Spatial aspects of Alcohol Consumtion and Drunkenness

Mark Jayne, Gill Valentine, & Sarah L Holloway (June 2008). The place of drink: Geographical contributions to alcohol studies: Drugs: education, prevention and policy, June 2008; 15(3): 219–232.
This paper considers how geographies of alcohol, drinking and drunkenness have been considered within and beyond the discipline of geography. We argue that while there has been a large amount of relevant, detailed and rich research considering ‘geographical’ issues, alcohol studies has tended to under-theorize the role of space and place. While geographers, on the other hand, have been relatively slow to engage with the alcohol, drinking and drunkenness, we show that geography have much to offer future research agendas. Despite recent progress, however, a failing of geographers’ engagement with alcohol, drinking and drunkenness has been an inability to transcend disciplinary boundaries. We conclude by arguing that geographical research into alcohol, drinking and drunkenness must continue to pursue theoretical and empirical advances, but also offer policy-relevant ‘public geographies’ that speak to non-academic audiences.

Michael Leyshon, (June 2008). ‘We’re stuck in the corner’: Young women, embodiment and drinking in the countryside: Drugs: education, prevention and policy, June 2008; 15(3): 267–289.
In this paper I extend our understanding of the ways in which young women in rural areas produce, negotiate and experience identity through an exploration of their drinking practices. Through a close ethnography of three groups of young women in the rural south west of England this paper shows how pubs, clubs, bedrooms and other informal spaces such as ‘in the park’ provide arenas of performance in which identities are constructed, negotiated and reproduced. In particular this paper explores the significance given by rural young women to their discursive drinking practices and the extent to which these practices lead to inclusionary and/or exclusionary experiences. Eschewing conventional notions of the body, by recognizing the body as malleable, porous and an unfinished product, subject to socially produced alteration, this paper teases apart the different lived experiences of rural young women by arguing that much of their behaviour in pub(lic) and private space(s) can be seen in terms of acts of spectacle, compliance and challenges to disciplinary frameworks. To illustrate this point I discuss how rural young women employ various embodied strategies to move between spaces to experiment with alcohol and alternative femininities and ‘do’ gender, thereby contesting acceptable rural gender roles and expectations. Through shedding light on drinking practices, I reveal how this experimentation affects their sense of their body, femininity and belonging in the countryside.

James Kneale & Shaun French, (June 2008). Mapping alcohol: Health, policy and the geographies of problem drinking in Britain: Drugs: education, prevention and policy, June 2008; 15(3): 233–249.
While parallels can be drawn between contemporary problem drinking in Britain and apparently similar cases from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, little attention has been paid to the ways in which drink is represented as a spatial problem. Closer analysis reveals that the mapping of ‘clusters’ of alcohol outlets or trouble spots has waxed and waned over the last hundred and fifty years, and that the appearance, disappearance and re-emergence of the cluster in policy discussions owes a good deal to changing understandings of the nature of public drinking. Both temperance and contemporary epidemiological approaches favour the cluster because they assume that the supply of alcohol lies at the root of the problems seen to be associated with drink, and mapping clusters makes this supply visible. In contrast the disease theory of alcoholism favours individual rather than social causes, and has little use for maps of clusters; as a consequence the cluster seems to disappear from discussions in the middle years of the twentieth century. The paper concludes that the history of problem drinking demonstrates the need to pay closer attention to changing constructions of drink as problem and the need for a more sophisticated understanding of the history of medicine and public health. It also makes clear the need to look beyond the State and the market as spaces in which the risks of alcohol are calculated.

Adam Eldridge & Marion Roberts (June 2008). Hen parties: Bonding or brawling?: Drugs: education, prevention and policy, June 2008; 15(3): 323–328.
While the number of marriages taking place in Britain continues to decline, the hen party has become both an accepted marriage ritual and a source of controversy. In previous research we have found bar owners and town centre managers eager to discourage hen parties from their town centres and venues. Equally, in the popular press, the hen party is increasingly portrayed in comparable terms to the ‘stag do’; a night of drunken excess and embarrassing misdemeanours. This paper examines the hen party in terms of the articulation of gender, alcohol and public space. Through a wide-ranging literature survey and pilot interviews, we ask if the hen party exaggerates existing behaviours and practices, or whether it represents an entirely new, albeit limited, example of how women are using public space at night. Against the backdrop of a historical anxiety about women and public space, and growing concern about women and binge drinking, we examine the hen party as both a site of transgression, empowerment and female bonding, and as a unique opportunity to explore women’s shifting attitudes to late-night culture.

David Bell, (June 2008). Destination drinking: Toward a research agenda on alcotourism: Drugs: education, prevention and policy, June 2008; 15(3): 291–304.
Studies of tourism and of alcohol consumption can be fruitfully brought together under the heading alcotourism. Alcotourism refers to the practices of travelling to drink, drinking on holiday, drinking to travel and drinking while travelling that are important but understudied aspects of both tourism studies and alcohol studies. Drawing on a selection of published studies, this paper scopes current research in order to assemble a research agenda for alcotourism. The paper includes discussions of cultural tourism, heritage tourism, party tourism, themed drinking environments, and acquisitive alcotourism. Debates about benefits and problems for both ‘hosts’ and ‘guests’ are highlighted, drawing on concepts such as cultural capital and liminality, while alcotourism is also situated in the context of contemporary debates about the regulation or deregulation of alcohol, drinking and drunkenness. It ends with a call for more sustained and systematic research, and a caution about straightforwardly reading alcotourism as a social problem; it should instead be understood as a set of context-specific practices often integral to the experience of holidays.

Mark Jayne, Gill Valentine & Sarah L. Holloway (April 2008). Fluid Boundaries—British Binge Drinking and European Civility: Alcohol and the Production and Consumption of Public Space: Space and Polity, Vol. 12, No. 1, 81–100, April 2008.
During the past few years, debate surrounding depictions of a ‘British disease’ of binge drinking in contrast to civil European drinking cultures has been a central feature of popular and political debate in the UK. This paper investigates the ways in which these drinking categories have been constructed and identifies how they have become key elements in the production and consumption of public space. Empirical findings are presented from a city in the UK to show how these labels are being translated into policy agendas through the construction of models of citizenship and ways of behaviour and operationalised through the designation and regulation of particular spaces via exclusion zones, quartering, planning and policing. The paper also highlights the ways in which discourses relating to British bingeand European-drinking are being adopted and interpreted by consumers and unpacks how this impacts on perception and experience of public space.

Gill Valentine, Sarah Holloway, Charlotte Knell, Mark Jayne (2008). Drinking places: Young people and cultures of alcohol consumption in rural environments: Journal of Rural Studies 24 (2008) 28–40
This paper focuses on the contemporary British moral panic about young people and the consumption of alcohol in public space. Most of this public debate has focused on binge drinking in urban areas as a social problem. Here, we consider instead the role of alcohol in rural communities, and in particular alcohol consumption in domestic and informal spaces, as well as the formal drinking landscape of pubs and bars. Drawing on empirical work (including a survey, interviews and participant observation) in rural Cumbria, UK we explore the specific socio-spatial nature of local attitudes to alcohol consumption and its regulation. In doing so, we reflect on the nature of rural lifestyles, community spaces and intergenerational relations. The paper concludes by highlighting some of the implications for health promotion professionals of the generally positive attitude towards young people’s drinking in the rural area where the research was conducted. It also draws attention to the need for academics to pay closer attention to the ways that moral panics about binge drinking are implicitly producing a monolithic image of alcohol consumption in urban areas that fails to acknowledge the socio-spatially differentiated nature of practices of alcohol consumption and regulation.

Mark Jayne, Gill Valentine & Sarah L. Holloway, (2008). Geographies of alcohol, drinking and drunkenness: a review of progress: Progress in Human Geography 32(2) (2008) pp. 247–263.
This paper explores geographical contributions to the study of alcohol, drinking and drunkenness. We argue that where alcohol studies have engaged with geographical issues research has been dominated by a case study approach that has undertheorized the relationship between practices and processes relating to alcohol, drinking and drunkenness and the people and places being studied. We then go on to show the ways in which human geographers are approaching alcohol, drinking and drunkenness via complex interpenetrations of political, economic, social, cultural and spatial issues and unpacking connections, similarities, differences and mobilities between supranational, national, regional and local spatial scales. We argue that such an approach represents a conceptually and empirically important contribution to alcohol studies research. The paper concludes, however, that if geographers are to have a central role in shaping future research agendas then they must engage with theoretical issues in a more detailed and sustained manner, particularly in relation to epistemological and ontological impasses that have to date characterized the study of alcohol, drinking and drunkenness.

Mark Jayne, Sarah L. Holloway & Gill Valentine (2006). Drunk and disorderly: alcohol, urban life and public space: Progress in Human Geography 30, 4 (2006) pp. 451–468.
This paper shows that, despite receiving significant attention, the relationship between alcohol, drunkenness and public space has been undertheorized. We show that where drinking has been considered it has generally been as a peripheral concern of political-economy accounts that have sought to conceptualize the development of the modern city, or more recently the impact of global economic restructuring on urban life and public space. Moreover, such work has posited the relationship between drinking and the political, economic, social, cultural and spatial practices and processes bound up with, for example, social control in modern city or with contemporary gentrification, corporatization, fragmentation and regulation of the night-time economy, public space and revanchist urban policy in very general terms. While drawing on evidence from around the world, this paper focuses on the UK and highlights the need for a research agenda underpinned by a more specific consideration of urban drinking. We suggest that such a project must seek to unpack the connections and differences between supranational, national, regional and local drinking practices and related issues, and in particular pursue a more nuanced understanding of the social relations and cultural practices associated with the emergence of particular kinds of urban drinking spaces.