Journal of Studies on Alcohol 61:475-483, 2000
TYPOLOGIES OF THE CULTURAL
POSITION OF DRINKING
Robin Room, Ph.D.1
and Klaus Mäkelä, Ph.D.2
1National
Institute for Alcohol and Drug Research
Dannevigsveien 10
0463 Oslo, Norway
2Finnish
Foundation for Alcohol Studies
POB 220
0531 Helsinki, Finland
Abstract
Objective: Typologies of
the cultural position of drinking from the social science literature are
reviewed. Method: The paper reviews significant studies and literature
on the topic. Results: Starting the 1940s, two research traditions
considered variations in the cultural position of drinking as explanations of
rates of drinking problems. A
“holocultural” tradition coded and analyzed ethnographic data on tribal and
village societies, starting in the 1940s, with each study identifying a
different social dimension as crucial. A
sociological tradition distinguished abstinent cultures and prescriptive
cultures, where drinking was integrated with daily life and expected, but
drunkenness prohibited. These types were
implicitly contrasted with American drinking, which was variously
characterized. Other dimensional and
typological approaches in the literature are considered, including a
little-known Jellinek typology. Problems
with the widely-used distinction between "wetter" and
"dryer" or "temperance" cultures are discussed. Conclusions: Four ideal-types of the
cultural position of drinking can be readily distinguished: abstinent
societies, constrained ritual drinking, banalized drinking, and fiesta
drunkenness. But there remains a large
residual category, and a dimensional approach to typology-building may be more
fruitful. Two basic dimensions are
proposed, regularity of drinking and
extent of drunkenness, and further dimensions are described which may be added
to fit the requirements of the particular study.
TYPOLOGIES OF THE CULTURAL
POSITION OF DRINKING
Robin Room and Klaus Mäkelä
INTRODUCTION
It has long been recognized that societies differ in
drinking practices and in the cultural position of drinking. Often the differences were noted in the
course of deploring the barbarous customs of others. Whereas the ancient Greeks drank their wine
mixed with water, Plato noted that
"the
Scythians and Thracians, both men and women, take their wine neat and let it
pour down over their clothes, and regard this practice of theirs as a noble and
splendid practice; and the Persians indulge greatly in these and other
luxurious habits." (Nencini, 1997)
Alternatively, the customs of
others would be held out as a positive example for one's own society. Writing a couple of millenia after Plato,
Martin Luther complained of the "the abuse of eating and drinking which
gives us Germans a bad reputation in foreign lands", observing that
"the Italians call us gluttonous, drunken Germans and pigs because they
live decently and do not drink until they are drunk. Like the Spaniards, they have escaped this
vice" (Room, 1988).
Efforts to systematize such observations into typologies
of the cultural position of drinking have a shorter history, stretching back
about half a century. This paper reviews
and discusses these efforts. By the
“cultural position of drinking” we are referring both to norms about the use of
alcohol in the culture, and to the relation of drinking to other aspects of the
culture. Not far from the surface in
most modern discussions of the cultural position of drinking is also a concern
about the occurrence of problems related to drinking in the culture. The discussion of the cultural position of
drinking may be linked to assertions or findings about the rate of drinking
problems in general (usually “alcoholism” in the earlier discussions), or about
the characteristic types or profile of problems related to alcohol in the
culture.
THE HOLOCULTURAL STUDIES
TRADITION
Two main traditions have aimed at analyzing the cultural
position of drinking. The holocultural tradition has used a dimensional
approach and analyzes Human Relations Area Files data on preindustrial
societies. In the so-called sociocultural tradition, the approach has been more
typological and mainly based on industrialized societies. The basic goal of
both traditions is, however, to explain the occurrence or rates of pathological
drinking.
Holocultural theories explicitly purport to explain
intercultural variations in the use of alcohol in terms of generalized
functions of drinking on the individual level. The first holocultural study of
the determinants of drinking was carried out by Donald Horton (1943). Horton's
basic hypothesis was that the primary function of alcohol in all societies is
the reduction of anxiety. A sample of preliterate societies was given ratings
on the degree of insobriety among men. The level of anxiety was measured by two
indicators of subsistence insecurity and one of acculturation. By a
correlational analysis, Horton found insobriety to be positively related to
anxiety. Later on, Horton's results received support and were challenged in a
number of studies using more sophisticated sampling techniques and alternative
measures of the key concepts.
The most important rival psychological explanations of
intercultural variations in drinking were presented by Margaret K. Bacon,
Herbert Barry and Irvin L. Child (1965) and David McClelland and his
collaborators (1972). Bacon et al. take the position that drunkenness should be
seen as a means of alleviating dependency conflict. In the view of McClelland
et al., men drink in order to attain a feeling of personal power. The
relationship between the three theoretical generalizations is anything but
clear. Each school of thought seems to regard the rival explanations as being
included in its own theory as special cases.
Holocultural statistical studies explicitly seek general
psychological theories to explain the genesis of alcoholism. From the viewpoint
of intellectual history, the rival theories are all attempts to explain
American alcoholism. Although the hypotheses relating to alcohol have been
formulated in terms of highly abstract concepts, each of them is anchored to
alternative ideas about the psychodynamics of personality.
When anthropological data are used, the occurrence of
psychological states postulated by different theories must be determined
indirectly. These indicators, which are intended to measure individual states,
in fact primarily reflect structural features of a culture or society, and
could as well be subjected to alternative psychological interpretations. The
theories are thus at one and the same time too generalized and too specific in
relation to the evidence provided by preliterate societies. The matter is not
helped, of course, by the fact that all the holocultural studies are committed
to a view of preliterate cultures as internally homogeneous, so that intragroup
variation in drinking is not taken into consideration (Stull, 1975).
In many studies the observation has been made that the
complexity of the political and social organization of society correlates
negatively with drunkenness. In Horton's study, subsistence insecurity was
measured by the nature of the economy (hunting, herding, agriculture) of each
society. As pointed out by Peter B. Field (1962), Horton's measure represents a
continuum of social organization as well as one of subsistence insecurity.
Richard E. Boyatzis on the other hand, presents an
interpretation of social stratification in terms of power concerns experienced
by individuals. "If indicators of structural differentiation are low
within a social group, it can be expected that the individual will experience a
persistent pressure to demonstrate his prowess and his right to claim a
position of importance in the community" (Boyatzis, 1976, 275-276).
It is thus easy to invent many different psychological
interpretations of the same results. It should be noted that a simpler
interpretation is also available, one based directly on variations in social
control. The higher the degree of social stratification, the higher the
probability that disruptive drinking among the lower strata is under tight
social control.
But the multiple psychological interpretations of the
measures used are not, as such, the source of the most serious trouble in
holocultural research. The greatest difficulties are due to the fact that
variables on altogether different levels, from the standpoint of describing the
structure of society, are given equivalent psychological interpretations. Thus,
the methods of educating children, the nature of the economy or the contents of
folk tales might be used as alternative measures of the same psychological
concepts. Nor is it seen as a problem that societies which have evolved
economically and socially on very different levels are included in the same
correlation matrix.
By applying psychological interpretations to social
features on quite different levels, one also obscures the possibility that the
microprocesses of social interaction may influence drinking similarly in
different types of societies. It is quite reasonable to suppose that systems of
consanguinity and child rearing influence drinking needs and drinking customs
regardless of whether the livelihood of the community is based on hunting,
stock raising or growing crops. The mode of gaining a livelihood and the social
and political organization of the community are bound up together to such an
extent, however, that it would be advisable in studying the connections between
child rearing and the use of alcohol, for example, to hold constant those
qualitative stages of social evolution.
A comparative reading of holocultural studies reinforces
the view that the psychological effects of alcohol are so multifarious as to
make it difficult to fit them into any specific psychological theory of need.
The answer generally given to the question "What needs does drinking
satisfy?" tends to remain too abstract in relation to historical variation,
even though at the same time it is liable to be too specifically identified
with a given theory of personality.
Holocultural studies are nevertheless useful in two ways
when explanations are sought for fluctuations in the level of alcohol
consumption. For one thing, they show that even in preliterate societies social
control and social and political power relationships are important factors to
consider in the study of drinking customs and the level of alcohol consumption
(see especially Field, 1962, and Bacon, 1976).
Secondly, such studies make it clear that the drinking
customs in every society are bound up with its overall cultural dynamics. The
psychological generalizations available are, to be sure, too abstract to be
able to delineate these connections, but this does not make the connections
less real. Cultural norms and the ongoing interaction of daily life possess
their own dynamics, which are likely to generate pressures toward heavy
drinking. These special features of culture and interaction probably have an
autonomous impact on drinking patterns which cannot be explained by the
material structure of the society.
THE SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH
The second main tradition of classifying cultural
drinking patterns is associated with what became known as the "sociocultural
approach". The first substantial
effort in this line was by Robert Bales.
In a publication based on his dissertation, Bales (1946) distinguished
four "types of attitudes which are represented in various cultural groups
and which seem to have different effects on the rates of alcoholism". The first, "complete abstinence",
is primarily discussed in terms of Moslem societies; the second, a "ritual
attitude", is exemplified with a detailed discussion of the place of wine
in Orthodox Jewish rituals. Bales uses
Irish and Irish-American drinking as his exemplification of the
"utilitarian attitude" to drinking, which includes "medicinal
drinking and other types calculated to further self-interest or purely personal
satisfaction". His fourth type is
"convivial drinking", which he presents as a "mixed type,
tending toward the ritual in the symbolism of solidarity, and toward the
utilitarian in the ‘good feeling’ expected.
Wherever it is found highly developed it seems to be in danger of
breaking down toward purely utilitarian drinking". Again, Irish material is used to illustrate
the type.
Though couched at a cultural level, Bales' typology
incorporates functions or utilities at the individual level, particularly in
the distinction between the third and fourth types. Furthermore, the article does not offer any
example of a culture which has either convivial or utilitarian drinking but
lacks the other. Essentially, then,
Bales' analysis singled out two types of cultural positioning of alcohol in which
alcohol problems seem to be minimized: an abstinence orientation (although here
he tended to emphasize the violations of the "taboo"), and a cultural
positioning which requires ritual drinking but with strong norms against
drunkenness as "a profanity, an abomination, a perversion of the sacred
use of wine".
Bales' analysis was the first in a tradition of analysis
which became known as the "sociocultural approach" in U.S. alcohol
studies. Among the various formulations
of the distinctions, one systematic effort was Mizruchi and Perrucci's (1970;
earlier version published 1962) distinction between "proscriptive",
"prescriptive", and "permissive" cultural norms on
drinking. Mizruchi and Perrucci used Mormons and Methodists in the United
States as examples of "proscriptive" cultural groups, and Jews and
Italians as examples of cultures with "prescriptive" norms, that is,
cultures where drinking was expected but drunkenness prohibited. The third
type, "permissive" norms, seemed to "be characteristic of periods
of normative transformation", an anomic period in which norms were not
specified. Although evidence on third type is said to be "scanty",
Mizruchi and Perrucci give examples from the general North American and Finnish
cultures.
An influential analysis in the same tradition was
Ullman's (1958) distinction between "integrated" and
"unintegrated drinking customs".
Orthodox Jews and Italians appear again as exemplars of "integrated
drinking customs", this time along with the Chinese; for examples of
"unintegrated drinking customs", Ullman cited Irish-Americans and the
impressionistic description by Selden Bacon of drinking among Protestant
middle-class northeastern Americans of British ancestry. Ascribing "unintegrated drinking
customs" to an "ambivalence" over drinking, Ullman put forward a
much-reproduced hypothesis:
"in any group
or society in which the drinking customs, values and sanctions -- together with
the attitudes of all segments of the group or society -- are well established,
known to and agreed upon by all, and are consistent with the rest of the
culture, the rate of alcoholism will be low."
A further elaboration in this
typological tradition was offered by Pittman's (1967) description of four types
of drinking cultures:
Abstinent culture: "the cultural attitude is negative and prohibitive toward any
type of ingestion of alcoholic beverage". The Islamic, Hindu, and ascetic
Protestant traditions are mentioned here.
Ambivalent
culture: "the cultural attitude toward beverage alcohol usage is one
of conflict between co-existing value structures". While the main
discussion here is of U.S. and Irish drinking, there is also mention of some
village and tribal societies and of the Netherlands.
Permissive culture: "the cultural attitude toward ingesting beverage alcohol is
permissive, but negative toward drunkenness and other drinking
pathologies". Spain, Portugal, Italy, Japan, and Jewish and Chinese New
Yorkers are mentioned as examples here.
Over-permissive culture: "the cultural attitude is permissive toward
drinking, to behaviours which occur when intoxicated, and to drinking
pathologies". Japan is mentioned again here, along with the Bolivian Camba
and France. Pittman comments that "in one sense, this type ... does not
occur completely in societies, but only approximations in certain nonliterate
societies, in those cultures undergoing considerable social change, and those
in which there are strong economic vested interests in the production and
distribution of alcoholic beverages".
In the early 1970s, the Ullman hypothesis became
influential in US government policy, forming the intellectual underpinning for
the "responsible drinking" campaigns of the National Institute on
Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism under its first director, Morris Chafetz (Chafetz,
1970; Room, 1976).
This tradition of thinking has been critiqued from a
number of different directions (Mäkelä, 1975; Room, 1976, Orcutt, 1991). The critiques to some extent focused on the
conceptual framing: for instance, that an absence of norms was sociologically
unlikely, and that societal differences in regulatory controls were left out of
the discussions.
Critiques also pointed out that most analyses in this
tradition relied on a very narrow empirical base. The same few cultures
reappear again and again as exemplars; despite the already burgeoning
anthropological literature on drinking in tribal and village societies,
Pittman's analysis is unusual among these discussions in even mentioning where
such societies might be placed on a typology.
Lastly, it was noted that the typologies were primarily
organized around half-expressed contrasts with a presumed American drinking
culture. In this regard, the crucial
contrast was between a category of cultures, however named, in which drinking
was seen as "integrated" into daily life and nonproblematic, and the
presumptively "ambivalent" U.S. drinking culture, in which norms were
seen as unclear or contested and in which drinking took on a problematic
character (Room, 1976).
Reflecting a new emphasis in the 1970s on the importance
of levels of drinking in a society's rate of alcohol problems, Frankel and
Whitehead (1981), in an analysis based on the Human Relations Area Files data
in the holocultural studies tradition, turned Ullman's hypothesis on its head:
"In any group
or society in which the over-all level of consumption is high and (to a lesser
extent) where proscriptions against excessive drinking are few or absent, the
rate of alcohol-related damage will be high.
Where drinking practices are integrated into the cultural structure and
where prescriptions for moderate drinking are prevalent, the over-all level of
consumption will be high." (Frankel and Whitehead, 1981:58)
Though this analysis has some
of the problems noted above with other studies in the holocultural tradition,
it does not seem to have drawn any critical comment. In fact, while the vision
of integrated drinking remains an ideal in popular discussions in both North
America and Scandinavia (Room, 1992), there has been little recent empirical
work in the sociocultural tradition.
UNIDIMENSIONAL APPROACHES
To some extent, the sociocultural tradition has been
succeeded by a tradition of discussion in terms of the "wetness" or
"dryness" of a culture. Where
the dimension to be explained of variation between drinking cultures in the
sociocultural tradition was between low and high rates of alcoholism or alcohol
problems, the discussion of wetness/dryness has emphasized the different mixture of alcohol problems
characteristic of the "wet" and "dry" ends of the
spectrum. Primarily focusing on European
and English-speaking societies, the tradition defines not only drinking
patterns and problems but also the system of social controls on drinking as
part of the overall cultural positioning of drinking.
An early example of this tradition was Christie's
comparative analysis of "the Scandinavian experience". Though Christie (1965) did not use the terms
"wet" and "dry", he described empirically a spectrum of
variation with Denmark at one end -- with the highest per-capita consumption,
the least restrictive control structure, but the lowest arrest rate for public
drunkenness -- and Finland at the other.
Christie offered a brief sketch of a model for how the variables
interact:
“A strict system of
legal and organizational control of accessibility of alcohol seems to be
related to low alcohol consumption, but also to a high degree of public
nuisance. The causal chain probably goes
like this: A drinking culture with a large degree of highly visible,
non-beneficial effects of alcohol consumption leads to a strict system of
control which somewhat reduces total consumption, which again influences and
most often reduces the visible problems.
But also, the system of control influences visible problems -- sometimes
probably in the direction of increasing them.... In determining the amount of consumption and
the problems created by consumption, I do not perceive the system of control as
the independent variable. I view the
system of control to be interrelated with the amount of consumption and
especially with visible problems.” (Christie, 1965)
In a series of analyses,
analogous patternings of social and health statistics were found in comparisons
among states and regions within the U.S. (Room, 1974), among districts within
California (Bunce, 1976), and in cross-national comparisons (Noble, 1979, pp.
20-25). In schematic form, the contrast
between the ideal types of "wet" and "dry" patterns was laid
out as in Table 1 (Room and Mitchell, 1972).
In the same vein, using
general-population survey data, Cahalan and Room (1974) showed that more
tangible consequences of drinking were reported for a given pattern of drinking
in "dryer" than in "wetter" regions and neighbourhoods of
the U.S. A comparison of drinking habits
in European cultures (Ahlström-Laakso, 1976) emphasized differentiations
between "dryer" and "wetter" cultures on two dimensions: on
the integration of drinking with meals in southern Europe but not in northern;
and on the stronger traditions in "dryer" cultures of ostensive
drunkenness and its control by formal criminal law.
As Table 1 illustrates, studies in
this tradition have consistently recognized that the "dryer" pattern,
as it is described in the context of European and English-speaking cultures, is
associated with a history of a strong temperance movement in the culture. In an analysis by Harry Levine (1992), this
is taken as the defining characteristic in a dichotomization of societies into "temperance
cultures" and others. What the temperance
cultures have in common, in Levine's view, is a dominant tradition of
Protestant religion. Levine draws on the
classic sociological analyses of Weber and Durkheim to argue that Protestantism
carries with it a cultural emphasis on self-regulation and self-control, and
discerns this at the heart of continuing high levels of societal concern about
drinking and drunkenness.
But not all Protestantism seems to
result in high concerns with temperance, Levine concedes, taking into account
Eriksen's comparative analysis (1989) of Denmark and Sweden in this
regard. And, from the other side,
Zielinski (1994) has put forward a spirited argument that, though Catholic,
Poland should be counted as having a strong temperance tradition and a
continuing high level of "alcohol-related moral annoyance".
Furthermore, there are other
relevant differences between "dryer" and "wetter" societies
in Europe which could lie behind the differences in alcohol's cultural position
(Room, 1989). The industrial revolution,
with its increased requirements for labour discipline, came earlier and made a
stronger cultural impact where temperance movements became strongest. In the last century, moves towards women's
emancipation have been most developed where temperance has been strong. While these factors, too, can be seen as
influenced by Protestantism, as historical phenomena they had their own direct
influence on the cultural position of drinking.
Most obviously, southern Europe is
the ancestral home of the world's "wine cultures"; in most parts of
southern Europe, wine has been the dominant alcoholic beverage since
antiquity. This factor links the wet/dry
discussions with another tradition of typological classification, into “beer”,
“wine” and “spirits” cultures, according to the traditionally dominant
beverage-type (Sulkunen, 1976, 1983).
For while this is obviously a three-way classification, the distinctions
drawn in this tradition have been primarily on a single dimension between “wine
cultures”, at one end, and “spirits cultures”, at the other, with “beer
cultures” in between.
As the "Mediterranean
pattern" is often described, wine is consumed almost entirely with meals,
and always in moderate amounts. In the
stereotypical description, alcohol is not only integrated but also
domesticated. And, indeed, drinking in
the wine-drinking cultures is clearly associated with less officially
recognized social disruption than elsewhere.
Wine-drinking cultures also proved more resistant to the "spirits
epidemic" of the 17th and 18th centuries, whereas cheap industrial spirits
seemed to bring a new level of alcohol problems to northern European
societies. But there is room for some
scepticism about the idyllic descriptions of drinking in wine cultures, which
are often written from a distance. For
instance, close ethnographic description reveals that much of the everyday
drinking in rural Greece goes on in the male world of the taverna,
rather than with meals at home (Gefou-Madianou, 1992a). While ostensive drunkenness seems to be less
common in wine cultures (e.g., Morgan, 1982), there can be a considerable
prevalence of unremarked drunkenness that is simply accepted as part of the
everyday scene:
"in societies
where alcohol is highly valued and praised, even considered sacred, and
constitutes an inseparable part of everyday social life drunkenness is not
necessarily considered a social or personal problem." (Gefou-Madianou,
1992b)
There seems to be increasing recognition
that the "wet/dry" dichotomy is somewhat problematic. In part, this reflects ongoing changes in
drinking cultures (Simpura, 1998): consumption levels have been converging in
Europe, as wine cultures have reduced their per-capita consumption and many
traditionally dryer societies have been increasing theirs. The label "dry" or "wet"
makes less sense as the per-capita levels converge.
As the frame of reference expands
beyond Europe, it also becomes increasingly clear that the label
"dry" has been applied to rather divergent cultural framings of
drinking. A society in which almost no
one drinks within the national borders can obviously be described as
"dry". But how about a society
in which drinking is confined for many to a few fiestas each year, and in which
the public discourse around alcohol is negative and moralistic? Or how about a society in which consumption
has risen in a few decades from very low levels to rival the levels of the
European wine cultures, but which seems to have retained a tradition of
sporadic extreme drunkenness? These
descriptions approximate the position in Saudi Arabia, Mexico and South Korea
respectively; it is questionable how useful it is to call them all
"dry" societies, though each has features which fit the
"dry" end of the dichotomy.
One problem with the
"wet/dry" dichotomy, in fact, is that it overlaps with another
dichotomy or dimension: the degree of association of drunkenness with
violence. The most influential
discussion in this area has been MacAndrew and Edgerton's interpretation (1969)
of the ethnographic record, which argues that cultures differ greatly in the
extent to which drunkenness results in "drunken
changes-for-the-worse" -- violent and other deviant behaviour. Implicit in MacAndrew and Edgerton's
discussion is a continuum, with societies in which drunken behaviour does not
differ at all from sober behaviour at one end and societies in which serious
violence is expected at the other end.
As a constraint on this end of the continuum, MacAndrew and Edgerton
note a "within limits" clause: that drunken comportment is still
governed by norms in such societies, but that they are different norms from
norms for sobriety.
In his study of Sociability and
Intoxication, which focuses in particular on drinking in Africa, Partanen
(1991) concludes by offering a contrast which might be seen as an
interpretation of MacAndrew and Edgerton's continuum: a contrast between ideal
types of "heroic drinking" and "modern drinking". Partanen draws on MacIntyre's (1984)
typification of "heroic societies" as described in Homer or the
Icelandic sagas, where strength and courage are valued as the virtues which
allow men to carry out the prescribed social roles, in which each individual
has a defined role and status and a prescribed set of duties and
privileges. Heroic drinking, as Partanen
formulates it,
"is the kind
of drinking from which all instrumentality and critical self-reflection are
absent, and it is a phenomenon that is essentially constituted by the stories
and myths spun around it. In the rituals
of heroic drinking these stories and myths are re-enacted and brought to life;
the shared experience of the participants coalesces with the mythical content
of heroic drinking and gets its significance from it." (p. 238)
In contrast to
this, Partanen argues that "alcohol and drinking in modern societies are
in a far more marginal position than in premodern Europe and North America, or
in the traditional African beer cultures" (p. 248).
"It is true
that alcohol is quite freely available and it use is extensive. The difference
is that we are not highly engaged with it[,] apart from young people's passage
rites and the alcoholics' way of life....
The dysfunctions of drunkenness put strict limits on the occasions in
which it is possible to indulge in serious drinking. Alcohol does not belong to offices and
factories, and its role in traffic arouses growing concern. Social drinking is most often permeated by
considerations external to it; the functional uses of alcohol have gained at
the cost of "drinking for drinking's sake". (p. 249)
MULTIDIMENSIONAL
TYPOLOGIES
All the approaches discussed so far
have been essentially unidimensional in their classification of drinking
societies, at least when abstaining societies have been set aside. There have also been a few discussions in the
literature where the cultural position of drinking has been described not in
terms of an implied single dimension (other than abstention), but in terms of a
multidimensional typology.
One of the most interesting of these
is a little-noticed cultural-level typology put forward by Jellinek. Behind Jellinek’s well-known Greek-letter
typology of the five “species” of alcoholism (Jellinek, 1960a, 1960b), which is
couched in terms of a characterization of individual drinkers, lay some years
of thinking about the elements of cultural differentiation in "the
problems of alcohol", only part of which was published in accessible form
(Jellinek, 1962). His most systematic
effort on this, a background paper for a 1954 W.H.O. Expert Committee meeting
(Jellinek, 1954), sets out three basic kinds of problem drinking. One is the "steady symptomatic excessive
drinker (with or without addictive features)" which he identifies as
"so much in the foreground" in the American and British alcoholism
literature. (Apparently the gamma and
alpha categories in his later typology are derived from this category).
A second type is what he terms the
"inveterate drinker" (corresponding to the delta type in the later
typology): someone who drinks steadily through the day, often without ever
becoming drunk, but who ends up with chronic alcohol-related health problems.
This type, described particularly in the literature from France, is identified
by Jellinek as also more common than the "symptomatic drinker" in
Spain, and equally prevalent with the "symptomatic drinker" in
Switzerland, Chile and Brazil.
The third type is the
"occasional excessive drinker", embracing "the heavy weekend
drinker, the ‘celebrator’, and the occasional excessive ‘relief drinker’ (the
distinction between the three types is not clear-cut)." (In the later
typology, this corresponds to the beta and epsilon types.) According to Jellinek, "the damage
caused by these drinkers is mainly absenteeism, accidents, violence and
property damage, and occasional interference with the family budget.... Serious
damage to society by occasional excessive drinkers occurs in many
countries." The type is identified
by Jellinek as probably more common than the other two taken together in
Belgium, Finland, Norway, Chile and South Africa, and equal to the other two
together in Spain, Brazil, Uruguay, Ireland, Scotland and Denmark.
Jellinek emphasizes that "all
types of ‘alcoholism’ and all types of damage through occasional excessive
drinking exist in all countries where alcoholic beverages are consumed"
(p. 27). But one type or another may be
predominant, and may thus form the culture's governing image of the alcoholic. In this vein, he notes that "one may
suspect that the preponderance of the steady excessive symptomatic drinker in
the United States of America may lead students of alcoholism there to
underestimate and ignore the damage arising from occasional excess" (p.
5). Similarly, he mentions that the
emphasis in French discussions on the inveterate drinker "does not mean
that Frenchmen never get drunk" (p. 9).
Jellinek's typological approach
starts backward from what became obvious to him in WHO Expert Committee
meetings of the early 1950s: the fact that professionals from different
cultures clearly described the characteristic forms of drinking problems in
very different terms. In Jellinek's
analysis, each society is assumed to have problems from drinking, but with
specific characteristic forms; the task he attempts is to describe differences
in features of the cultural position of drinking which account for the
different forms of drinking problems.
Despite the substantial
anthropological literature on drinking, explicitly comparative studies of
drinking in tribal and village societies have been rare, and typological
contrasts even rarer. An exemplar here
is Lemert's (1964) comparison of "forms and pathology of drinking in three
Polynesian societies". In Tahiti,
Lemert finds a pattern of "festive drinking" on periodic festivals
and on weekends, where singing and dancing is accompanied by a "long slow
drunk" without peaks of intoxication.
On Atiu, he found a pattern of "ritual-disciplined drinking"
in "bush beer schools", presided over by a sober master of ceremonies,
featuring hymns, conversation and recitations.
Samoan drinking, occurring away from the public scene in small circles
of drinkers, Lemert characterized as "secular drinking". Drinking in Tahiti seemed to him
"relatively integrated", while men on Atiu were definitely more
hostile and aggressive when intoxicated.
But it was in Samoa that drinking was most commonly associated with
disorder, free-floating aggression, rape and spousal abuse. Lemert noted that alcoholism in a North
American sense was unknown in any of the three cultures.
Even more explicitly than Jellinek,
Lemert links the characteristic "pathologies" of drinking to the
place of drinking in the culture. The
cultures are contrasted in terms of the relation of the drinking group to the
larger society, and in terms of forms and degree of social control of the
drinking situation exerted by the drinking group and by the culture as a
whole. Lemert's analysis also opens a
window into complexities which lie beyond the reach of Jellinek's typology. Despite the contrasts outlined by Lemert, the
three societies would all probably fall into a single Jellinek category, where
the modal form of problematic drinking is "occasional excessive
drinking".
There are relatively few typologies
of the cultural position of drinking which focus on properties of drinking or
its occasion or setting in its own right, with little regard to the rate or
type of alcohol problems associated with it.
One such is Csikszentmihalyi’s (1968) discussion of types of drinking-places in European
cultures. Csikszentmihalyi mentions the
decline in Europe of the group drinking fiestas of the Roman Empire, the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance: “instead of engaging in intensive group drinking on
especially designated holidays, modern man has developed a pattern of moderate
but repetitive group drinking in a specialized location”. Csikszentmihalyi contrasts particularly three
drinking environments: the open and airy wine shop in Mediterranean cultures,
with drinkers sitting in small groups around tables; the huge, darkened beer
halls of Germany and Austria, with long parallel tables flanked by benches; and
the stand-up bar of the English pub, with drinkers standing in a line. The American saloon or cocktail lounge is
mentioned in contrast to these, with negative comments both about it and about
the Nazi associations of German beer-halls.
The structural arrangements and activities in the environments are
contrasted, and it is proposed that a number of things
"co-vary with
changes in the structural arrangement of the environment: (i) the strength and
direction of a customer's group identification; (ii) the amount of individual
participation in group interaction; (iii) the relationship between the small
group and the total group; (iv) the form of individual participation, i.e., the
leader-follower structure of the group; (v) the type of task the small group
can optimally deal with; and (vi) the individual independence of the customer."
While Csikszentmihalyi's focus is on
differences in specialized drinking environments in modern European cultures,
perhaps the most interesting aspect of his analysis is his contrast between
what modern European drinking cultures have in common -- "moderate but
repetitive group drinking in a specialized location" -- and the group
drinking fiestas of earlier times. For
the ethnographic literature, and increasingly also epidemiological studies,
make clear that such "fiesta drinking" remains a dominant pattern in
many places in the world. In this wider
context, the variations in European drinking patterns, on which the typological
literature has focused, are only a portion of the range in drinking's cultural
positioning worldwide.
A paper by Mäkelä (1983) approaches
the issue of the cultural position and regulation of drinking from another
angle: the use-values of alcohol.
Alcohol is unique among psychoactive substances, he points out, in the
variety of its objective properties for which humans have found uses. Setting aside its use as a fuel and as a
solvent, alcoholic beverages are consumed as a medicine, as a nutrient, as a
sacral substance, and as an intoxicant.
Cultures attach meanings and beliefs to each of these material
properties of alcohol. But while the
cultural meaning of a particular act of consumption may be defined in terms of
one property, each of the other material properties is always simultaneously
present.
Mäkelä uses this framework to
critique Pittman's classification, noting that "the qualitatively distinct
uses of alcohol cannot be arranged on a continuum and that the cultural
dynamics of the control of excessive drinking vary according to the
historically dominant uses of alcohol".
In the cultures discussed by Pittman (1967), Mäkelä discerns two basic
types of cultural configuration: cultures like Italy in which "nutritional
use of alcohol is historically dominant", and cultures where the
definition of alcohol as an intoxicant is dominant.
"Among the
Jews, the Scandinavians and the Camba alike, alcohol is an intoxicant, but
these three cultures have developed alternative normative solutions to the
regulation of the use of this intoxicant.
The orthodox Jews have succeeded in isolating alcohol into a sacral
corner, the Camba use it up to extreme drunkenness but only on clearly
demarcated occasions, and the Scandinavians vacillate between Dionysian
acceptance and ascetic condemnation of drunkenness."
Mäkelä notes that
the nutritional use can be further subdivided into alcohol as a source of
nutrition and alcohol as a beverage and thus a thirst-quencher. We may add that a further subdivision might
also be made in Mäkelä's category of alcohol's use as an intoxicant. Some one who drinks "to relax" is
seeking a somewhat different use of alcohol as a psychopharmaceutical than
someone who drinks "to forget everything". We will return to these issues below.
As Mäkelä notes, each of the
properties of alcohol are always present, even when consumption is culturally
defined only in terms of one property.
While this is true, it should also be noted that uses in terms of one
property may diminish alcohol's performance with respect to another. In particular, using alcohol as a significant
source of nutrition potentially diminishes its effectiveness as an intoxicant,
through the mechanisms described as "tolerance". The regularity of use which tends to be
implied by the use of alcohol as a nutrient or even as a thirst-quencher thus
has a built-in tendency to banalize drinking, to make its effects as an
intoxicant less notable.
Finally,
in an empirical reanalysis of data from the Human Relations Area Files,
Partanen (1991:211-214) offers a two-dimensional typology of the cultural
position of drinking, describing each dimension in terms of the cultural
position of drinking, but then relating the types to indicators of general
drinking-related problems in the culture, and of the expression of hostility in
relation to drinking. One dimension of
the typology he names Engagement with Alcohol, incorporating such measures as
extent and frequency of drinking and approval of drinking. The other he names Serious Drinking,
incorporating quantity consumed on an occasion, duration of the drinking
episode, and frequency and approval of drunkenness. These dimensions are somewhat reminiscent of
the two dimensions noted above in Ahlström-Laakso’s (1976) differentiation of
drinking cultures in Europe.
In Partanen’s analysis, high
reported rates of problems with drinking are related to Seriousness of
Drinking, whether or not Engagement with Alcohol is present. On the other hand, the intensity and
extremeness of the hostility expressed while drinking is strongly related to
Seriousness of Drinking only in the absence of Engagement with Alcohol. Partanen notes that
"this suggests
that those social aspects of behavior that often go together with a high level
of engagement with alcohol -- the ritualization of drinking, its ceremonial
uses, do, in fact, exert a dampening effect on more extreme forms of drunken
comportment." (p. 213)
As we have noted
above, the greater tolerance which would accompany Engagement with Alcohol may
also play a role.
DISCUSSION
Three main approaches have been
taken to constructing typologies of the cultural position of drinking. The most common, to range societies on a
single dimension, with ideal types at each end of the dimension, has proved
problematic. The diversity of different dimensions which have been used is
evidence in itself that no single dimension is likely to be able to capture the
diversity of factors involved in the cultural position of drinking.
The second approach has been to construct a
limited number of ideal-types, with each type characterized in terms of a
cluster of aspects of different dimensions.
In such an approach, two categories are relatively easily
denominated. One is the "abstinent
society", where drinking is religiously and often legally forbidden and
the ban is more or less observed. In the
modern world, a few Islamic societies fit this type. Even in these societies, the mobility which
comes with modernity and affluence allows at least some members to live by very
different rules outside the society than when they are home.
A second category, probably quite
rare, is the constrained ritual drinking described in the literature for
Orthodox Jewish communities. Such a
pattern should not be confused with wine-drinking cultures of southern Europe;
the amount drunk on a typical occasion in the constrained ritual pattern is quite
small.
A third category of drinking might
be described as banalized drinking, where drinking is woven into the fabric of
daily life, at least for males. Here the
southern European wine-cultures have been taken as the archetypes. As such drinking cultures are conventionally
described, they might be said to have performed the miracle of turning wine
into water: the dominant alcoholic beverage is defined as a foodstuff or a
thirst-quencher, but not as an intoxicant, and drunken comportment is expected
to more or less match sober comportment.
As we have noted, there is room for
some scepticism about and for much further research testing the somewhat
idyllic picture presented in the literature on banalized drinking. It is clear that the banalized drinker does
not escape traffic casualties and is at elevated risk of liver damage. To what extent nothing is left in such
cultures of the link between alcohol and violence would bear further scrutiny;
in particular, it would interesting to have the testimony of women about the
effects of men's drinking in these cultures on family life and tranquillity.
In a more global perspective, it is
worth considering whether analogous patterns can be found in developing
societies. Does the "palm-wine
drinkard" of West Africa or the non-explosive festive drinker of Tahiti,
for instance, bear any resemblance in terms of drinking-related behaviour and
consequences to the Italian or Spanish wine-drinker, or are the patterns
described in the literature very specific to a small number of cultures on one
shore of the Mediterranean?
A fourth category is suggested by
the analyses of Csikszentmihalyi and Partanen: communal fiesta
drunkenness. Csikszentmihalyi identifies
this pattern with the European past, and Partanen contrasts it with "modern"
drinking. But Partanen also envisages
the possibility of atavistic or nostalgic occasions in modern societies, where
the participants attempt to recapture the heroic spirit of the past or at least
of their youth. Communal celebratory
festivals are in fact quite common in the modern urban world, and ostensive
drinking is central to them in some cultures (e.g., O'Donnell, 1982) but
apparently not in others (Morgan, 1982).
The difference perhaps between
fiesta drunkenness now and in the past is that then fiestas may have been the
only occasions of drinking, at least for poorer members of the community. Now the fiesta drunkenness may commonly come
on top of other, more regular patterns of drinking. And whatever may be true in traditional
tribal and village life, fiesta drunkenness often comes with problems in modern
urban environments. There are hundreds
of casualties and many deaths each year in the course of the annual celebration
of carnaval in Rio de Janeiro (“Rio de Janeiro”, 1982).
For most societies with a pattern of
fiesta drunkenness, the pattern is thus not a summative characterization of the
position of drinking in the culture, but simply one among a number of cultural
patterns of drinking. As with the other
three types, the number of cultures where the cultural position of drinking is
adequately described in terms of fiesta is small.
When we have separated off these
four ideal types, and the relatively limited number of societies which can be
characterized adequately by any one of them, we are still left with a broad
spread of patterns and range of societies, and with the problem of how to
typologize them. The literature suggests
no easy solution in terms of ideal types.
A third approach to typologization
is in terms of multiple dimensions of variation. The range of potential dimensions to be
considered is quite large.
One obvious dimension for
consideration is the degree of regularity of drinking. This dimension holds implications for such
matters as tolerance, and probably also for the dimension of how much the
drinking occasion is set apart from ordinary life, with the focus on the
behaviours around drinking -- a dimension Partanen alerts us to.
But regularity by itself is not
enough. If there is one thing that
survey studies of drinking have taught us, it is that many drinkers in
industrial societies combine "regular" and "sporadic"
patterns: with affluence and opportunity, a common pattern, well suited to the
industrialized workweek, is a couple of drinks every evening, just enough to
feel some effects, and a drunken "blast" or binge on the
weekend. Along with regularity of
drinking, there is a need for a differentiation on how widespread at least
occasional intoxication -- Partanen’s Serious Drinking -- is in the culture.
Along with the frequency and
ubiquity of intoxication, an issue to consider here is “how drunk is
drunk”. It is clear that there are
cultural differences in this, and that these relate to how intoxication fits
with core cultural values. We may
hypothesize that where there is a tradition of vision quests, or where trances
and altered-consciousness experiences are valued, drinking to extreme
intoxication, with radical changes from sober behaviour, will often be a goal
for the drinker rather than an accidental misjudgement. Where drinking is more contained within the
frame of everyday sociability, intoxication may be quite frequent, but it will
be less extreme, and marked by less change in behaviour.
The two general dimensions of
regularity of drinking and extent of intoxication, akin to those used by
Ahlström-Laakso (1976) and Partanen (1991), can provide a serviceable framework
for a relatively crude classification of societies in terms of the cultural
position of drinking. Some version of
each of these two general dimensions is likely also to feature in any more
extended set of dimensions for classification.
Beyond these dimensions, however,
lie a number of dimensions of variation potentially important in characterizing
the cultural position of drinking (Room, 1998).
Some of these dimensions, like regularity of drinking and extent of
intoxication, describe qualities associated with drinking as a behaviour. These include aspects related to the use-values
of drinking, discussed above, and in particular the extent some form of alcohol
is defined as an important element of nutrition. An important set of dimensions relate to
expectations about behaviour while drinking or intoxicated. These include the degree of association of
drinking with belligerence and violence, the main concern of MacAndrew and
Edgerton’s (1969) analysis. Also
included here would be the degree to which drinking and drunkenness is cultural
associated with sexuality, whether more or less normative or transgressive,
dimensions which have remained unexplored in the typological literature.
A further set of dimensions deals
with the cultural position of the drinker, the drinking group, and the
drinking occasion. A general
dimension here is the degree to which drinking is enclaved from or integrated
with other aspects of social life.
Cultures vary in the extent to which there are differentiations by
gender, age, social status, etc. in whether drinking is allowed at all, and
whether and how much intoxication is permitted.
Drinking groups may be central to the society, and membership in them
may be a prerogative or expression of power in the culture, or they may be
peripheral and membership may be an indicator of marginality. Drinking occasions may be integrated in daily
life, as for instance where the archetypal drinking occasion is the family
mealtime, or they may be separated, in terms of time, space and/or cultural
definition.
Lastly, a typological approach to
the cultural position of drinking may decide to take into account cultural modes
of social control of drinking and cultural definitions concerning the
nature of drinking-related problems and the means of their handling. Cultures vary in the stringency with which
expectations about drinking behaviour are expressed and enforced, and in the extent to which the family, the drinking
group, other informal groups, or formal social agencies such as licensing
agencies and police are involved in controlling access to drinking and
behaviour while drinking. They also
differ in whether and when an event or condition is defined as a problem and as
drinking-related, in how the problem is defined, and in who should respond and
what the response should be.
There is no obvious general answer
concerning which dimensions, from this large array, should be included in a
dimensional approach; the answer will depend on the purpose and design of a
particular study. Our suggestion to
future investigators wishing to measure variation in the cultural position of
drinking would thus be to include coverage of both the regularity of drinking
and the extent of intoxication, and then to consider what further dimension or
dimensions, from the check-list we have offered, are potentially most important
to the particular study’s purpose and design.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Revised from a
paper presented by the first author at the annual meetings of the American
Sociological Association, August 9-13, 1997, Toronto, Canada, and prepared
while at the Addiction Research Foundation of Ontario. Revised material from a 1979 paper by the
second author, “Note on holocultural generalizations and historical
fluctuations in aggregate drinking”, is also included. This paper has benefitted from discussions
with Laura Schmidt and with our colleagues in the WHO project on Alcohol
Policies in Developing Societies, and from the comments of anonymous reviewers.
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Table 1.
Contrasting the patterns of “wet” and “dry” drinking cultures:
a characterization
from 1972
Type
I ("wet") Type II
("dry")
characterized by: characterized by:
temperance
tradition: weak strong
proportion of
abstainers: low high
dominant pattern of
drinking: frequent fairly heavy infrequent
very heavy
(binge)
deaths from alcohol
poisoning (overdose): lower higher
deaths from
cirrhosis higher lower
violence and social
disruption associated
with heavy drinking: lower higher
moonshining absent present
source: Room and Mitchell, 1972