Nightlife as counterspace: Potentials of nightlife for social wellbeing

ABSTRACT

Nightlife is used to escape everyday life, meet others, and have fun. Empirical studies of nightlife nevertheless have been predominantly concerned with the night-time economy, the regulation of nightlife, and injustices towards participating in nightlife. The presented research complements this field of work by focusing on the potential of nightlife for social wellbeing. In a mixed-method approach, we questioned 485 students in the city of Freiburg, Germany, about their perceptions and usages of nightlife highlighting its distinctive qualities as a counterspace to the day. Specifically, we explored (I) their perception of a nightlife atmosphere, (II) their perception of distinct rules and norms in nightlife, (III) the role of different spaces in nightlife, (IV) the varying individual usages of nightlife. We found that nightlife constitutes a social time and space for meeting others with an important role in social wellbeing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare. The authors would like to thank Prof. Dr. Tim Freytag for his support and his excellent guidance on the theoretical framework and data collection. The authors would further like to thank Christiane Meyer-Habighorst for her extremely helpful feedback on our manuscript which allowed us to further sharpen our framework. The authors would finally like to thank Sophia Silverton for her English language feedback and final ideas.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in figshare at: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21769694.

Notes

1 The first one on the 19.10.2021, the second one on the 20.10.2021

2 We understand the phrase ‘meeting new people’ as the meeting of people that were previously unknown to each other. This does not necessarily mean that they have never seen each other but rather that they have not yet established a meaningful relation or connection with each other.