drinking cultures - alcohol and identity - wilson

[...]... power and identity, in terms of their related practices, traditions, understandings and embodiments – 12 – Drinking Cultures Drinking Cultures Given all of this attention to historical and contemporary anthropological accounts of the intersections of drinking alcohol, culture and society, it is worth noting that one of the most durable and influential analyses of the meanings and practices of drinking. .. is the co-author (with Hastings Donnan) of Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation and State (1999, Berg), the co-editor (with Irène Bellier) of An Anthropology of the European Union (2000, Berg) and the co-editor (with James Anderson and Liam O’Dowd) of New Borders for a Changing Europe (2003, Frank Cass) – xv – Drinking Cultures –1– Drinking Cultures Sites and Practices in the Production and Expression... chapters: the politics of class and national identity, the distinctions represented in beer and wine drinking, the formal and informal economic relations which depend on alcohol and drinking behaviors, and the local and global intersections which give definition to identities, and cause for change in all the drinking arenas which have proved so important to Maltese identity and culture As Mitchell (2002)... age and class, with various drinking arenas, fields, networks, occasions, places and spaces The anthropology of alcohol and drinking has a long and distinguished pedigree, but some of the major figures in this anthropological tradition have long recognized the need to desist to some extent from theorizing drinking alcohol as a social problem, and to pay more attention to the roles which alcohol and drinking. .. culture and identity, and the relevance of anthropological studies of drinking, ethnicity and national identity to wider scholarly concerns with the differentiating processes of culture Our chapters review various aspects of drinking places and spaces, memories, economics and politics, and wider expressions of culture and identity Many other thematic threads run through them, such as gendered drinking. .. this importance and the situation to change In many societies, perhaps the majority, drinking alcohol is a key practice in the expression of identity, an element in the construction and dissemination of national and other cultures And the roles of drinking, in terms of culture and identity, are not ‘simply’ (as if such things are simple) aspects of everyday life, that arena of discourse and action so... investigation of drinking cultures Drinking Politics Drinking is also a political act, whether it be in terms of the grander formal politics of government, party and policy, or in the interpersonal relations of power and authority In Anthony Marcus’s chapter we approach the intersections of civil and political society, on the margins of big-city and small-city life in the United States, in ways which demand that... drinking beyond descriptive notions of performing culture and expressing identity in order to view drinking sites and practices as realizations of national, ethnic, gender and class culture Before some of the chapters’ particular themes are introduced, however, a brief review of the anthropology of drinking alcohol and its relation to studies of national identity and culture is in order Leftovers and. .. express and discuss their identities and cultures Alcohol is one of the ingredients in social cement, but also one of the means to remove such adhesion As a result, it is a tool of our profession, and one of the key metaphors and practices of the cultures we seek to explicate The importance of drink and drinking to ethnographers is clear We meet informants and share alcohol We partake of food and drink... ethnicity and national identity Drinking practices are active elements in individual and group identifications, and the sites where drinking takes place, the locales of regular and celebrated drinking, are places where meanings are made, shared, disputed and reproduced, where identities take shape, flourish and change To borrow from Keith Basso’s (1996) analysis of Western Apache notions of their landscape, . Cataloging-in-Publication Data Drinking cultures : alcohol and identity / edited by Thomas M. Wilson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-8 597 3-8 7 3-7 (pbk.) — ISBN 1-8 597 3-8 6 8-0 . Ayora-Diaz and Gabriela Vargas-Cetina 155 – vii – – viii – Contents 9 Cheers and Booze: Football and Festa Drinking in Malta Jon P. Mitchell and Gary Armstrong 179 10 Drinking Rituals, Identity and. Frank Cass). Contributors – xv – Drinking Cultures – 1 – –1– Drinking Cultures Sites and Practices in the Production and Expression of Identity Thomas M. Wilson Some time ago, on my arrival in Ireland for pre-dissertation