Constructive Drinking: Perspectives on Drink from Anthropology

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Psychology Press, 2003 - Psychology - 302 pages

First published in 1987, Constructive Drinking is a series of original case studies organized into three sections based on three major functions of drinking. The three constructive functions are: that drinking has a real social role in everyday life; that drinking can be used to construct an ideal world; and that drinking is a significant economic activity. The case studies deal with a variety of exotic drinks

 

Contents

anthropological study of alcohol use 19701980
16
rituals of drinking time
73
union politics in Newfoundland 76
91
Mary Anna Thornton Sekt versus Schnapps in an Austrian
102
of the Kasai
113
Anne Tyler Calabresi Vin Santo and wine in a Tuscan
122
Farnham Rehfisch Competitive beer drinking among
135
Paul Antze Symbolic action in Alcoholics Anonymous
149
Elizabeth Bott The Kava ceremonial as a dream structure
182
Haim Hazan Holding time still with cups of tea
205
Lisa Anne Gurr Maigrets Paris conserved and distilled
220
Thomas Crump The alternative economy of alcohol in
239
Hillel Levine Alcohol monopoly to protect the non
250
Gerald Mars and Yochanan Altman Alternative mechanism
270
Index
280
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About the author (2003)

Born in Italy, Mary Douglas was educated at Oxford University and began her career as a civil servant in 1943. Her first field research was carried out in what was then the Belgian Congo and she taught at Oxford and the University of London before moving to the United States in 1977. Purity and Danger (1966) is an essay about the logic of pollution beliefs, suggesting that ideas about dirt and disorder outline and reinforce particular social orders. Her other essays exploring the implicit meanings of cultural symbols follow a similar Durkheimian format. Her recent interests have turned to analysis of risk behavior and cross-cultural attitudes about food and alcohol.