Thomas P. Thurnell-Read

Off the leash and out of control: masculinities and embodiment in Eastern European stag tourism.

Entrenched conceptions of masculinity have constructed the male body as bounded and controlled. This article discusses the centrality of a particular construction of the male body to the phenomenon of British premarital stag party tourism to Eastern European cities. Drawing on data from participant-observation in Kraków, Poland, it is shown that the tour participants enact an embodied masculinity which is unruly and unrestrained. The stag tour experience is embodied through the use of clothing and incidences of nudity, public urination and vomiting, and the detrimental physical effects of heavy alcohol consumption. This embodiment is self-destructive and frequently self-parodic. The failures of participants to sustain a controlled and contained body are celebrated as part of the enactment of a boisterous masculinity. This represents a release from normative pressures concerning the male body but, with transgression being only temporary, also acts to support the ritualistic reinscription of a wider hegemonic masculinity.

What Happens on Tour: The Premarital Stag Tour, Homosocial Bonding, and Male Friendship

The article explores the premarital all-male stag tour made by groups of British men to an Eastern European city as a homosocial bonding ritual. Homosocial groups help sustain hegemonic masculinity and play a significant role in establishing accepted forms of masculinity. Male friendships have been characterized as lacking in intimacy and typically channeled through alternative social relations such as competition. The article draws on qualitative data from participant observation with stag tour groups. Although bonding through shared activities and overt expressions of heterosexuality are common to stag tourist behavior, groups were seen as largely noncompetitive. Expressions of intimacy and emotion were frequent and a high value was placed on group cohesion and fostering a sense of togetherness. The performance of a loss of homosocial friendship was apparent and this links to wider social changes in men’s lives. This suggests both the significance of men’s friendships and possible patterns of change.

‘Real Ale’ Enthusiasts, Serious Leisure and the Costs of Getting ‘Too Serious’ About Beer

The article uses the concept of serious leisure to explain the leisure commitments made by members of the British consumer campaign group the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) and that of Real Ale enthusiasts in general. Drawing on in-depth qualitative research including interviews with CAMRA branch members and staff, the article demonstrates that beer appreciation can be understood as a serious rather than a casual leisure activity. While many of the benefits to participation typical of serious leisure activities are identified, so are the numerous “costs” involved. Beyond costs relating to money, time, obligation, and organizational conflicts, the article suggests that Real Ale enthusiasts are at times marginalized by wider cultural stereotypes positioning them as obsessive and snobbish. The article concludes with discussion of how the concept of the cultural omnivore might explain how serious leisure practitioners are often marginalized because of their specialism in a single field rather than many.

'Common-sense' research: Senses, emotions and embodiment in researching stag tourism in Eastern Europe

The article reflects on the experience of conducting participatory research with all-male premarital stag tour groups in Krakow, Poland. The research therefore concerns the performative and embodied aspects of hegemonic male behaviour that are encouraged and enacted by the British men who take part in such tours. Vital to the process of gaining an ethnographic insight into the highly gendered leisure spaces of the stag tourism phenomenon was a willingness to centre sensory, emotional and embodied data in the research process. Methodological reflections, therefore, recall the effects of conducting research in a setting mediated by the consumption of alcohol and collective drunkenness and pervaded with sensory (the thump of nightclub bass speakers, the drunken cheers of stag group participants, the smell of vodka) and emotive (feelings of elation, amusement and disgust) stimuli. Particular importance can be given to the benefit of mutual ‘common-sense’ experiences in building rapport between researchers and their participants. Such insights are of considerable epistemological value. In closing the article it is suggested that learning to recognise and work with such aspects of the research process is vital in developing effective research competencies.

'Yobs' and 'Snobs': Embodying Drink and the Problematic Male Drinking Body

The cultural linkages between the drinking of alcohol and the assertion of masculinity have been well explored. In particular, drinking alcohol is still assumed to be a site where masculinity can be tested and proved. However, equally, drinking can be seen to undermine and discredit the male body. Further, older mens drinking practices are commonly overlooked. Through exploring two examples of cultural stereotypes relating to male drinking bodies, the lager lout and the real ale enthusiast, the article argues that persistent cultural assumptions about the appropriate way to embody masculinity. Both the lager lout and the bearded ale snob represent two alternative discourse of how alcohol undermines the bounded male body. Both cases exhibit a lack of control and restraint which is assumed to be desired of masculine bodies and, therefore, both become problematic and subject to significant social sanctions and cultural policing in the form negative caricatured depictions. Finally, it is suggested that such stereotypes offer vivid examples of problematic male drinking bodies from which other embodiments can be normalised.

‘Did you ever hear of police being called to a beer festival?’ Discourses of merriment, moderation and ‘civilized’ drinking amongst real ale enthusiasts:

While the real and perceived excesses of ‘binge drinking’ have received considerable attention in policy, media and academic debates, the concept of ‘sensible drinking’ is poorly defined and has rarely been subject to empirical analysis. Using qualitative research, this article explores the drinking discourses of ale enthusiasts as a means of highlighting how understandings of sensible drinking draw on notions of taste, sociability and self-control. Drawing on Elias’s concept of the ‘civilizing process’, the article analyses how these narratives highlight self-control and social regulation as central features of acceptable drinking practices. Emerging from these accounts is a rejection of elements of the night-time economy and the unruly and hedonistic ‘determined drunkenness’ often associated with it.

Masculinity, Age and Rapport in Qualitative Research

Abstract Purpose To reflect on the central role of gender and age in qualitative research practice, particularly in regard to how the gender and age of the researcher influence fieldwork interactions. Methodology/approach A reflection of three separate qualitative research undertakings, all of which made use of interviews and participant-observation fieldwork. Findings Gender and age intersections of both the researcher and research subjects influence fieldwork interactions both in terms of discursive and embodied interactions. Reflections on past research involve considering the relative changing subject position of the researcher in terms of masculinity, youth and social status. Rapport is established in the field through talk and interaction that can involve the performance of knowledge and gender. The researcher’s embodied feeling of ‘fitting in’ during fieldwork therefore draws on gender-, age- and ethnicity-specific privilege. Originality/value Unlike many acts of researcher reflexivity which reflect on a single research project, this chapter recalls experiences of fieldwork during three separate research undertakings. It adds to debates about methodological issues of doing research into men and masculinities by exploring how such is intersected by the age of both the researcher and research participants.

International students’ perceptions and experiences of British drinking cultures

While the increased scale and importance of international students to the UK Higher Education sector is now well established, little is known about the ways in which students from non-UK countries experience and interact with the heavy drinking culture that predominates on and near many British universities. Drawing on qualitative interviews, this article analyses the perceptions, attitudes, and experiences of British drinking cultures held by international students studying on postgraduate courses at a UK university. Students report prior awareness of alcohol consumption being important to British culture and recount both positive and negative experiences of witnessing and, for many, participating in drinking alcohol. Students make ready comparisons with the drinking habits and attitudes of their own culture. Further still, many made a distinction between the public house, or ‘pub’, as a welcoming and friendly social space, and bars and nightclubs, where a far greater risk of exposure to violence and harassment was perceived. The article provides theoretical insights to support future and more wide-ranging research into mobile drinking cultures and also suggests practical implications to inform stakeholders with interests in the welfare of international students in the UK in relation to the provision of effective and proactive policies which address the impact of British drinking cultures on international student integration and well-being.

The embourgeoisement of beer: Changing practices of ‘Real Ale’ consumption

Recent years have seen changes in the practice of beer consumption, which appear to indicate raised standards of cultural prestige. This article focuses on the practice of Real Ale consumption, which has been promoted by the UK consumer pressure group, the Campaign for Real Ale, since 1971, and analyses how beer consumption has achieved an increased cultural position relative to understandings of taste and cultural capital. The article also draws on qualitative research, including interviews, archival material analysis and participant observation. Following recent advances in practice theories of consumption, the article identifies important changes in the materials, meanings and competencies of Real Ale consumption, which mean that a more complex ‘intellectualised’ form of beer appreciation has emerged over recent years. The article argues that by tracking these changes, it is possible to illustrate how cultural tastes and practices have undergone a process of ‘embourgeoisement’. Specifically, exponents of Real Ale appreciation practices have borrowed from proximate practices, such as wine and food consumption, in seeking increased value. Beer consumption has become subjected to upward social mobility in becoming more complex and refined, meaning that it now functions more readily as a marker of social status. However, there is some suggestion that such a process of embourgeoisement has also generated antagonisms, with some consumers being excluded by discourses of taste and status.

‘Just Blokes Doing Blokes’ Stuff’: Risk, Gender and the Collective Performance of Masculinity during the Eastern European Stag Tour Weekend

The emergence in recent decades of the stag tour as a premarital ritual undertaken by large numbers of British men sheds new, and at times vivid, light on an array of connections linking notions of masculinity and travel. Starting with cities such as Amsterdam and Dublin in the 1990s, the stag tour ‘phenomenon’ soon spread east, with destinations in newly developing post-Soviet states of Central and Eastern Europe such as Prague, Riga, and Budapest achieving a degree of notoriety for drunk and disorderly British men, fuelled by copious amounts of what was, for them, outrageously cheap beer and vodka, causing trouble. The streets of these cities were, according to the media, literally overrun with gangs of dishevelled and disrespectful male tourists, all eager to seek out fun, excitement, and titillation at the expense of put-upon locals, yet, equally, such antics were and still are rarely greeted with more than a prosaic shrug and the dismissive assertion that, after all, ‘boys will be boys’.