What Happens on Tour

Introduction

Male friendship remains a problematic and often ambiguous social reality. Tightly knit homosocial groups are seen to sustain damaging masculine ideals which become manifest in the impoverished social relations both between men and other men and between men and women (Kimmel 2008). At the same time, both the ability and the desire of men to invest in emotive, same-sex, intimacy is frequently rebuffed (Leib 1997). However, male friendships are an important resource for identity construction, particularly for boys and young men (Walker 1988; Mac an Ghaill 1994; Nayak, 2003). In light of current transformations in gender relations, and what is still loosely termed a crisis in masculinity, male friendship offers a potential retreat from wider social changes. This article explores the continued salience of male friendship through the analysis of participant-observation research conducted with groups of British men undertaking premarital stag tours to an Eastern European city.

The article explores the stag tour, comparable to the North American “bachelor party” or Australian “buck’s night,” made by groups of British men as a homosocial bonding ritual and therefore explores how masculinity is collectively constructed between men. The friendships which the stag tour ritual celebrates are seen as an important site for the construction of masculine identity. Through qualitative data gathered during ethnographic fieldwork in the Polish city of Kraków, the article analyses how the internal workings of stag tour groups deploy a range of practices which aim to ensure group cohesion and a collective definition of masculinity in which male friendship is an integral and defining ingredient. As opposed to many academic studies of male friendship and bonding, and a wider ingrained cultural assumption, that suggests men reject emotional attachments with each other, the article proposes that men’s friendships are, although not unproblematic, a site for intimacy and expressive connections. Further, these friendships are hugely important to participants’ lives and life courses. Findings add significantly to this area of debate and, through empirical data, enhance discussions about the importance of men’s relationships with each other and the homosocial bonding rituals by which they are sustained. The article draws on recent theoretical explorations of masculinities as hybrid and plural (Aboim 2010), temporal (Spector-Mersel 2006), and situated in and across fields of masculinity (Coles 2009) to better understand how male friendships can be locate in the wider flows and changes of men’s lives.

Male Friendship and the Construction of Masculinity

It can be argued that male friendships are central to Raewyn Connell’s conception of hegemonic masculinity, whereby a form of masculinity becomes culturally dominant at the expense of others which, alongside femininity, become marginalized or subordinated (Connell 1987, 1995; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). Her concept is “inherently relational” for it is always in relation to women and other men that hegemonic masculinity is socially constructed and sustained (Connell 1995, 68). Similarly, Demetrakis Demetriou (2001) has suggested that there is an important distinction to be made between internal and external hegemonic masculinity, this being the relationships between men and between men and women, respectively. Men’s friendships and peer group bonding are, therefore, an area ripe for the exploration of men’s interactions with each other and for developing an understanding of how masculinities are constructed and regulated within a wider gendered hierarchy of power relations.

Lipman-Blumen (1976, 16) defined homosociality as “the seeking, enjoyment, and/or preference for the company of the same sex” and further suggested that homosociality serves a wider purpose of perpetuating exclusionary practices which retain resources within the control of men rather than women. Likewise, early studies of the socialization of masculinity have focused, either explicitly or implicitly, on the importance of the friendship groups of adolescent boys and young men as providing a site in which masculinity is negotiated and collectively defined (Willis 1977; Walker 1988; Mac An Ghaill 1994). The stakes appear high; the heavily controlled boundaries of homosocial groups represent, simultaneously, possible acceptance and affirmation but also the chance of rejection. Dramatic illustrations of this include Jana Pershing’s (2006) discussion of hazing rituals in a US Naval academy, the homosociality and displays of loyalty of the “inner circle” of male corporate managers (Kanter 1977), and the repertoire of nicknaming, joke telling, and humor used on the industrial shop floor which serve to bind but also to distance (Collinson 1988). Homosociality finds its most vivid examples in settings such as the military (Pershing 2006; Flood 2008), the emergency services (Thurnell-Read and Parker 2008), sport (Waitt and Warren 2008; Evers 2010), business (Roper 1996; McDowell 2001), and drinking and leisure settings (Blackshaw 2003, Nayak 2003).

While male friendship groups, particularly in adolescence, help establish and sustain a viable masculine identity, it has been shown that such also has a restrictive and often negative effect. Many young men’s friendships involve a jostling for status and a fierce policing of boundaries of what is acceptable or unacceptable masculine behavior (Nayak and Kehily 1996; Edley and Wetherell, 1997; Redman et al. 2002). Curry (1991), for example, has spoken of the rigidity of the bonds between men, particularly where they are reified around a specific activity such as playing a team sport. Such competition and status focused talk and behavior “curtails or conditions friendships” between men (Curry 1991, 127). Through homosocial bonding, acceptable masculinity is established while alternatives to it are forcibly rejected.

Male friendships, and the homosocial behavior and ideals they support and sustain, greatly impact upon men’s relationships with each other and with women. One concern, then, is that homosociality works in a way to maintain the divisions between men and women. Sexual and sexist joking frequently play a prominent role in establishing male heterosexual identity and facilitating male group bonding (Kimmel 1987). Further, Michael Flood (2008) has observed that the tightening of bonds between men, particularly in predominantly masculine institutional environments, presuppose and encourage the exclusion of women and sustain notions of gender difference. In extreme cases, the bonds between men serve to entrench and encourage dangerous misogynist behavior, most vividly depicted in Sanday’s (1990) exploration of campus fraternity rape. Male friendships, therefore, have a power to define dominant gender ideals of both those within the homosocial group and, through the construction of boundaries, those men and women who are excluded.

One area where the relationships between men have been relatively well explored is what we might call “men’s talk,” that is, the form and character of talk between men. Such has been identified as an area where the specifics of what constitutes acceptable masculine behavior and ideals are maintained (Gough and Edwards 1998; Coates 2003; Cameron and Kulick 2003). As a rule, emotive expression is seen as feminine while the absence of self-disclosure and a lack of emotive expression are typified as masculine (Williams 1985; Reeder 2003). Both the ability and desire for interpersonal connection and intimacy are assumed to be lacking in men’s relationships with other men. A devise commonly deployed by men in male peer groups is “indirectness,” where expressions of homosocial connection are invariably filtered indirectly through, for example, mutual talk of shared interests or alternative social arrangements such as competition and playacted confrontation (Kiesling 2005).

Michael Kimmel has observed that “masculinity is largely a ‘homosocial’ experience: performed for, and judged by, other men” (Kimmel 2008, 47). This is well illustrated in two recent studies; David Grazian’s (2007) analysis of “the girl hunt” and Beth Quinn’s (2002) description of workplace “girl watching” as homosocial performance. In the former, the group of male friends engages in a collective pursuit of casual sexual encounters with women where heterosexual masculinity is asserted homosocially through the “vicarious thrill” taken in each others, more often than not unsuccessful, attempts to “pick up” women (Grazian 2007, 232). In the latter, the practice of girl watching can also act to buttress the masculine and heterosexual identity of men, whereby the gaze of male sexual desire is used to actively display heterosexual masculinity for the benefit of a complicit male audience (Quinn 2002).

Men’s friendships are thus commonly characterized by emotional detachment, competitiveness, and the objectification of women (Bird 1996). In particular, the expression of anything suggestive of weakness, such as tears, pain, and self-pity, are seen to contradict masculine ideals and are, as such, heavily policed. Thus, “through widespread identification of masculinity with self-control, men learn to relate to emotions as threats to their male identities” (Seidler 2006, 95). Men are understood to reject emotional attachment as something which is feminine and, therefore, unmasculine. The need for others might be read as disrupting masculine ideals of autonomy and independence. Lillian Rubin (1984), for example, provided an in-depth analysis of what amounts to an emotional division of labor between men and women. She describes how the feminine sense of self is characteristically based on interpersonal connection, whereas the masculine sense of self is based on self-containment. Men fail to develop, and indeed often go to great lengths to hide, a need for mutuality and interdependence which is felt to in some way threaten the independence which a lifetime of gender socialization has taught to be fundamental to masculine identity. For Rubin (1984, 71), this can be traced back to childhood development where “boys are trained to camouflage their feelings under cover of an exterior of calm, strength, and rationality.”

A useful definition of intimacy is that employed by Lynn Jamieson (1998, 158) where intimacy is a process of “mutually sustaining deep knowing and understanding, through talking and listening, sharing thoughts, showing feelings.” There should be some caution, however, in relation to judging men’s friendships against feminine measures of intimacy which prioritizes talk and self-disclosure (Messner 2001). So too is there a need to not too readily disregard the homosocial interactions of men with other men as lacking emotional value. Further, one should assume that there are disparities between the ideology of gender appropriate same-sex friendships and the reality of men’s or women’s friendship (Walker 1994). Although men may not readily acknowledge their feelings of intimacy and connections with others in the same verbal terms as women apparently do, there is the suggestion that men do indeed value friendships and personal relationships in various ways some of which may not be directly verbalized.

Two further recent studies in Australia highlight the complexity of emotion and intimacy among homosocial peer groups in the contexts of surfing (Waitt and Warren 2008) and football (Evers 2010). Young men do experience and value intimacy but refrain from labeling it as such due to the fear of homophobia (Evers 2010). Homosocial bonding, or hanging out “doing nothing,” is an “affective assemblage” “a mixed assortment of touch, smell, sight, sounds, and taste that spill all over each other” (Evers 2010, 59). Rather than a simple shared activity through which men can connect indirectly, surfing is here understood as contingent upon embodiment, spatiality, and emotion (Waitt and Warren 2008). Common to both these cases is a willingness to view intimacy between men as embodied. These studies provide an interesting contrast to previous research on homosociality which has stressed the verbal aspects of male bonding only to then suggest that men’s friendships are largely characterized by superficial banter which actively suppresses the direct expression of intimacy and interpersonal connections. Rather than dismissing bonding practices which do not verbalize their intersubjective nature as lacking in intimacy, here men’s friendships are seen as meaningful and played out through complex, embodied, practices.

As such, more recent work has revealed less rigidity in the need for men to dominate and compete with other men. Jon Swain (2003) has argued that boys are now freer to assert their own forms of masculinity than the at times strict hierarchical conception of dominant and subordinate masculinity might allow. These personalized forms of masculinity are “active, and for much of the time and in many ways, they are more secure than the dominant forms, for they are more self-contained and neither wish nor need to challenge or subordinate other forms” (Swain 2006, 343). Here, Swain uses self-containment as a positive aspect of emerging male identities where the need to assert power over others, to subordinate alternative masculinize, is less pronounced. Similarly, Eric Anderson has noted the decreasing significance of homophobia in the homosocial construction of masculine identity (Anderson 2008). A decline in homophobic talk and behavior within male friendship groups allows for greater expression, tactility, and intimacy between male friends (McCormack and Anderson 2010). In what manner, then, does the stag tour ritual represent wider changes in men’s lives and the importance of male friendships in the face of wider social changes?

In sum, male friendships are seen as a valuable resource through which masculine identity is constructed at both the individual and collective level. Yet, direct expressions of friendship and intimacy are problematic and frequently viewed with suspicion while much homosocial interaction does evidently prove restrictive. Talk and behavior between men is bestowed with a performative quality where men appear locked into presenting themselves in accordance with the collectively defined notion of desirable and acceptable masculinity. This performance often seems to emphasize the rejection of emotions, interpersonal connection, and anything that suggests weakness. In spite of the wealth of empirical and theoretical research into men and masculinities, there is still a latent tendency to disregard the meaning of male friendships as anything more than a means for the playing out of competitive individual masculine identities. While friendship does not necessarily automatically equate to intimacy, it appears important to look beyond the more visible examples of homosocial bonding as enacted through competitiveness to see how male–male friendships do indeed also offer opportunities of intimacy and emotion.

A further trend of the literature has been to speak of homosocial groups or male–male friendship as static. Paralleling a more general tendency for work on men and masculinities to overlook the temporal aspects of masculinity which see significant changes in how masculinity is constructed across the life course (Spector-Mersel 2006), the literature explored above in fact does little to explain how the bonds of friendship might be reshaped and bestowed with different meanings as men age. Should we, then, expect the competitive and status-driven bonding of school age boys to necessarily continue into adult life? This temporal element of friendship is made clear in Geoffrey Greif’s (2009) exploration of male friendships across the life course. While Greif finds friendships to be important to men of all ages, the specific ways in which relationships with friends are established and maintained across the life course, and what form and meaning those friendships take, are dynamic and change in both subtle and pronounced ways.

Tony Coles (2009) has suggested the use of Bourdieu’s concept of field to make sense of “fields of masculinity” between which different iterations of dominant masculinities are asserted and sustained. Here, again, the temporality of masculinities is important. He states that “as men age and move through the course of their lives, so too do their identities as men shift to accommodate the changes in their lives” (Coles 2009, 30). Further still, Coles uses the notion of fields of masculinity to suggest that men enact their masculinity in different ways across different situations. Blackshaw's (2003) account of the “ontological security” sought by the working class men in his study of a male social group in post-Industrial Leeds is one where the reassurance that their masculine ideologies remain largely intact in one field, the “leisure life-world” of the night-time economy, while elsewhere being under either a real or perceived attrition in other fields such as work and the family. However, this is not to say that Blackshaw devalues male friendship. Rather, in contrast to some of the studies discussed above, Blackshaw goes to considerable lengths in capturing the meaningful and long lasting bonds between the group of friends.

The Stag Heads East: Stag Tourism in Eastern Europe

As a premarital ritual, the stag night involves a man who is soon to get married, “the stag,” celebrating the coming wedding within an exclusively male social group. The stag party in its modern form evolved out of a range of localized rite of passage traditions centered on working-class communities and often bearing notable similarities to rituals marking the end of a period of industrial trade apprenticeship (Monger 1971, 1975). Commonly, these celebrations would involve the drinking of alcohol and, often, some form of symbolic punishment such as the playing of practical jokes on the stag. The British stag night ritual, in this sense, bears considerable similarity to the American bachelor party ritual where the “bachelor” who is about to marry is subjected to ritualistic “punishments” which serve to humiliate and feminize (Williams 1994).

Recent years have seen the scale, duration, and cost of such celebrations escalate. Indeed, media coverage has been quick to draw a distinction between the excesses of contemporary stag tourists and what is perceived to be the more sedate stag rituals of previous generations (Rohrer 2006). Part of this growth has seen the stag night enlarged to become a stag weekend or tour involving travel to a foreign city. Numerous companies have emerged to cater for what is now a fully fledged stag tourism industry. Central to this growth has been the onward expansion of budget airlines, making short haul air travel within Europe both flexible and, often but not always, cheap. Further, economic disparities between the United Kingdom and popular stag destinations in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Latvia meant that from the 1990s and throughout the 2000s, stag tour groups have been drawn to Eastern European cities by the promise of cheap alcohol, restaurants, and entertainment including abundant night life.

The majority of companies primarily offer a combined package of accommodation, usually at 2* and 3* hotels, hostels, or in apartments, as well as airport transfers by minibus or coach. Additionally, most packages will involve some sort of activity, ranging from a simple welcome drink at a local bar to an extensive bar and nightclub “crawl” following a packed schedule of sports and brewery tours or vodka tasting and leading to a visit to a strip club. Popular activities offered by these companies include pistol shooting, paintball, go-cart racing, white-water rafting, and tank or military vehicle driving. Many tour companies, including Party Poland, the Polish tour company through which stag groups participating in the research were accessed, offer a “stag tour rep” who acts as a guide to the group. Tellingly, with few exceptions these guides are young local females.

Methods

Research was conducted in Kraków, a city of around 750,000 inhabitants in the Małopolska region of Southern Poland. Access to stag tour groups was gained through cooperation with Party Poland, one of several stag tour companies operating in the city. Prior to commencing fieldwork, a number of stag tour operators were contacted by the researcher. As well as Poland, these included companies based in Hungary, Latvia, and the Czech Republic. Of these, Party Poland was selected on the basis of being the most forthcoming of companies contacted and, to a lesser extent, of the researcher’s familiarity with the country and Kraków in particular having conducted previous research in the city. At the time of first contact, Party Poland had been offering stag tour packages for over two years and had served more than 2,000 individual clients during 2006 alone. Following discussions with the company director and further negotiations with the company office manager, it was agreed that the first research visit would be made in September 2007, with subsequent visits undertaken at intervals until the following summer. The final research visit was made in June and July 2008.

Prior to arrival in Kraków, the Party Poland office manager would be able to establish contact with the groups and raise the possibility of a sociology researcher conducting research on stag tourism in Poland. Based on this provisional consent, it was then possible to meet the group at a point early in the weekend to further introduce myself and clarify my research. Although no groups refused to participate once contact was established in this manner, it was often necessary to be careful not to impinge upon the special nature of the group’s weekend. In one case, for example, the stag and another member of his group were in deep conversation and asked the researcher to leave, a request with which he complied at once.

Participant observation was conducted with eight separate stag tour groups, representing a total of ninety-three individual participants. All participating stag tourists, tour guides, and tour companies were given pseudonyms and ensured of their anonymity as well as their right to refuse participation at any point during research. Of these participants, ages ranged from very early twenties to late thirties, while one group included two older men—the fathers of both the bride and the groom. Individuals came from a range of locations throughout England and Scotland and, in terms of social class, could be defined as coming from a mix of middle- and working-class backgrounds. I have noted elsewhere (Thurnell-Read 2011) how the stag tour phenomenon is often mistakenly assumed to involve exclusively working-class men when, in fact, the class backgrounds of participants proved much broader. It is also worth noting that although the cost of activities, food, and drinks in Poland proved relatively cheap for participants, the overall cost of the weekend ensured that all participants required an evident level of financial affluences. Indeed, several groups referred to absent friends for whom the cost of the weekend proved prohibitive.

During the research, the author participated with groups as they moved around the city, drinking in bars and clubs and, during the daytime, recovering from hangovers, eating meals in local restaurants, or pursuing activities such as go-cart racing and various forms of sightseeing around the city. In many ways, this was made possible by the author’s similar age, gender, nationality, and background to the participants being male, British, white, and at the time of the research aged twenty-five. Throughout, participants knew of the author’s position as a researcher and had opportunity to openly discuss the research, including their participation within it. In light of the significance of drinking alcohol and drunkenness to stag tourists, the author participated in some elements of the groups’ drinking (the methodological significance of this is discussed elsewhere; Thurnell-Read, 2011). The topic of masculinity was not directly addressed by the researcher at the outset as there was concern that to do so would restrict or inhibit participant behavior. However, participants were quick to raise the topic themselves. The stag tour experience was commonly spoken of by participants in terms of directly referencing the centrality of masculinity such as, for example, “blokes doing bloke stuff” and “boys being boys.”

Field notes were taken as “jottings” at suitable moments, but, in recognition of the potential incongruity of brandishing notepads and pens in the leisure setting of bars and nightclubs, these were often limited and only written up in full detail as soon as possible afterward. Emergent themes from fieldwork were noted and later coded in the analysis of data. These themes included matters relating to the sociology of tourism, such as participants’ perceptions of city and their collective construction of the stag tour as a unique and spectacular event. Themes relating to masculinity and gender included sexuality (both heterosexuality and homosexuality), friendship, embodiment, emotion, gendered interaction with local men and local women, and the role of alcohol consumption and drunkenness in asserting masculine identity.

Bringing these themes together, the research sought to explore the meaning of the stag tour to its participants. As a result, the study places an emphasis on in situ, descriptive qualitative material gathered during fieldwork. One upshot of this is that the research is perhaps limited to this ethnographic moment in its scope. However, throughout participation with groups, members would talk informally about themselves, their experiences of the stag weekend, and their lives beyond it. Indeed, much of the interaction with participants was characterized by talk which amounted to numerous informal interviews. In this sense, inferences can be drawn to the wider implications and significance the stag tour weekend represented for individual participants and for the group as a whole. Participants showed a keen awareness of the stag tour as a meaningful moment in their lives. Interestingly, the majority of participants also demonstrated considerable understanding of their behavior being informed by gender expectations. In some cases, this amounted to a limited “boys will be boys” attitude, but for others was indicative of a highly reflexive and personal account of their perceptions and attitudes to their own behavior and that of other group members.

The Stag Tour as Male Bonding Ritual

The stag tour is symbolically marked as a time and space for men to be together and pursue a range of notably male interests, primarily the consumption of alcohol and the pursuit of drunkenness. Alcohol consumption, and the other activities which fill up the group’s time during the weekend, is an example of Kiesling’s (2005) notion of “indirectness” which posits that much homosocial behavior is necessarily channeled through an intermediate activity such as watching sport or talking about mutual interests. During the stag tour, the purchasing and consumption of alcohol and strong statements attesting to just how drunk individuals are serve as ways in which a sense of mutual connection is expressed and experienced not directly but indirectly through alcohol. Further, the establishment of the stag group as a collective entity can be seen as an example of what Kiesling would call addressee indirectness. Here, “taking one for the team” or expressing a strong loyalty to “the tour” are all ways of expressing feelings of connection without directly addressing the intended addressees, the other specific individual group members. As stag tour groups make their way from bar to bar, drinking beer and vodka shots, and head on to nightclubs to act out drunkenness and excess, the tour itself becomes an expression of connection between members.

There was, however, a notable absence of the overt competitiveness between group members which has previously been noted as characteristic of young men’s homosocial relationships (Bird 1996; Kiesling 2005). It was, for example, remarkably common to witness small acts of mutual affection and generosity, from buying each other drinks to overt displays of friendship such as hugging and the ubiquitous use of terms of endearment such as “mate,” “pal” or “buddy.” Upon entering one of Kraków’s bustling bars or nightclubs, a round of beers would be bought with much ceremony and considerable care in ensuring each member soon received a drink. Indeed, the stag tour abounded with numerous examples of direct expressions of friendship and attachment. This was seen to reflect the stated aim of the stag tour ritual, as celebrating the group’s friendships with the stag before he gets married.

A common occurrence among all groups where the direct expression of intimacy was present was in the form of speech making as part of the stag tour ritual. For example, during their first evening in the main room of a cellar bar members of Ryan’s group took it in turns to give speeches. As the group stood in a circle surrounding the stag, Mike, the best man, addressed Ryan over the general noise of the busy bar, saying, “What can I say? I fucking love you mate. You’re a legend, I’ve known you…way too long!” By the end of his speech both Mike and Ryan seemed genuinely affected and hugged each other. As a clear and direct expression of intimacy, such speech making demonstrated the importance of male friendship to stag tour group participants and typified expressions of emotion which were common throughout field work. Further still, the special position of the stag is marked; he is the reason the group has come together and thus becomes the center of such expressions of friendship.

The pursuit of women and the enactment of overt heterosexual desire was a relatively common occurrence within stag tour groups. Many stag tour activities in one way or another involve some level of interaction with local women. Also readily apparent was the importance of talking about and looking at local women as a persistent and common activity among stag groups. This was, in accordance with Quinn’s notion of girl watching (2002), generally collective, with individuals “doing” their girl watching in such a way as to be seen to do so by their peers. A group was observed occupying a large seating area outside of one of the numerous café tables overlooking the old town square. As a pair of women walked past the tables occupied by the group, one of the men commented that he was “like a dog on heat” and mimed walking after the women with his tongue lolling out of his mouth. Again, although the focus of his attention was the passing women, the audience for his enactment of heterosexual desire was evidently his peers whose laughter acted to condone his actions. The objectification of women was therefore a notable means of bonding with each other within the homosocial group. Through such acts, it seems no surprise, the masculinity enacted by stag tourists is constructed as being overtly heterosexual.

However, this is not to say that interaction between stag tours and others is limited simply to gazing. An example of this was Stuart, a member of a stag group from London in his late twenties, who stopped a passing local girl, to ask for directions to a nearby nightclub but then added, “That’s my best mate there, he’s getting married, come and have some drinks with us.” This eventually unsuccessful attempt to initiate contact with local women is fairly typical of observed stag behavior. Interestingly, Stuart later expressed no interest in actually pursuing sexual interactions with women during the stag tour as he was in a happy and committed long-term relationship. Rather, what seemed to motivate Stuart was an attempt to foster the interaction of local women within the group for the benefit of other members who were single. In this sense, as Grazian (2007) has suggested, there is a collective enactment of the heteronormative script of the “girl hunt” which derives its meaning from its function as a homosocial bonding ritual rather than out of the heterosexual desire of the individuals involved.

Many stag tourists do evidently pursue local women with great persistence and some success. For example, one stag party member spoke of how Jack, a close friend from his time at university, had succeeded in “chatting up” a local woman and had returned to her home. While the assumption would be that the heteronormative imperative of the group would be to praise Jack for his success in the quest for sexual gratification, here his actions were interpreted as a breach of group unity. Thus, another friend commented, “His loss, you can get a shag any time back home but he’ll be missing the whole night, missing all the fun.” Given the overt expressions of heterosexuality expected within the homosocial group, this reaction to the success of a peer in asserting his heterosexuality appears somewhat contradictory. To act up to the expected codes of dominant masculinity through behavior and talk which demonstrates the individual heterosexuality is desired by and expected of stag tour participants. To pursue this too single mindedly to the detriment of group cohesion, however, is to undermine the deeper meaning of the stag weekend as a homosocial bonding ritual and an expression of group loyalties and connections.

Masculinity and Group Cohesion

Constructing a shared group identity was an important aspect of creating a successful stag tour weekend for participants. The use of matching clothing such as group tour t-shirts or polo shirts emblazoned with a group logo and team motto were a common means of instilling a collective identity. So too were group in-jokes and shared cultural references a common means for stag tour groups to manifest their group identity. This group cohesion was often marked by a high degree of in-group validation, with certain acts or behavior being labeled as significant to the stag tour group participants. Common examples of this include, the retelling of stories or, after an episode during the weekend the group deem particularly significant, calls of “nice one, mate” and “you legend.” Group cohesion was also fostered through a sense of mutual secrecy or collusion which was often encouraged and acted out within groups. This is most commonly reflected by the motto invoked by numerous groups: “what happens on tour stays on tour.”

In these ways a tightly bounded group is formed. Interestingly, however, all were not as cohesive as first appeared. Rather than a single friendship group, the stag tour groups observed would generally be better described as a looser interconnection of different friendship groupings relating to different areas of the stag’s life. As such, it was common for the stag tour groups to comprise of various subgroups consisting of the stag’s friends from school or his hometown, from his university, colleagues from his working life, siblings and relatives from his closer family network, or friends from mutual interest groups such as sports clubs and societies. The special role of the stag himself is clear; as the central focus of the group he is the subject of both expressions of friendship and ritualistic humiliations involving drinking challenges and fancy dress costumes designed to embarrass and ridicule (for more in-depth discussion, see Thurnell-Read 2011). With this apparent, the need for the group to establish a collective identity during the stag weekend takes on a wider significance in relation to what the stag tour experience can suggest about apparent changes to male friendship.

Of all the groups with which some level of participant observation was carried out, all but two had such multiple friendship groups. Commonly, the stag might have moved to a university town and made a new friendship group before returning to his hometown to maintain friendships established as far back as primary school. Further still, given the likelihood that many of the men participating in the stag tour group, and often the stag himself, may have moved to other cities to pursue different careers (most notably being those who move to London from regional areas of the United Kingdom) an emergent theme of the research was that such multiple friendship groups became constituted in a multiple and varied ways through the stag’s life and across a variety of times and locations. The stag tour, notably, represented an opportunity to provide coherence to these sometimes quite disparate friendship groupings. Also notable was the specific role of the best man who, beyond the simple logistics of organizing the trip and activities included as part of it, would bear considerable pressure to ensure that all members of the group bonded and participate with each other. For example, Phil’s best man Harry theatrically played out the challenges of keeping the large group together but ultimately spoke of the his “big success” that by the end of the weekend “we’re all mates now.”

The degree to which stag group members are familiar with each other prior to the trip can vary greatly, with different sets of friends within the group having little prior knowledge of each other. For example, Jay spoke of the stag weekend as a good chance for his various friends to get together and get to know each other more before his wedding. This included initial introductions between his closest friends from his hometown in the Northwest of England, some of whom he recalled knowing since his very first year of school, with his newer but, in many ways, no less important group of friends all working in the same company and living within a short distance of each other in an area of south London. For Jay, the aim and function of the stag tour was this bringing together of these different strands of his life as represented by different friendship groupings. Hence, it was with much pleasure that he spoke of seeing his friends getting along, joking and drinking together and, for Jay more a case of awkwardness than pleasure, recounting embarrassing anecdotes from his past. Notably, then, the collective identity of the group does not necessarily predate the stag weekend as such but is instead negotiated through acts of homosocial bonding during the weekend itself. This indicates the need to not see the male friendships as static and fixed but as dynamic and in process in relation to the men’s life course and different areas or fields of their lives.

There were, however, instances when this desired group cohesion was not achieved by groups. The cohesion of the group might fluctuate during the course of the weekend, with initial collective bonding giving way to more disparate interactions within subgroups only for the group emphasis to remerge later. An interesting example is Jon’s group. Talking to Darren and Ali on the Sunday afternoon, they spoke of the previous night when Jon the stag, the best man Rich, and several others had left the hotel for dinner without letting the others know, resulting in the remaining group members being split between two other nearby restaurants. This seems to indicate that in spite of the evident drive for establishing and maintaining group unity, some group members do indeed become somewhat peripheral or marginalized from the central core of the group.

Individuals, such as Darren and Ali, who fail to “hit the mark” in terms of their fitting in with the homosocial bonding established and maintained by the group provided interesting cases with which to make more visible the working of the homosocial group which, at other times, remain obscured by an ethos which promotes group cohesion and togetherness. A second example to consider is that of Andrew, a member of Rob’s stag group and brother of the fiancé. Andrew’s occupation in the British Navy and marginal relationship to the group, being linked by the fiancé’s family rather than direct friendship with the stag, were commented on by other group members on several occasions. Despite his efforts, Andrew was at times noticeably contested by other members of the group. For example, one of Andrew’s attempts to instigate a drinking game early on the Saturday night were shouted down by other members of the group, one of them adding, “Gotta be careful and not get you Navy boys too pissed, know you all get naked and wrestle each other.” This response from the group is particularly interesting, given that prior to arriving at the club they had already partaken in competitive drinking and Rob’s revealing fancy-dress outfit, a gold bikini, had been the subject of much in-group approval.

A final example is that of Peter and Josh, two members of Rob’s group who were both openly gay. In the case of Josh, his characteristically camp attitude was often at the center of some of the group’s most humorous verbal exchanges. Peter, however, was predominantly straight acting, more reserved than Josh, and in terms of his looks and style seemed to be given considerable status in the group. On this topic, Peter observed that, “Obviously they’re not going to want to go to a gay bar or anything but they know I’m gay and don’t mind,” adding “we’re all good mates, I can out drink most of them anyway.” This comment appears to establish Peter’s masculinity, irrespective of his sexuality, as viable within the group. Peter invokes his drinking ability as a sign of his group acceptance, indicating that he understands his participation in the homosocial bonding rituals of the stag tour as demonstrated through other means than heterosexuality. Interestingly, while the notion of hegemonic masculinity is constructed around an implicit heterosexuality and overt expressions of heterosexual desire as a common tool for homosocial bonding, as observed here, homosexuality is by no means a barrier to stag tour participation.

It seems striking that Andrew, a heterosexual British Navy officer who had seen service in Iraq was marginalized by the group despite his spirited attempts to play up to the hegemonic ideal while both Josh and Peter, as homosexual men, were still fondly welcomed within the group. One evident suggestion is that as a member of the bride’s family rather than a friend, first and foremost, Andrew is seen as an outsider and treated with suspicion as someone who might “report back” on the events of the weekend and, in particular, the groom’s behavior. However, several further lines of analysis might be drawn from these examples. First, they demonstrate that participation in the homosocial group is not best understood by an easy reading off of masculine attributes which would directly dictate status as accorded to individuals based on the normative ideals of heteronormativity and hegemonic masculinity. Second, in spite of the various ways in which the stag tour apparently aspires to an ethos of fun and camaraderie and places a high value on group cohesion, there are still evident workings of interpersonal power between group members that work to marginalize individuals such as Darren, Ali, and Andrew. Despite a lack of overt competition within stag tour groups, such reveals the persistence of what Sharon Bird has referred to as the “subtle mechanisms of control in small homosocial groups” (Bird 1996, 121).

Attempts by the group to foster inclusion do not, of course, necessarily prohibit actions and behavior which result in the exclusion of others. Rather, inclusion and exclusion are flip sides of the same coin and tellingly reveal the Janus-faced nature of hegemonic masculinity. In spite of an apparently inclusive ethos to much of the group behavior, we see in the objectification of women by stag tourists and the careful boundary work and self-policing of groups both internal and external hegemonic masculinity at work (Demetriou 2001). Sexualized talk about women is one of the central tropes through which the groups achieve a desired sense of togetherness in constructing a collective performance of masculinity. The objectification of women and distancing of men who stand in relation to the group supports the apparent ease with which claims to masculinity are made within the groups. Although, as outlined above, the stag tour groups appeared to lack the overt competitive elements previously assumed of homosocial peer groups, it could be argued that much of this is made permissible by other processes of exclusion. Equally, group members might play down their own importance within the group in recognition of the role of the stag which is elevated, albeit temporarily, in significance. In this light it remains difficult to separate inclusion and exclusion when discussing the formation and maintenance of such groups.

Stag Tourism and the “Loss” of Male Friendship

For many of the groups who participated in the study, growing older and the move from school to university and to work life, had meant that times to be together with male friends had become more infrequent. This became evident in that for some groups the early stages of the tour weekend seemed given over to catching up with old friends, having not seen each other recently due to other responsibilities, and reasserting bonds of friendship. Indeed, in one case, the majority of the group had not seen each other socially since the stag weekend and subsequent wedding of a friend held six months previously.

Expressions of nostalgia were a common occurrence among stag tour groups. These might take the form of recounting anecdotes from previous group holidays, recounting the “heroic” drinking feats of university days or sharing memories of a particular club or pub at home once claimed as the group’s very own territory. For one group, the stag tour weekend fell by chance almost exactly ten years after a joint resort holiday to Ibiza which most of the group participated in to mark the end of their A Levels. Similarly, a stag tour group from Scotland drew numerous parallels between their weekend in Krakow and previous trips in Britain and Europe made together supporting their football team, Glasgow Rangers. As such, much of this nostalgic talk can be read as an attempt to perpetuate the collective memory and identity of the group of friends.

While much of this talk serves to reinforce the group sense of collectivity, it also highlights what are felt as very real changes in the men’s lives. As noted by Blackshaw (2003), in such homosocial groups a collective history or shared mythology runs as a thread through men’s lives. Such talk was frequently linked to a present sense of loss, whereby the previous times of togetherness among the group were held in contrast to the contemporary situation where jobs, relationships, and, for some, family might be making increasing inroads into their time. One example of this is the comparison drawn by Clarke, one of the prominent members of Tom’s group. Recalling school days and how the different friends came to know each other, he stated that the current situation was, “Not like the old days sitting around drinking cheap lager talking shit, these days everybody’s got less time…maybe more money but less time.”

Through such comments, many participants performed the stag tour not only as a celebration of marriage but as a commemoration of the strong friendships within the group. Inherent within this is the perception that the ties and bonds of the group are in some way under threat or erosion specifically by the marriage of one of the group’s members and, more generally, by changing patterns in the men’s lives. Settling down into a heteronormative married relationship represents a possible antagonism to long running homosocial bonds. As a result, many young men appear to regard a committed relationship as oppositional to their homosocial friendships (Gilmartin 2007). In many ways, this reflects the observations of Greif (2009) in his study of the changes in male friendship across the life course. As men enter their thirties, they are faced with balancing the competing responsibilities of family, career, and friendship. Thus, “the strength of the pulls between these three distinct part’s of a man’s life will vary, and the pulls cannot always be balanced equally” (Greif 2009, 182). There is a sense that the simplicity of the stag tour as a homosocial act was reassuring to its participants. References were made by all groups to how the stag would be, in some way, lost to domesticity and, through his married status, less committed to his friends and their collective group identity. The notion of “losing” a friend underpinned the stag tour and, consequently, encouraged attempts to restate ties of friendship through homosocial bonding.

Of use here is Spector-Mersel’s (2006, 71) conceptualization of hegemonic masculinity scripts as “cultural exemplary-plots that draw social clocks for masculinity, determining diverse contents of desired manhood at different points in a man’s life.” Our understanding of masculinity, she argues, needs a greater understanding of the temporal nature of shifts and changes across the life course. Applying this model to the stag tour highlights the transitional nature of the phenomenon; the tour itself marks a movement from one culturally condoned placement on the hegemonic masculinity script (that of being a bachelor, a socially virile young man) to another (that of husband, perhaps with increased responsibilities but also increased status). I have suggested elsewhere (Thurnell-Read 2011) that the ritualized humiliations and debasements of the stag tour represent a symbolic rite of passage at a moment when, for many men, this transition from adolescence to adulthood has become hugely protracted. Although the stag tour weekend takes place over a short space of time, it does offer some insight into the wider nature of men’s lives. As noted above, it has a temporal quality in both symbolically marking the coming status change of the soon to be married man and offering an emotional outlet in the commemoration of long lasting friendships and therefore has a distinctly biographical quality in signifying changes in the life course.

The ambiguity with which the stag’s coming wedding is greeted, in being performed as a loss of friendship, represents the at times uneasy transition between different fields of masculinity or stages on the dominant hegemonic masculinity script. There is evident resonance between the findings presented here and both suggestions that masculinity is reconstructed though a retreat from accountability (Blackshaw 2003) and that masculinity is being asserted by men, and young men in particular, in more inclusive and expressive ways (Swain 2006; Anderson 2008; McCormack and Anderson 2010). The stag tour offers, in its simplicity, a reassuring space in which strong ties of friendship are expressed and reasserted without inhibition.

Conclusion

As a homosocial bonding ritual, the premarital stag tour is significant to participants in numerous ways. First, through a range of shared activities the stag tour offers a means for the male participants of such tours to express connections with each other and to express their friendship. Somewhat predictably, drinking alcohol and gazing on, talking about, or actually pursuing women were activities through which much of this bonding was established (Quinn 2002; Grazian 2007). Notably, however, direct expressions of friendship and connection were common and did not seem to be subject to the censure which has previously been suggested as characteristic (Bird 1996; Kiesling 2005). Second, the group worked in various ways to ensure the cohesion of the group as a fundamental characteristic of the stag tour weekend. This was particularly important, given the observation that many groups were in fact made up of more fragmented friendship groupings than first appeared. The stag tour represented a chance for the stag to bring together friends from various areas of his life and, through the homosocial bonding rituals of the tour weekend, establish a more cohesive group. This cohesion was often not complete, with certain group members being marginalized. Finally, the stag tour was in many instances underpinned by a sense of loss where a key reference was made to the tensions between “settling down” and the maintenance of established friendships ties.

Findings suggest that, as a homosocial bonding ritual, the stag tour functions as more than just a means of men being together without having their motives questioned. Following Kiesling (2005), there is some need for homosocial desire not to be misconstrued as homosexual desire. While the array of competitive drinking, the objectification of women, and the maintenance of a well-policed homosocial group boundary are all present, and all represent the ways that gendered power relations are perpetuated, it would be remiss not to assert the persistence of more inclusive forms of masculinity including expression of emotion, connection, and overt displays of affection. In all cases there was an evident and at times unabashed (and because of this often heart warming) sense of togetherness among stag group members. Taken together, the array of practices which play out when men “hang out” together evidently do amount to meaningful friendships (Evers 2010). The article has shown how the homosocial bonds evidenced during the stag tour are neither trivial nor lacking in emotion and that the topic of men’s friendship and homosocial bonding requires more sensitivity than it is at times given.

Although significantly older than the school or college age cohorts studied by the likes of Anderson (2008), Swain (2006), and McCormack and Anderson (2010), research participants exhibited many of the features of “inclusive masculinity.” Like McCormack and Anderson (2010), the use of homophobia to mark boundaries of masculinity was not readily apparent. A more sociable sense of being friendly and fun to be with, of being loyal to the group, seemed to be the main marker of group acceptance. A further analysis of this might be that the long-term friendship groups of the stag tour are unlike the more transitory relationships, which are both more insecure and more competitive, that boys and young men form in their adolescent years in educational settings (Willis 1977; Walker 1988; Curry 1991; Mac An Ghaill 1994; Bird 1996; Nayak and Kehily 1996), and during the often precarious and fragmented transitions which follow (Nayak, 2003). Indeed, it appears that at this stage of the life course, the male participants of the research were actively working at maintaining their friendships through striving for group cohesion and togetherness rather than interpersonal competition and exclusion.

While much of the behavior of stag tourists is predictable and in numerous ways does conform to what a theorization of masculinity based on Connell’s conception of hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1987, 1995; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005) would expect, there is, within these bounds, relative flexibility. Findings suggested that friendship and group inclusivity was not contingent on asserting an overt heterosexual identity or, as in the case of Peter and Josh, on the negation of homosexuality. Indeed, the case of Andrew demonstrates that a group member who went out of his way to play up to a typical hegemonic masculine identity with an amount of posturing and overplayed interest in drinking games and other activities was actually less accepted by the group and seen as being overbearing and too assertive. In light of these observations, it is important not to overstate the evident importance of group cohesion with a total rejection of the workings of interpersonal power. While direct competition and aggression or status marking was not evident there was still a clear possibility that some group members would be either directly or indirectly marginalized within the group.

Lastly, in some ways the research repeats the somewhat limiting tendency of other works on men and their friendship by focusing on one moment and upon one setting. The implication of findings here is that the symbolic moment of the stag ritual brings together some rather fragmented friendship ties within the stag’s life and offers a chance for cohesion and security. The stag tour is evidently reassuring for participants in this ability for it to bring together different elements of the stag and his friends’ lives. The value of recent work by the likes of Sofia Aboim (2010) and Tony Coles (2009) is that masculinity is seen as plural and situational, as open to change and reconfiguration within different areas of men’s lives. If there is to be a greater focus on masculinity as situational, as constructed in different ways at different times and places in men’s lives, there needs to be a return to an associated academic interest in transitional moments in men’s lives and in changes across sites or locations of which the stag tour weekend is just one, albeit vivid, example.