Abstract

While the night has long been associated with crime and fear, over recent decades ‘nightlife’ has become increasingly associated with the creative economy, tourism, sociability, job growth, and urban regeneration. Debates about anti-social behaviour, morality, and safety continue to shape our understanding of the night but newer concerns have also emerged about gentrification, economic and social exclusion, commercialisation, and over-development. Exploring Nightlife: Space, Society and Governance is the first edited volume that critically examines nightlife from a cross-disciplinary and international perspective. Comprising original contemporary research, the collection brings together case studies from across the globe that explore topics including nightlife and urban development, race, gender and youth culture, alcohol and drug use, and urban renewal. In doing so, each chapter explores nightlife in relation to local and global structures of power and governance. Exploring Nightlife is an ideal introduction to the emerging field of night-time studies and will be a valuable resource for students and researchers with an interest in geography, cultural studies, sociology, youth, leisure, and urban studies.
A fascinating collection of research from around the world, providing illuminating case studies of cities undergoing profound social and economic changes after dark. Nightlife involves key aspects of urban governance and social justice, which are now major topics of interest in Human Geography; the editors are to be congratulated for achieving the difficult task of marshalling diverse international perspectives from a range of established and emerging scholars.
Phil Hadfield, Advisory Board Member, the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies at the University of Leeds
In urban studies, night is the final frontier. For the last several years, Jordi Nofre and Adam Eldridge have engaged colleagues in a series of studies of nightlife in cities around the globe. The results are presented here, with contributions from scholars that bridge four continents and nearly two dozen cities. From the editor’s outstanding introduction with its overview of the development of urban nightlife in the 19^th Century to the engaging afterword by Will Straw, readers have the opportunity to visit and learn about nightlife in Amsterdam, Cairo, Johannesburg, Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro, Sidney and beyond. It is a journey not to be missed!
Ray Hutchison, Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
Cities after dark are places of mystery, the imagination, pleasure, danger, economic life, a plethora of social and cultural worlds, and much more besides. This collection of chapters on night life in cities from across the globe, sheds light on this often neglected issue which is of increasing relevance to policy makers and city dwellers alike. A fascinating and intelligent contribution to urban studies.
Sophie Watson, Professor of Sociology at The Open University
Jordi Nofre Mateo is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at CICS.Nova –Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences, Faculty of Social & Human Sciences, New University of Lisbon.
Adam Eldridge is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, Sociology and Criminology; Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Westminster.
Though nightlife is often cast as the premiere site of leisure—escapism, excess, erotics—Exploring Nightlife demonstrates how pubs, clubs, and commercial neighborhoods are managed by institutional forces, from “Nightlife Czars” to urban gentrification. Via rich descriptions of soundscapes and “drinkscapes,” temporal and spatial analyses, and expert attention to political economy, the book promises exciting new contributions to nightlife studies.
Kareem Khubchandani, Mellon Bridge Assistant Professor in the Department of Drama & Dance and the Program in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Tufts University
This book is a fascinating collection of essays on nightlife in cities that have been underrepresented in the Anglophone literature. The chapters illustrate the intersection of global nocturnalization and planetary neoliberal gentrification, while also foregrounding the variegated forms of local nightlife governance and identity politics embedded in these processes. The book signals where urban night studies are, and should be, heading.
Laam Hae, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at York University