Alcohol and Society

Written by Stanton Peele

Pamphlet prepared for The Wine Institute, San Francisco: CA, July, 1996

How Culture Influences the Way People Drink

Stanton Peele, Morristown, NJ

Archie Brodsky, Boston, MA

Contents

• Introduction
• I Alcohol problems are not simply a result of how much people drink.
• II Enormous differences can be observed as to how different ethnic and cultural groups handle alcohol.
• III Alcohol use does not lead directly to aggressive behavior.
• IV There have been major historical variations in drinking patterns in the U.S.
• V Throughout history, wine and other alcoholic beverages have been a source of pleasure and aesthetic appreciation in many cultures. 
• VI Young people in many cultures are introduced to drinking early in life, as a part of normal daily living.
• VII Many cultures teach their young to drink moderately and responsibly.
• VIII A recipe for moderate drinking can be constructed from such successful examples as the Italian, Spanish, French, Greek, Jewish, and Chinese cultures.
• IX Government control policies are misguided and ineffective in regulating cultural drinking practices.
• X Researchers have derived important lessons from cross-cultural research on drinking practices.
• XI Summary: Historical and cross-cultural research point the way to more responsible, healthful, and pleasurable drinking practices today
• XII Conclusions

Introduction:

Sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and psychologists, in their study of different cultures and historical eras, have noted how malleable people's drinking habits are.

"When one sees a film like Moonstruck, the benign and universal nature of drinking in New York Italian culture is palpable on the screen. If one can't detect the difference between drinking in this setting, or at Jewish or Chinese weddings, or in Greek taverns, and that in Irish working-class bars, or in Portuguese bars in the worn-out industrial towns of New England, or in run-down shacks where Indians and Eskimos gather to get drunk, or in Southern bars where men down shots and beers--and furthermore, if one can't connect these different drinking settings, styles, and cultures with the repeatedly measured differences in alcoholism rates among these same groups, then I can only think one is blind to the realities of alcoholism."

Peele, S., Diseasing of America, Lexington Books, Lexington, MA, 1989, pp. 72-73.

"Sociocultural variants are at least as important as physiological and psychological variants when we are trying to understand the interrelations of alcohol and human behavior. Ways of drinking and of thinking about drinking are learned by individuals within the context in which they learn ways of doing other things and of thinking about them--that is, whatever else drinking may be, it is an aspect of culture about which patterns of belief and behavior are modeled by a combination of example, exhortation, rewards, punishments, and the many other means, both formal and informal, that societies use for communicating norms, attitudes, and values."

Heath, D.B., "Sociocultural Variants in Alcoholism," pp. 426-440 in Pattison, E.M., and Kaufman, E., eds., Encyclopedic Handbook of Alcoholism, Gardner Press, New York, 1982, p. 438.

"Individual drinkers tend to model and modify each others' drinking and, hence,...there is a strong interdependence between the drinking habits of individuals who interact.... Potentially, each individual is linked, directly or indirectly, to all members of his or her culture...."

Skøg, O., "Implications of the Distribution Theory for Drinking and Alcoholism," pp. 576-597 in Pittman, D.J., and White, H.R., eds., Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns Reexamined, Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, New Brunswick, NJ, 1991, p. 577

"Over the course of socialization, people learn about drunkenness what their society `knows' about drunkenness; and, accepting and acting upon the understandings thus imparted to them, they become the living confirmation of their society's teachings."

MacAndrew, C., and Edgerton, R.B., Drunken Comportment: A Social Explanation, Aldine, Chicago, 1969, p. 88.

Thus, how we learn to drink and continue to drink is determined most by the drinking we observe, the attitudes about drinking we pick up, and the people we drink with. In this booklet we will explore the relationship between cultural assumptions and educational messages about alcohol and the likelihood that people will drink in ways that are harmful to themselves or others.