DRINKING MATTERS: WHY ALCOHOL IS MORE THAN JUST A PROBLEM

Based on a podcast from a Researcher to Researcher event, held in the Wolfson Research Exchange

Following on from our recent publication of a podcast from a Researcher to Researcher event, this podcast focuses on the many facets of drinking and alcohol, based on research by the Warwick Drinking Studies Network. This interdisciplinary group, established with the assistance of Dr Mark Hailwood, Department of History, brings together scholars to share their findings on any aspect of drinking culture, past or present. This forms part of a pair of articles we have coming up on the culture of drinking and alcohol.

This Researcher to Researcher event at the Wolfson Research Exchange, chaired by PhD candidate Matthew Jackson, tackles the multi-faceted nature of alcohol consumption, drawing on expertise from over 15 attendees in a variety of different disciplines. It was organised under the auspices of the Warwick Drinking Studies Network: an interdisciplinary group which Dr Mark Hailwood helped to establish in September 2010 with the purpose of bringing scholars together to share their findings on any aspect of drink or drinking culture, past or present.

One of the aims of this Researcher to Researcher discussion was to publicise the Network and its upcoming symposium, Drink and the Life Cycle, which will take place at Warwick on September 23rd 2011, but Matthew also wanted to pose some questions around the role that alcohol plays in society, and why people continue to drink, despite the activity’s negative associations.

‘I think it’d be fair to state that academic attention to alcohol has tended to fall under two predominant, but not independently exclusive, remits of research,’ he begins. ‘On the one hand, social and cultural approaches to drink emphasise the cultural meanings, motivations and variations in patterns of drinking behaviours [while] medical and neurological approaches emphasise the intoxicating effects of alcohol on mental processes and the human body... In terms of governmental attention to drink - both today and from an historical perspective - official attitudes have generally gravitated towards the latter approach.’

This puts the stress on the dangers that drinking, and in particular, excessive drinking, pose to the individual and to society as a whole, continues Matthew. ‘An examination of these negative discourses, past and present, is informative in many ways, but particularly in revealing the degree of continuity they maintain throughout time. Legislative practice sought, and continually seeks, to control the timing of consumption, the standards and activities of retail outlets, and the quality and strength of drink available, in the hope of reducing the problems associated with drinking too much.’

Matthew gives some well-known examples of legislative restrictions: the early 17th-century statutes against the ‘odious and loathsome sin of drunkenness’; the Gin Act of the mid-18th century; the temperance movements of the late 19th century and the 2003 Licensing Act, which extended drinking hours to reduce the sudden rush to the bar before closing time. ‘In modern and pre-modern societies drink was, and is, seen as interfering with work patterns, destabilising a country’s industriousness and draining public resources. Alcohol is typically described as the source to acts of violence, both within the home and in public as well as the stimulant to shameful mindless and irrational behaviour,’ says Matthew.

...I think it’d be fair to state that academic attention to alcohol has tended to fall under two predominant, but not independently exclusive, remits of research...

With regard to the representation of the effects of alcohol, common threads can be discerned throughout the ages, from Hogarth’s Gin Lane, depicting a debauched and drunken woman sprawled on a London street, to the modern media concerns surrounding female binge-drinking and its connection to a rise in unsafe sexual practices.

‘That people continue to drink, and often drink excessively, in spite of the social and moral condemnation, as well as the State efforts that seek to limit access to alcohol and dictate the ways in which it should be consumed... [makes one] question whether, underneath these negative discourses, there remains a more positive range of values and experiences to be gained from drinking which continually motivate individuals in groups to participate in this practice in the face of potential risks. This question is basically the theme and motivation for our meeting today,’ says Matthew.

You can listen to the whole podcast below, including the subsequent group discussion on topics such as the demise of pubs and working men’s clubs, the economic benefits of alcohol and the cultural shift towards buying alcohol from supermarkets.

Matthew Jackson spent his undergraduate years (2005-9) in Colchester at The University of Essex reading History and Modern Languages. He moved to the University of Warwick in 2009 and completed his MA dissertation on Women, Drink and Agency in Early Modern England and France, for which he was awarded the Sir John Elliot Prize for most outstanding MA performance. He is currently working towards a doctoral thesis entitled Drink and Identity: A Comparative Case Study of Early Modern Bristol and Bordeaux.

Dr Mark Hailwood undertook an MA in Religious and Social History 1500-1700 at the University of Warwick, followed by a PhD about the social and cultural lives of ordinary men and women in early modern England, seen through a particular form of social activity: drinking in alehouses. Afterwards Dr Hailwood took up a six-month IAS Early Career Fellowship, during which he helped to establish the interdisciplinary Warwick Drinking Studies Network.

By Dr Annette Rubery