Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the private security
industry, this article focuses on the training of low-level guards, examining the centrality
of the body and embodied experience to their work in hospitality settings. In a
racially stratified society in which lower-class, dark-skinned bodies are oft en equated
with poverty and criminality, security guards are required to perform an image of
upstanding, respectable, law-abiding citizens in order to do their jobs protecting corporate
property. Guards learn techniques of body management at security schools as
part of their basic training. They also learn how to subdue the bodies of others, including
those of white elites, who represent a constant challenge to their authority. Working
from my own experiences as a student in private security schools, I argue for the relevance
of an understanding of the body and its significations to private security work.
Ethnic Minority Youths’ Encounters With Private Security Guards: Unwelcome in the City Space