Drinking in the dark: shedding light on young people’s alcohol consumption experiences

Abstract

This paper draws on 12 months of ethnographic research to explore the drinking experiences of young people, aged 15–24, living in the suburban case study locations of Chorlton and Wythenshawe, Manchester, UK. This paper moves beyond the contemporary geographical imaginary of alcohol consumption as a city centre issue, to explore suburban indoor and outdoor drinking cultures. Through paying attention to atmospheres of darkness and lightness, I show how drinkscapes are active constituents of young people’s drinking occasions, rather than passive backdrops. More than this, I illustrate how young people transform dark and light drinkscapes, thereby shaping the drinking practices of themselves and others. Through looking at the interplay between the curating of an atmosphere, and the experience of that atmosphere when bodies, and practices are inserted into it, this paper offers a different take on the ‘drinking at home is bad, drinking in public spaces is good’ argument, with original policy suggestions.     

Recognition,power and coloniality

Recognition has emerged in recent decades as an almost universally valued moral and political horizon in intercultural contexts. Recognition claims underpin myriad social struggles, and forms and practices of recognition also animate the management of alterities within both formal and informal arenas. Recently, critical Indigenous scholars Audra Simpson and Glen Coulthard have posed a fundamental challenge to this moral and political horizon. Writing particularly in response to North American settler colonialism, they argue that the politics of recognition has functioned, not to ameliorate colonialism’s negative effects, but to reproduce them. We seek here to respond to the important provocation posed by Simpson and Coulthard’s scholarship, and to extend their critiques into new geographic and empirical terrains. Specifically, we draw on the notion of coloniality to establish a comparative frame that can bring both settler and non-settler postcolonial contexts into dialogue. Doing so highlights a multiplicity of forms of recognition relationships, as well as of sites and structures of power beyond the settler state. It also illuminates a complex, unstable middle ground that can exist between recognition and its absence, which provides a productive ground from which to engage with the possibilities of being against, or beyond, recognition.     

What's in a name? Anthrozoology,human‐animal studies,animal studies or…? (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Human interactions with other animals feature regularly in the pages of Anthropology Today, and academic research focusing on the human‐animal relationship is undergoing something of a boom in the social sciences and humanities generally. This comment, prompted by Caplan's paper ‘Death on the farm’ in the last issue of AT, considers the place of human‐animal interactions in anthropology through a discussion of the terminology and methodologies employed by scholars within this area. It is argued that such a discussion is instructive because, as the etymology of the term suggests, anthropology is ultimately concerned with ‘understanding humans’. The ways that we, as researchers, choose to distinguish between humans and other animals, and the ways that we choose to represent our informants' interactions with other animals, can provide considerable insight into how all concerned think about what it means to be human.     

Here be Dragons? No, big cats! Predator symbolism in rural West Wales

The presence of non-endemic 'Alien Big Cats' (ABCs) in Britain is an oft debated topic in the press and the public sphere, especially in rural areas where agriculture is the dominant industry. Based on seven years of fieldwork in a farming community in rural Ceredigion, West Wales, this paper considers the 'Big Cat' phenomenon from the perspectives of informants for whom inexplicable livestock losses must be accounted for and 'rationalised'. Moreover, in this ethnographic context, ABCs, like other transgressive non-human animals, have become particularly powerful metaphors for the humans who encounter them.     

Panel regression formulas for estimating stature and body mass from immature human skeletons: a statistical approach without reference to specific age estimates

Anthropologists require methods for accurately estimating stature and body mass from the human skeleton. Age-structured, generalized Least Squares (LS) regression formulas have been developed to predict stature from femoral length and to predict body mass in immature human remains using the width of the distal metaphysis, midshaft femoral geometry (J), and femoral head diameter. This paper tests the hypothesis that panel regression is an appropriate statistical method for regression modeling of longitudinal growth data, with longitudinal and cross-sectional effects on variance. Reference data were derived from the Denver Growth Study; panel regression was used to create one formula for estimating stature (for individuals 0.5–11.5 years old); two formulas for estimating body mass from the femur in infants and children (0.5–12.5 years old); and one formula for estimating body mass from the femoral head in older subadults (7–17.5 years old). The formulas were applied to an independent target sample of cadavers from Franklin County, Ohio and a large sample of immature individuals from diverse global populations. Results indicate panel regression formulas accurately estimate stature and body mass in immature skeletons, without reference to an independent estimate for age at death. Thus, using panel regression formulas to estimate stature and body mass in forensic and archaeological specimens may reduce second stage errors associated with inaccurate age estimates.     

Police and Political Violence in the 1960s and 1970s: Germany and Italy in a Comparative Perspective

Notwithstanding the significant differences between the German and Italian police models (federal and civil vs. centralised and militarised), in both countries the confrontation with the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s had a profound impact on police conceptions and public order strategies. Police forces in some German federal states (West Berlin) followed a hard line until the late 1960s, while in others (Munich, Hamburg) reforms to the Weimar-centred police intervention tactics took place beginning in the early to mid-1960s. In Italy, traditional police conceptions and strategies remained largely unchanged and re-emerged in 1968. Here, a movement from within the police led to the demilitarisation and unionisation of the state police in 1981. In both countries, fighting left-wing terrorism in the 1970s stimulated technical modernisation and enhanced the centralisation of the police. In critical response to police tactics, in the late 1970s Germany police matters were increasingly perceived as a concern not only of the state but of civil society—even if policing remained a highly contested terrain. In Italy, such matters largely remained state concerns in which only politicians and internal security specialists were entitled to intervene.     

‘Travail,famille, patrie’ dans L'écume des jours de Boris Vian

Having historically lagged behind most Western countries on matters relating to disability, France now seems poised on the brink of a new era in the provision for, and attitudes to, people with disabilities. This article begins with a brief examination of the political context of this recent change, including the new anti-discrimination law of 2005, the positions of both Chirac and Sarkozy, and the recent work of Julia Kristeva. Since one of Kristeva's main aims is to change the way in which disability is seen, this article goes on to examine in detail the photographic work of Delphine Censier, a woman with disabilities who is also concerned with changing perceptions of disability, and making possible a new relationship between people with and without impairments. Censier's work—which pictures her in lingerie and in sexually suggestive poses—appears problematic, at first glance, from both a feminist and a disability theory perspective. Using the work of US disability theorists such as Rosemarie Garland Thomson and Robert McRuer, however, this article argues that Censier's work in fact self-consciously performs disabled sexuality in a nuanced and insistently non-normative manner and, in so doing, goes a long way to fostering the new perspectives on disability that Kristeva's own work, alone, could not.

En ce qui concerne les attitudes envers le handicap, la France a toujours été considérée comme étant en retard par rapport à d'autres pays occidentaux. Pourtant, une nouvelle époque semble actuellement se préparer dans ce domaine. Cet article examine d'abord le contexte politique de cette nouvelle attitude, évoquant notamment la loi de 2005 sur l'égalité des chances; les positions et de Chirac et de Sarkozy, et le travail récent de Julia Kristeva. L'un des buts principaux de Kristeva est de changer la façon dont on regarde les personnes en situation de handicap. Ainsi, cet article examine en détail le travail photographique de Delphine Censier, une femme en situation de handicap qui veut, comme Kristeva, changer le regard des ‘valides’ vis-à-vis du handicap, et qui veut aussi imaginer de nouveaux rapports entre ceux qui sont en situation de handicap et ceux qui ne le sont pas. Dans ses photographies, Censier porte de la lingerie et se montre volontairement séduisante. Considérées sous un aspect féministe, ou bien selon les principes de ce que le monde anglo-saxon appelle ‘disability theory’, ces photographies présentent des problèmes d'interprétation. Pourtant, à l'aide du travail des théoriciens américains Rosemarie Garland Thomson et Robert McRuer, cet article se propose de démontrer que le travail de Censier est performatif, qu'il interroge, consciemment, les normes sexuelles du monde ‘valide’ dans le but de lui montrer que sa perception de la ‘sexualité handicapée’ devrait être beaucoup plus nuancée. De cette manière, l'?uvre de Censier ajoute une autre perspective à la critique de Kristeva, suscitant de nouvelles interprétations ‘visuelles’ de la personne handicapée.