Rule-Making and Rule-Breaking: Strip Club Social Control Regarding Alcohol and Other Drugs

Abstract

Through fieldwork and interviews, this research addresses internal and external social control of drug and alcohol use in “Mell's Belles,” a strip club in a working-class northeastern city. I describe a variety of internal social control techniques used to regulate alcohol and illicit drugs, and then note the impact of external social control on the strip club, including police raids and general surveillance. Strip clubs have an unpredictable, laissez faire approach to rule enforcement, enforcing rules only when necessary. External social control uses legal power to infiltrate Mell's Belles over petty ordinance breaches, and ultimately, drugs. As an underclass population engaged in deviant work, strippers and patrons are unequipped to contend with surveillance regimes.

Acknowledgments

Versions of this work have been presented at the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. I thank Clint Sanders, Kim Price-Glynn, Gaye Tuchman, Beth McBride, Christine Zozula, and reviewers and editors who provided helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this work.

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Melissa F. Lavin

MELISSA F. LAVIN earned her Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut, where she is an Adjunct Professor. She has researched extensively in the areas of sex work and drug use. Her fields of expertise within sociology include crime and deviance, gender and sexualities, qualitative methods, and sociological psychology.