‘In summer we go and drink at the lake’: young men and the geographies of alcohol and drinking in rural Estonia

In this paper, we explore the role of place in drinking practices of young people in the context of rural Estonia. We draw on a participatory research project carried out during seven months with a group of eight young men (15–18 years of age). We focus on three locations identified as the most popular drinking places by the young men in our research – familial homes, a local hamburger kiosk and the outdoors. The findings indicate that youth drinking practices as well as the drunkenness-related risks are spatially contingent. Characteristics of individual drinking locations influence the negotiation of local and national opportunities, restrictions and attitudes toward drinking, and the associated risks. We argue that, when developing public health tools, it is fruitful to pay attention to the local context and specific places in which young people's drinking practices are negotiated.     

National Alcohol in Hungary’s Reform Era: Wine,Spirits, and the Patriotic Imagination

Abstract

Hungarian elites saw wine consumption as a matter of national pride. The glorification of wine, and particularly of the luxury vintage Tokaji, reflected the economic interest and social customs of the Hungarian aristocracy, whose members tended to see themselves as the Hungarian nation. When liberal reformers began rationalizing the wine sector for mass production and export in the early nineteenth century, wine patriotism also became merged with the economic nationalism of Hungary’s Reform Era. Hungarian wine patriotism involved the denigration of alcoholic beverages other than wine, such as beer and spirits, since Hungarian public opinion associated these other alcoholic beverages with non-Magyar minorities in the Kingdom of Hungary, such as Slovaks, Croats, Germans, or Jews. Hungarian wine patriotism thus also illustrates the rise of Magyar chauvinism, anticipating ethnic conflict in the Kingdom of Hungary.     

Collapsing contexts: social networking technologies in young people’s nightlife

In the latest discussions of children and young people’s new geographies of leisure and pleasure, one controversial issue has been how digital technologies co-produce and reconfigure young people’s everyday worlds. This article draws on semi-structured interviews with 40 young people who regularly use social networking technologies in their nightlife experiences in Zurich and Lausanne, two nightlife hubs in Switzerland. Informed by Danah Boyd’s concepts of ‘collapsing contexts’ and ‘imagined audiences’, this article enables a critical engagement with young people’s emerging understanding of their nightlife contexts, which are increasingly permeated by networking technologies. I show how social networking spaces facilitate the coming together, or collapse, of various social contexts which induce young people to imagine multiple audiences, including authority figures, in their nightlife practices. These collapsing contexts and imagined audiences, I argue, present new perspectives on debates about control and surveillance in young people’s contemporary urban nightlife.     

Enthusiasm,craft and authenticity on the High Street: micropubs as ‘community fixers’

The retail recession has left a legacy of vacant shops on many shopping streets, with closures having significant consequences for local populations. But several new ‘pop-up’ formats are bucking this trend by bringing community-oriented forms of consumption back to the High Street. The micropub is a notable example, a small-scale venue selling real ale that has taken over a vacant shop premise, usually in smaller and struggling town centres. The rapid take-up of the micropub concept has attracted considerable attention, suggesting a model for retail regeneration based on community-mindedness and a close relationship between owner and customer. Based on ethnographic research in micropubs, alongside interviews with landlords, this paper suggests that their success is dependent upon the enthusiasm of landlords and customers alike, with such ‘cultures of enthusiasm’ encouraged via the nostalgic motifs of craft, tradition and Britishness that inform the curation of these seemingly ‘authentic’ spaces. The paper concludes that the micropub offers a form of socially-connective consumption highly valued by some, but stresses that there are clear limits to the ability of such spaces to be ‘community fixers’ given enthusiasm for real ale remains a distinctly white, male, and middle-aged pursuit.     

Maintaining the Bar: Regulating European Barmaids in Colonial Calcutta and Rangoon

In 1902 the government of India banned the employment of European women as barmaids in Calcutta and Rangoon. This article examines this intervention, proceeding from the premise that a close look at this ban, and the women whose lives were affected by it, illuminates the entangled and at times contradictory ideas about gender, sexuality, mobility, labour and racial boundaries that characterised British imperial policy in India and Burma at the beginning of the twentieth century. This article argues that European barmaids, while seemingly marginal, in fact occupied a unique and important position within the British Empire, being at the heart of the recreational worlds of Calcutta and Rangoon. It further argues that the ban on the employment of barmaids reflects a wider official ambivalence about the new social forms emerging from the interactions of mobile subjects in these colonial port cities. Finally, it argues that Curzon’s and his colleagues’ intervention to ban the barmaids demonstrates the way that the relations of empire were negotiated through the control of mobile subjects.

The employment of barmaids was controversial in multiple sites across the British Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, including in London. Yet the campaign against barmaids in London was unsuccessful, whereas the campaigns in Calcutta and Rangoon succeeded. The particular dynamics of the specific colonial context help to explain this difference: European barmaids in South and Southeast Asian colonial cities were marginal in multiple dimensions. Some of the women employed as barmaids were members of the domiciled European community, who occupied a place on the margins of both Englishness and ‘whiteness’. The barmaids’ employability in drinking establishments catering to a predominantly but not exclusively European clientele was in part a function of their European identity, yet that identity meant that their presence in the morally ambiguous space of the bar posed a threat to British prestige. To colonial officials, including Curzon, European women’s employment behind the bar was additionally problematic because these women could be employed in serving alcohol to non-European men in an inversion of the desired colonial hierarchy.     

Flows,Friction and the Sociomaterial Metabolization of Alcohol

Abstract: Political ecologists have considered the sociomateriality of diverse hybrids and the metabolism and circulation of urban flows such as water, food and waste. Adding alcohol to this list enhances our understanding of the geography of alcohol as well as the theory of sociomateriality. Viewing alcohol as a sociomaterial hybrid draws attention to the power‐laden, dynamic processes which shape its flow, rather than considering it as already in place. Additionally, my examination of alcohol calls attention to aspects of sociomateriality which are widely relevant but underexplored in the literature: the role of friction in shaping flows; the need to examine microscale impacts of sociomateriality on the body and community; and the conditional impacts of complex, unpredictable sociomaterial hybrids. I use a case study of alcohol in Cape Town to examine how alcohol flows, encounters friction, flows over boundaries and shapes sociability and harm in complex, indeterminate ways. Studies of alcohol typically focus on either its negative impacts on health and wellbeing or positive impacts on economic development, while policy debates focus on whether and how to control access. In this paper, I move beyond these binaries to provide a more nuanced, grounded articulation of how alcohol flows and what inhibits its flow. I examine the distribution of power and agency, limitations of state regulation, willingness of community members to act outside of and with little fear of the law, and the specificity of alcohol as a highly desirable commodity which easily flows around artificial barriers. These insights help clarify relationships, power and the (in)efficacy of policy efforts, and suggest the need to refocus debates. The paper is unable to provide specific policy recommendations, but instead argues that a better understanding of flows and frictions can move the focus from alcohol control to reducing alcohol‐related harm.     

Egas Moniz and the Origins of Psychosurgery: A Review Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Moniz's Nobel Prize

Modern psychosurgery began in 1936 with the work of the Portuguese neurologist, Egas Moniz, who attempted to treat the symptoms of mental illness by severing neural tracts in the frontal lobes. This procedure eventually became widespread and applied to thousands of institutionalized, psychotic patients in the United States and other countries. Despite serious side effects associated with psychosurgery, the apparent importance and validity of the treatment was recognized in 1949 when Moniz received the Nobel Prize for his innovation. Psychosurgery was largely replaced by anti-psychotic drugs in the mid-1950s, and the procedure and its practitioners rapidly fell into disrepute. This article reviews Moniz's career, the factors that led up to his first clinical trials of frontal lobe surgery, and the circumstances that allowed psychosurgery to flourish in the 1940s, eventually leading to Moniz's Nobel Prize.     

Young people and drinking in Italy: the good side of familism

Abstract

Since the 1990s, young people’s drinking has been a matter of public concern, attracting considerable media attention that has contributed to spreading the alarm. The purpose of this article is to dispel some stereotypes about youth drinking in Italy, by putting it in an international perspective and explaining some of the key factors that have contributed so far to limiting the spread of at-risk alcohol consumption when compared to other countries. Among these factors, the persistence of social values that emphasize family ties and the sharing of informal norms between adults and young people seem to play a prominent role. However, both the spread of increasingly individualistic values at a global level, and the growing complexity of transitions to adulthood could lead to changes in consumption patterns among Italian youth in the near future and increase risky behaviours.     

Going out,getting about: atmospheres of mobility in Melbourne's night-time economy

Drawing from recent affective geographies of drinking and drunkenness, this article explores the affective atmospheres of spaces of mobility in Melbourne's night-time economy and how these atmospheres shape the experience of alcohol-related problems. Our discussion is grounded in the analysis of interview data collected in 2012 among 60 young adults living in Melbourne. Participants included youth residing in the inner-city who reported taking a tram, walking or cycling to nearby venues along with youth from periurban communities who used trains, buses or taxis to travel to and from venues in the inner-city. Each group reported spending varying amounts of time on the move during a night-out drinking, although the atmospherics of mobility differed for each group. Inner-city participants described ‘comfortable’ or ‘fun’ journeys on the tram, walking or cycling, whereas participants from periurban communities spoke of ‘boring’ or ‘unpleasant’ journeys via train, night-bus or taxi. Moving beyond reports of the ‘priming’ effects of affective atmospheres, we conclude that these atmospheres are (co-)constituted in encounters between bodies, human and non-human, as they move. We close with a brief discussion of the implications of our analysis for the study of alcohol-related problems in the city at night.     

Constitutional Blemishes: American Alcohol Prohibition and Repeal as Policy Punctuation

Historical explanations for the American “noble experiment” with alcohol prohibition based on individual conspiracies, cultural changes, social movements, or self‐interested bureaucracies are partial and unsatisfying. Recent advances in punctuated equilibrium theory shine new light on this historical enigma, providing a more persuasive account of the dramatic episodes associated with both constitutional prohibition and its repeal. Through longitudinal analysis of a unique data set reflective of early twentieth century public alcohol control sentiments, this article suggests that, as but one of a range of potential alcohol policy options, national alcohol prohibition was hardly a foregone conclusion. The ultimate adoption of prohibition over competing alcohol control alternatives, as well as its eventual repeal, can best be understood with reference to particular feedback processes inherent in the institutional structure of American policymaking, which readily account for both the mad dash for prohibition and the widespread clamor for repeal, which have traditionally eluded historical explanation.