Renewal without replication: Expanding Durkheim's theory of disruptions via queer nightlife

Abstract

Gay bars are closing in large numbers around the world, but institutional loss provides only a partial narrative for evaluating the larger field of nightlife. Drawing on 112 interviews, we argue that bar closures disrupted the field and consequently encouraged the visibility of alternate nightlife forms, called club nights. Unlike the fixed and emplaced model of bars, club nights are episodic and event-based occasions that are renewing nightlife without replicating the format of the gay bar. By detailing the phenomenology of club nights, we develop a new Durkheimian theory of disruptions that explains how and why some members of a community are motivated to renew rather than replicate existing institutional structures. We bring our framework to organization, sexuality, and nightlife studies—subfields that seldom engage with Durkheim—while subjecting a foundational social theory to an empirical case that can push it forward in important ways.