Description:
This volume brings together a wealth of contemporary research from a diverse range of cultural contexts which explores sociological aspects of contemporary drinking and alcohol consumption practices. Drinking Dilemmas contributes a significant and much needed exploration of the contested role of alcohol and drunkenness in contemporary debates about place, identity and sociality.
Review Quotes:
"Drinking Dilemmas" is an important and timely collection of papers on the study of alcohol, drinking and drunkenness. Thurnell-Read has brought together a range of distinguished authors to explore how drinking practices and individual identities are both spatially and culturally defined. This book will prove to be a useful resource for both scholars and students at all levels who wish to understand the multiple ways in which individual identities, alcohol consumption, drinking practices and intoxicated behaviors are interwoven.
Geoffrey Hunt, Professor, Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research, Aarhus University, Denmark
This timely collection of recent research on the role of alcohol in cultural life makes an important contribution to contemporary debates about the 'demon drink'. Contributors challenge the overwhelmingly negative connotations of much public health and policy discourse, examining the diverse symbolic meanings of drinking in a range of social, political and economic contexts. The book has a distinctive focus on place and space, crossing academic disciplines from sociology and geography to criminology, and crossing the globe from the Bigg Market in Newcastle to Mar Mikhael in Beirut, via France, South Africa and the extreme metal music scene in Leeds, UK.
Professor Christine Griffin, University of Bath, UK
This book is, in my opinion, an excellent, informative, attractive and relevant read for all working in the substance misuse field. There is a lot of information, facts and figures and current thinking about emerging trends and alcohol-related social genres that I found very helpful and interesting.
John Sims, Bangor University, UK, British Sociological Association, Issue 130, Autumn 2018