Thomas Friis Søgaard

‘When you're boxing you don't think so much’: pugilism, transitional masculinities and criminal desistance among young Danish gang members

ABSTRACT This paper draws upon international research evidence that suggests a relationship between protest masculinity and the manifestation of violent crime among young males, and that criminal desistance may be linked to (inter-) subjective processes such as the reconstruction of masculine identity. The paper considers the potential that pugilism (the art and practice of boxing) may have on enabling young, disadvantaged minority male gang members to find avenues for alternative identity construction and to gain transitional experiences which trigger self-confessed desistance actions. Drawing upon an ethnographic study conducted in a boxing rehabilitation centre on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark, the paper reports on data gleaned from participant observation and qualitative interviews with 22 ethnic minority young men. Findings suggest that the masculine context within the rehabilitation programme provided the young men with a safe space to perform broader versions of locally dominated views on masculinity and to reflect on their current situations and dilemmas. The young men were clearly in transition and their desistance journeys were characterized by hope and ambition but also disappointment and despair. In some cases it appeared that the young mens dogged attempts to desist from crime became a new way for them to ‘do masculinity’. The authors draw upon the findings to make recommendations for policy, practice and research.

Desistance and the micro-narrative construction of reformed masculinities in a Danish rehabilitation centre:

Juvenile justice systems and reformatory institutions hold the potential to help young offenders and drug abusers change their behaviours and life-courses. Driven by an ambition to pave new ways to examine the inner workings of reformatory institutions this study explores how young male offenders’ gendered identities are engaged in a Danish reformatory programme. In recent years existing research on the gendered aspects of reformatory interventions has highlighted how reformatory institutions at times work to promote desistance by problematizing offenders’ and drug-abusers’ performance of hyper-masculinity and by constructing therapeutic spaces where men can reformulate softer versions of masculinity. Contributing to this line of research, this study explores and discusses how reformatory programmes at times also utilize hyper-masculine symbolism and imaginaries to encourage young offenders and drug abusers to engage in narrative re-constructions of identities and to socialize these into new subject positions defined by agency, self-responsibility and behavioural changes.

Ethnicity and the policing of nightclub accessibility in the Danish night-time economy

Abstract In early club studies, nightlife domains are often depicted as scenes where class and ethno-racial boundaries are dissolved into post-modern cultural formations. This article adds to a growing body of research challenging this characterisation, by exploring how the policing of nightlife accessibility contributes to the (re)production of ethnic divisions and inequalities in nocturnal consumer spaces. Based on ethnographic research in Denmark, the article explores the key governmental rationalities informing bouncers’ exclusion of visible ethnic minority men. The article argues that bouncers’ ethnic governance is a multi-dimensional process which can be analysed using different analytical approaches. While the first part uses the concept of “vernacular risk perception” to highlight how bouncers’ ethnic governance is driven by loss-reductive logics, combined with prejudiced thinking, the second part uses an interactional perspective to illustrate how bouncers’ ethnic governance is also the product of situated power struggles between bouncers and minority youth. Third, I use a performative perspective to demonstrate how the exclusion of minority men is also driven by intra-group processes and implicated in bouncers’ dramatised in-group construction of masculine identities. In conclusion, I discuss how a focus on bouncers’ ethnic governance and regulation of access can contribute to the study of (nightlife) youth culture.

Social capital in Scottish and Danish neighbourhoods: paradoxes of a police–community nexus at the front line

ABSTRACT Community-oriented social capital strategies and punitive-oriented policing approaches conflict. Establishing local networking initiatives with community-oriented policing at the centre lends itself to an assets-based policing approach, based on honouring, mobilizing and extending the assets of community members. Scholars argue about the need for comparative research on convergences and divergencies across subcultures on the streets and communities. Based on qualitative data gathered from working class communities in Scotland and Denmark in 2014, the article draws inspiration from community-generated theory of social capital to explore the micro-sociology of experiences and understandings about community–police integration policy initiatives. We use this perspective to argue that the building of positive inter-generational and police–community relationships is the result of social exchanges and officers’ use of what we call ‘constructive investment strategies’. Ironically, our insights from Scotland to Denmark also suggest what appear as positive achievements of community policing may instead intensify residents’ negative perceptions of police officers and organizations. In this way, the article illuminates the tangled and conflicted nature of these embedded symbolic interactions, social capital formations and the latter’s form as a potential positional and ‘tribal’ commodity.

Transitional narratives of identity among ethnic minority youth gangs in Denmark: from collectivism to individualism

Abstract Current literature often depicts the street cultures of ethnic minority youth as forms of collective cultural resistance to experiences of marginalization from mainstream society. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews in 2014 with 23 young men attached to a rehabilitation centre for criminal offenders in Denmark, this article focuses on ethnic minority youth who desist from such street culture and their former gang life, criminality and drug use and how they describe this shift within their narratives. More specifically, we show how this shift can to some extent be characterized by a move from collective to more individualistic self-narratives re-articulating broader individualistic discourses existing in contemporary society. Among these more individualistic self-narratives, we find extensive reference to ideas of self-responsibility and also individual pragmatic interpretations of Islam. Such re-articulations can be seen as a way to create feelings of agency in severely disempowering circumstances.

Violent potentials: exploring the intersection of violence and masculinity among the Bugkalot

This article explores the social significance of violence as potentiality and performance among former headhunters engaged in ritual killings. Taking its outset in an ethnographic study of violence and masculinity among the Philippine people known as the Bugkalot, we explore how violence as ‘performed violent potentiality’ plays a critical role in relation to Bugkalot mens construction of hegemonic masculinity and the sustaining of complex egalitarian relations. The Bugkalot have a notoriously violent history; until the late 1970s more than half of the adult men engaged in ritual killings. While most Bugkalot men have today abandoned headhunting, the potentials for violence and dominance, which the act of headhunting sought to elicit, remains a critical aspect of masculinity. We propose that a focus on the social significance of performative violent potentiality among Bugkalot men can provide general insights that can also be used in other contexts to understand how men construct hegemonic masculinity by strategically adopting the interspace of civility and violence.

Violent work environments

Purpose – Over the last decade a substantial pool of research has emerged on bouncers and their influence on the safety conditions in nightlife environments. Comparatively little, however, has been written on bouncers themselves and their working conditions. The purpose of this paper is to identify the perceived risks, stress and other work-related problems among bouncers working in Danish nightlife. Design/methodology/approach – A survey was conducted. In total, 238 bouncers were contacted and 159 of them completed a questionnaire. Findings – In total, 40 percent reported having been threatened with a weapon and 58 percent reported that they had been physically assaulted at work. Moreover, 16 percent reported feeling stressed and 50 percent reported weekly sleeping difficulties. Originality/value – These findings highlight some of the costs of working in the night-time economy. They may be used to improve the working conditions of bouncers and, by implication, help improve the general safety conditions i...

Voices of the Banned: Emergent Causality and the Unforeseen Consequences of Patron Banning Policies

In Western cities, public authorities are increasingly resorting to the use of patron banning orders as means of reducing alcohol and other drug-related harms in nightlife. While the use of banning orders is often hailed by authorities, due to their presumed deterrent and crime reduction effects, little research exists on how patrons react to being banned. This is a problem, as assessments of whether the policy goals of banning orders are being met and of the wider consequences of banning necessitate understanding the practice from the perspective of its targets. This article combines statistical data from police registers and in-depth interviews with 10 young patrons who have been subjected to a 2-year banning order in Aalborg, Denmark, to explore how patrons experience and negotiate the banning orders imposed upon them. While police use of patron banning orders is often based on a conception of patrons as rational actors, as well as on linear notions of cause and effect, this article challenges such conceptions. Instead, this article draws on actor network theory, and an understanding of banned youth as situated in networks of relations, in order to provide insights into how the effects of banning policies emerge in often unpredictable ways and with unforeseeable consequences dependent on the specific sociomaterial contexts through which they are coproduced. In this way, this article aims to provide a more detailed understanding of the causal mechanisms giving shape to banning policy effects.

Disturbing the ‘spoiled-unspoiled’ binary: performances of recovering identities in drug-experienced youths’ friendship narratives

Abstract In existing recovery studies, binary distinctions between ‘spoiled’ identities defined by drug-related practices and relationships on the one side, and ‘un-spoiled’ drug-free identities on the other, are dominant. Similarly, in contexts of youth drug-treatment, substance-using friends are generally viewed as ‘bad company’, while non-using friends are considered as recovery promoters. This article, however, joins the growing chorus of qualitative researchers beginning to question critically this ‘spoiled-unspoiled’ distinction. Based on 30 qualitative interviews with 15 young people recruited from a Danish drug-treatment database, we investigate how drug-experienced youth perform recovering identities vis-à-vis their still-using friends. Employing a performative approach to identity formation, we demonstrate how such identity processes play out, and the dilemmas and ambivalences they entail. For example, while drug-using friends are regularly positioned as ‘bad company’, this is often accompanied by sentiments such as loss and frustration. Our analysis suggests that young people in recovery are easily trapped between societal expectations related to factors such as education on the one hand, and comfortability and connectedness with friends on the other. However, by means of carefully balanced ‘borderwork’, participants did occasionally manage to integrate using friends into their recovering identities without positioning them as ‘bad company’ per se. On this basis, we discuss whether breaking bonds with friends who still use drugs is imperative for any process of recovery, and argue that treatment programmes should focus on reconfiguring drug-related friendships, while taking seriously the notion that recovering youth are not necessarily interested in abandoning relations with drug-using friends.