Status Distinctions in Interaction: Social Selection and Exclusion at an Elite Nightclub

Abstract

Although social status plays a crucial role in the generation and maintenance of social inequalities, how status processes operate in naturalistic social contexts remains less clear. In the following article, I provide a case study of doormen-individuals who simultaneously represent status experts and status judges-at a highly exclusive nightclub to investigate how people draw status distinctions in micro-social settings. Using interview and ethnographic data, I analyze on what bases doormen evaluate the relative worth of patrons and confer the status prize of admission. I find that in making such decisions, doormen drew from a constellation of competence and esteem cues, which were informed by contextually specific status schemas about the relative material, moral, and symbolic worth of particular client groups. Moreover, the ways in which doormen used these cues and schema depended on the identity of the specific patron being evaluated. As such, I argue that processes of interpersonal evaluation and status conferral are contextually specific, culturally embedded, and interpersonally variable. Despite such variations, a patron's perceived social connections seemed to outweigh other types of cues in admissions decisions. I conclude by discussing these findings in light of both status characteristics theory and Bourdieu's work on the transubstantiation of capital to suggest that social capital is a powerful status cue that can, under certain conditions, be a more potent source of social distinction and status advantage, or hold a greater conversion value, in systems of stratification than other types of qualities.

Bouncers, Policing and the (In)visibility of Ethnicity in Nightlife Security Governance

“…As indicated above, spatial exclusion, as a form of invisibilisation of particular ethnified bodies and troublesome masculinities, plays an important role in the attempt to enhance middle-class consumers and international elites' feeling of safety, comfort and freedom. These findings correlate with other studies of urban regeneration, which describe how governmental creation of attractive and safe consumer spaces in western cities is often coupled with the spatial exclusion of certain behaviors, bodies and signs of disorder (Hadfield, 2008;Boogaats, 2008;Measham & Hadfield, 2009;Samara, 2010;Rivera, 2010;Castro, 2013). At The Blue Palm, minority men were, however, not only rendered invisible through spatial exclusion; they were also rendered less socially visible to ethnic Danish consumers by being subjected to policies of compulsive integration designed to avoid ethnic enclavisation inside the venue.…”

“…Research showed that bouncers regulate access on the basis of different criteria ranging from age, style of clothing, physical appearance (Hadfield, 2008), patrons' behavior, level of drunkenness and physical display of violent potential (Monaghan, 2003), formal and informal house rules, and patrons' history of violence (Hobbs et al, 2003). While Hobbs and his colleagues have focused on bouncers' policing of women, Hadfield (2008) and Rivera (2010) have described how class markers, race, accent and dress are central to bouncers' sorting practices at elite and prestigious venues. A central point put forward in this work is that bouncers regularly exclude ethnic or racial minorities, and that this is done either because ethnic or racial minorities are seen as less desirable consumers (Hadfield, 2008), or because they are seen as a threat to the ambience of more valued and affluent crowds (Measham & Hadfield, 2009).…”

“…Over the last decade, researchers have given considerable attention to racial or ethnic effects of bouncers' security governance (see Hadfield, 2008;Measham & Hadfield, 2009;Grazian, 2009;Rivera, 2010;Schwanen et al, 2012). However, with a few exceptions, such as May and Chaplin (2008), very little attention has been given to how access, belonging and ethnicity are dynamic processes negotiated in encounters between bouncers and racial or ethnic minority youth.…”

Mediating Access: The Utilization of Status Evaluation Processes in the Work of Bouncing

“…Berger et al's (2002) status characteristic theory has seldom been used in the sociological study of bouncing and licensed establishments. A rare study that employs Berger et al's theory is Rivera's (2010) case study that explores the evaluation of patron status by bouncers who mediate access to an exclusive nightclub. Rivera examines the status characteristics used in the evaluative processes in a prestigious social setting and finds that the bouncers mainly evaluated patrons' visible status characteristics, such as race, accent, gender and dress (p. 248).…”

“…It is crucial to study the use of evaluative processes in various social settings to determine whether or not the functioning of these processes depends on the type of establishment and the class of patrons being evaluated. Previous literature on the evaluation of status characteristics at licensed establishments has focused heavily on the evaluation of patron dress, age, physical appearance and gender (Rivera, 2010;Monaghan, 2002;May & Chaplin, 2008;Winlow et al, 2001). To date, there has been little to no scholarly focus on the status characteristic of patron attitude, the breaching of bouncer evaluations through bribery, or the lack of formal training and its impact on the development of bouncers' evaluation processes.…”