Dick Hobbs

Receiving shadows: governance and liminality in the night-time economy.

This paper focuses upon the emergence of the night-time economy both materially and culturally as a powerful manifestation of post-industrial society. This emergence features two key processes: firstly a shift in economic development from the industrial to the post-industrial; secondly a significant orientation of urban governance involving a move away from the traditional managerial functions of local service provision, towards an entrepreneurial stance primarily focused on the facilitation of economic growth. Central to this new economic era is the identification and promotion of liminality. The States apparent inability to control these new leisure zones constitutes the creation of an urban frontier that is governed by commercial imperatives.

Going Down the Glocal: The Local Context of Organised Crime

Transnational organised crime is currently regarded as a threat to contemporary political and economic regimes. This paper will query the use of the term transnational, and suggest that a better understanding of organised crime can be gained from interrogating its local manifestation.

Lush Life: Constructing Organized Crime in the UK

1. Introduction: Dubious Ideologues and Illegal Entrepreneurs 2. A Malady of Modernity: Constructing Organised Crime in the UK 3. Malignant Cosmopolitanism: Precursors of Organised Crime 4. Mutant Proletarians: Class and Territoriality 5. The Houses In-Between: The Neighbourhood Firm on a Shifting Terrain 6. Small Faces: Entrepreneurial Youth and the State of Dogtown 7. Populating the Underworld: Armed Robbery 8. The Same Money?: Locating the Entrepreneurial Habitas 9. A Sense of Order: Violence, Rumour and Gossip 10. The Cosmopolitan Criminal 11. Concluding: A Community of Practice

Violence in the night-time economy; bouncers: The reporting, recording and prosecution of assaults

This paper, based on ethnographic research, is concerned with the accountability of licensed premise door staff – better known as ‘bouncers’.2 The situational dynamics of the bouncers enacted environment ensures that theirs is a role consistently exposed to the interactions of violence. As such, allegations of assault, both upon and by door staff, are common. This paper reports upon incidents of door staff violence and why they often fail to be investigated and, when they are investigated, why they frequently fail to be successfully prosecuted at court. In doing so, the paper highlights the adopted attitudes and procedural methods employed by both bouncers and police officers, which have a detrimental impact upon the deterrent function of the criminal law. The paper ends by offering some policy prescriptions to local police managers, suggesting that the state police become more (pro)actively involved in overseeing the provision of this expanding sector of the private security industry.

Calling the Shots

The Olympic Games promise great things; world peace and the transformation of the host city are but two ambitions of the Olympic Movement. The benefits and changes that the 2012 Olympics are supposed to bring to the London Borough of Newham—which will host some 80 per cent of the Olympic events—have been much lauded by the Olympic apparatchiks who typically proselytise about the transformation of communities, countries and individuals via the staging of the Games. The local Organising Committee and others—typically within the real estate sector—are the people who shape these sentiments into particular land deals that will serve to justify the plethora of deals, contracts and developments. Whilst the Olympics are about transformations, ostensibly in the lives of athletes, ordinary people and communities, transformations of an even more lasting sort occur in the Olympic neighbourhood through massive construction and servicing contracts. The Olympics are also about discipline which plays out not only in terms of the preparation of athletes to perform at their utmost, but is imperative to all the arrangements required to host such a huge event. For the good of the Games, people living in the shadow of the 2012 Olympic stadium face having their movements and their neighbourhoods subjected to all manner of prohibitions and limitations.

The boy done good: football violence, changes and continuities

As football related disorders remain stubbornly impervious to ‘solutions’, so the study of football hooliganism has become almost a minor branch of the social sciences. This paper looks critically at the main academic approaches to the problem in the UK and Europe. The shortcomings of much of this work are revealed, both theoretically and in terms of the evidence employed about the nature of hooliganism. The meagre amount of data about hooliganism contained in the plethora of Government reports that have so far been commissioned is striking. This may well be the reason why ‘official’ remedies so often prove inadequate. One way of gaining an understanding of this phenomenon is by making contact with, talking to, and observing at first hand the behaviour of those people most centrally involved, the hooligans themselves. This paper concludes with a series of portraits of ‘the boys’, some of it based on their own published writing. This will illustrate different forms of hooligan involvements. It will also provide an understanding of its origins as well as the true scale and scope of hooligan activity, about which many myths prevail. Something of the changes as well as the continuities on the football scene over the past 25 years will be indicated. Finally we will attempt to locate the whole phenomenon in its true place within British youth culture.

Sport Mega-Events and Public Opposition A Sociological Study of the London 2012 Olympics

This article examines the diverse forms of public opposition, protest, criticism, and complaint in the United Kingdom on the staging of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in London. Our discussion draws heavily on empirical research, primarily fieldwork and interviews in East London with local residents, opposition groups, business people, politicians, and other stakeholders. The article is separated into three main parts. First, we explore the setting and political–economic context for London 2012. The main Olympic setting—the London Borough of Newham—features very high levels of poverty and ethnic diversity. We argue that London 2012 represented a form of “festival capitalism” that was part of a broader set of “New Right two-step” policies in poor urban areas, involving initial Keynesian investment, followed by a deeper and far-reaching array of neo-liberal measures. Second, in the main part of the article, we identify and examine, in turn, six forms of public conflict, criticism, and complaint that centered on the Games, specifically national criticisms (e.g., on distribution of Olympic resources), local criticisms (e.g., on lack of jobs and business benefits), issue-specific campaigns (e.g., on the environment), “glocal” protests against specific nations and sponsors (e.g., campaigns against BP, Dow, and Rio Tinto), neo-tribal transgressions and situationist spectacles (e.g., mass cycle rides near Olympic venues), and anti-Olympic forums and demonstrations (e.g., critical web sites, multi-group marches). Third, we set out briefly the importance of conducting research into critics and opponents of sport mega-events, and discuss different arguments on how the social impact of protest movements might have been intensified at London 2012. The findings in this article may be extended to examine critical public responses to the hosting of other mega-events in different settings.

'E' is for enterprise: Middle level drug markets in ecstasy and stimulants

This article is derived from a study of ‘middle-market’ drug distribution funded by the Home Office. It involved prison interviews with middle and upper level drug dealers, and interviews with a range of enforcement personnel. The focus of the article is middle level drug markets in Ecstasy and stimulant drugs such as amphetamine and cocaine. A number of case studies are used to illustrate the varying kinds of brokerage, go-between and ‘middle-man’ functions that link together the different levels of the stimulant drug market, to supply the needs of consumers within the burgeoning night-time economy. Some of these individuals sit just above the retail level supplying retail level dealers who are in turn selling direct to consumers; others involve serious crime networks that control regional and cross-regional distribution systems within the UK, and transport routes that facilitate importation from the Netherlands.

Sport Mega-Events and Public Opposition

This article examines the diverse forms of public opposition, protest, criticism, and complaint in the United Kingdom on the staging of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in London. Our discussion draws heavily on empirical research, primarily fieldwork and interviews in East London with local residents, opposition groups, business people, politicians, and other stakeholders. The article is separated into three main parts. First, we explore the setting and political–economic context for London 2012. The main Olympic setting—the London Borough of Newham—features very high levels of poverty and ethnic diversity. We argue that London 2012 represented a form of “festival capitalism” that was part of a broader set of “New Right two-step” policies in poor urban areas, involving initial Keynesian investment, followed by a deeper and far-reaching array of neo-liberal measures. Second, in the main part of the article, we identify and examine, in turn, six forms of public conflict, criticism, and complaint that centered on the Games, specifically national criticisms (e.g., on distribution of Olympic resources), local criticisms (e.g., on lack of jobs and business benefits), issue-specific campaigns (e.g., on the environment), “glocal” protests against specific nations and sponsors (e.g., campaigns against BP, Dow, and Rio Tinto), neo-tribal transgressions and situationist spectacles (e.g., mass cycle rides near Olympic venues), and anti-Olympic forums and demonstrations (e.g., critical web sites, multi-group marches). Third, we set out briefly the importance of conducting research into critics and opponents of sport mega-events, and discuss different arguments on how the social impact of protest movements might have been intensified at London 2012. The findings in this article may be extended to examine critical public responses to the hosting of other mega-events in different settings.

Professional Crime: Change, Continuity and the Enduring Myth of the Underworld

Based on a recent ethnographic study of professional crime (Hobbs 1995), this paper is concerned with juxtaposing the contemporary enacted environment of serious crime with the most potent device that is utilised to explain and contain its practices and ideological frameworks: the underworld.