Nightlife

The study of nightlife, or the “nighttime economy,” is the study of nocturnal leisure and entertainment. It is not a uniquely geographical theme; the emergent field of nightlife studies also incorporates research from history, urban studies, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, biomedical sciences, and other disciplines. Despite this range of interventions, when the word nightlife is used in both everyday and academic language, it almost always refers to a specific portion of nighttime activity, usually taking place in pubs, bars, and restaurants, incorporating alcohol drinking, dancing, eating, and socializing. This article both aims to introduce work that has studied this “dominant” nightlife, and also suggests examples of research and sites where different or alternative nightlives are present. Researchers have shown how nightlife has grown with the spread and extension of capitalism, alongside technologies such as artificial lighting, modes of governance that are relaxed about permitting public life at night, and the growth of the leisure society. In its contemporary form, nightlife has become associated with neoliberal capitalism, as reduced regulations on alcohol retail and consumption in many countries have encouraged the growth of nightlife. Through globalization, and in particular through the emergence of global cities that seek to compete for relatively footloose business people, the “creative class,” and tourists, Western-style nightlife has spread as a tick-box on the list of criteria for being a global city. Relatedly, research has been dominated by the European and Anglophone cities from which this nightlife has emerged, though the structural biases of academic practice have also contributed to this. This article inevitably reflects those biases, but examples of research from Asia, Africa, and South America are also included. Beyond the political and economic spread of neoliberal nighttime economy, nightlife also has important cultural resonances. Both mainstream and alternative nightlife cultures offer insights into everyday life, and included in the bibliography are some of the detailed and evocative ethnographies of different nightlife sites and communities. The experience of nightlife is inevitably differentiated according to commonly recognized grounds of intersecting social groupings: race, class, gender, religion, and so forth. Papers in this article introduce some of these differences, and the inclusions or exclusions associated with them.