries for their own (in)appropriate violence against 'problematic' customers and the construction of competent identity. Dimensions of masculinity enumerated and valorised in urban licensed premises include body build, techniques of the body and a willingness to risk one's body in performance. In a masculinist occupation, the bodily suggestion of forceful action is also significant for doorwomen presenting themselves as physically competent and controlling.
