I suppose the short answer is that it was about time. To study the re-emergence of private policing and the consumption of security, as I have done for the last seven years, and to exclude nightclubs and bouncers does not make much sense. Both are far too important to the nighttime economy and for securing contemporary urban centres. It was inevitable for me that nightclubs and bouncers be considered as an object of research.

You did your research on the basis of direct observations in nightclubs. How did you experience this as a relative outsider?

The point is to be accepted as an insider as quickly as possible. If not an insider then at least an unobtrusive 'hanger-on'. This is when the data become intriguing, when you get access to the type of candour that increases your understanding of motivation and legitimation among bouncers. Much of this comes with time and by taking on a non-judgemental posture. Of course, simply by virtue of being in the nightclub, being swallowed up by the music, the aesthetics, the entire vibe, to a certain degree you inescapably become an insider.

They are central to the nighttime economy and signifiers of urban cool. They are a crucial part of urban planning and manufacture a city’s appeal. Ostensibly, an urban centre with no nightlife is a moribund city because it cannot attract the type of hip cultural consumers who are said to be the creative drivers of wealth in post-industrial cityscapes. In this sense, the nightclub’s spectacle, its superficiality, its excesses, its capacity to digest all forms of cultural rebellion, its tendency to create exaggerated schisms based on race, class and gender and its associated propensity for fostering insecurity in the form of lonely crowds acts an alibi for all of these tendencies already ever-present in society at large. The nightclub as a research site is not exceptional, just exceptionally illuminating.

Consumption is voracious in a nightclub because it is omnipresent and the key idea to understanding this is its voyeuristic quality. It drives all of the social interactions that comprise the nightclub setting. It also literally eats up patrons because they go to nightclubs to be seen and see others. By virtue of consumption decisions made before and during the evening, patrons relentlessly devour and are devoured by one another, and they pay for this privilege. This is a judgmental activity that creates crises of identity because in the context of the nightclub you can be little more than the superficial limits of your social and material capital captured in such attributes as attire, body image, clique membership and even personal posture allows you. The nightclub setting sees to it that communication is stunted so that the superficial is valorised. This is sexy because it allows for the possibility of projection but also potentially devastating. A scowl or sideways glance of disapproval can easily result in violence. This rather extreme response only makes sense when you are forced to consider that consumption itself is violent in a nightclub.

No. A revolution cannot take place in a nightclub setting because before it can gain any momentum it will have already become culturally clichéd, it will be turned into a theme night, its proponents’ will be stylised and the nightclub will charge cover to attend: “Revolution night on Thursdays, 80s night on Fridays”. At the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas they have a nightclub lounge called “Red Square” complete with a beheaded two-story statue of Lenin, a five-foot high engraved hammer and sickle topping the bar, blood-red drapes hung over austere Soviet-style chandeliers, and a plethora of Bolshevik propaganda posters and portraits of revolutionary heroes. But I don’t believe Marx is turning in his grave as a result. If you read him carefully enough on commodity fetishism, he’s more likely chuckling in self-satisfaction.

For many cities, attractive nightlife options are becoming an ever more important asset in the global competition between urban centres. What does this mean for ‘security’ (the sense of security and the practice of security) in cities?

It means that security, by definition, is something to be merchandised. But this security culture is now endemic to all social interaction. Institutions and practices are increasingly 'securitised'. It is difficult to say or do anything anymore, especially under the auspices of urban planning, without first considering the security issues. New York is a prime example. Philadelphia is another. High-end resto-bars and swanky nightclubs must go hand-in-hand with a renewed investment in order maintenance. The transgressions of the night must be circumscribed and made safe for staged risk taking. Las Vegas is the city of sin but also the most heavily policed and panoptic place in North America. It is virtually impossible NOT to be caught on CCTV.

Security has become a very important subject in cities around the world. Can you explain why? What does this imply for the future? How do you think this increased (in)security will influence urban societies? Should we be worried?

As I mentioned, generalised insecurity is now endemic to late capitalist consumption. Of course, at core, insecurity is already built into the mechanics of capitalism. Marx said that “security is the supreme concept of bourgeois society” because the entire police apparatus is set up to ensure the contractual arrangements of private property under liberalism.

In the last three decades we have seen an unprecedented concentration of wealth and the emergence of an international bourgeoisie that is increasingly dependent on the exclusionary practices of private security – a rather revealing oxymoron if you think about it – and compliant police services that lend out their officers to private interests. This will continue and will become more automated with the spread of CCTV and RFID (radio frequency identification, ed.) technology. Imagine your access to certain city areas based on an RFID signature. Why not? Gates need not be physical barriers. Entire cities are already being colour-coded by terror alerts that automatically shut down access to particular spaces and mobilize police to follow particular security threats. I think, however, it is more likely we will choose to be 'chipped' just as your car might now have a transponder or GPS system because it will facilitate access and ease consumption. Already Alzheimer patients, family pets and even young children are being chipped because of security concerns. The interesting point here is the intimate connection between security and consumption.

A few months ago a young woman had her driver’s license swiped by a bouncer using a commercially available identification device at a Montreal nightclub. This was done in order to verify her age and by extension minimize the risk of potential legal liability or a liquor license suspension by the provincial authority. The system also potentially makes criminals on probationary terms reticent to enter as any violation would be detected. Even violators of more innocuous nightclub rules can be easily tracked and digitally banned from future entry. These are all seemingly legitimate security practices. Two weeks after she originally attended the nightclub, the patron was sent an invitation to her home asking her to return to the nightclub with two complimentary drink vouchers attached as her birthday was soon approaching. Not surprisingly, the security database was simultaneously a marketing database.

This is a colossal question to which I have no ready answer. At least no answer that immediately satisfies the reader because my solution relates to the material transformation of society. At a conceptual level, however, we need to stop thinking of security as some unassailable good. The concept of security is actually loaded with negative implications and, for me, incessant security talk is an indicator of a sick society. As a first step researchers must have the audacity to mount a critique of security, as Mark Neocleous has recently done. This will illicit a more critical research agenda that will better assist in resisting the security trend. Although the first insight we might make of this security trend is that it is no recent trend at all but part of the ongoing nature of capital accumulation. Security was a concern almost immediately during the transition from feudalism and part of the logic of the establishment of liberal governance. Knowing this, the depth of our approach to a critique of securitization necessarily improves and becomes more rigorous and historically nuanced.

Source: EUKN, Simone Pekelsma
Photography: Ashley Fraser