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>Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2000 14:34:37 +0100 (BST)
>From: Anne Shepherd <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Reviews in History - John Burnett Responds
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>Reviews in History
>
>Liquid Pleasures: A Social History of Drinks in Modern Britain.
>London, Routledge, 1999, pp. viii + 254.
>
>Author's Response: John Burnett.
>
>I appreciate this full, careful reading of Liquid Pleasures and Matthew
>Hilton's many complimentary remarks. They leave me little to say except to
>comment on some general points which he raises. The first is about the
>structure of the book, which consists of separate chapters on the
>histories of the principal drinks consumed in modern Britain (water, milk,
>tea, coffee, soft drinks, beer, wine and spirits): there is a brief
>Introduction and a rather longer Conspectus. I debated hard about the
>structure. The alternative was to attempt to treat all drinks together
>within historical periods from the Restoration onwards, but I ultimately
>rejected this approach which, I believe, would have resulted in
>repetition, confusion and frustration for a reader who wished to follow
>through the history of a particular drink. A further objection to a more
>synthetic treatment is that there is no single, overarching interpretative
>framework which covers all drinks, as, for example, in Goodman, Lovejoy
>and Sherratt's Consuming Habits. Drugs in History and Anthropology, to
>which Hilton refers. Drinks fall into three major categories alcoholic
>(beer, wines and spirits), caffeine (tea and coffee) and "other" (water,
>milk and most soft drinks): the first two groups are linked by possessing
>psychoactive properties, and there are numerous references to this in my
>text, but the third remains discreet. In the end, the treatment by
>separate chapters on each drink and a Conspectus which drew together
>general interpretations of change seemed both logical and inevitable.
>(Incidentally, Consuming Habits also follows this structure.) The second
>main point relates to my explanatory position. Hilton rightly says that I
>take a predominantly "materialist" view of change which concentrates on
>economic, social and political (and, to a lesser extent, physiological)
>determinants. I might prefer the term "materialist/developmental (as in
>Goody, Mennell, Mintz and others) which gives greater weight to historical
>perspectives, but it is true that I do not give as much emphasis to
>non-material and structural explanations as cultural historians might
>wish. This is not the place for an extended academic debate, except to say
>that in my own view the dichotomy between materialist and culturalist
>approaches is a largely false one, and that some fusion of the two
>dimensions of consumption history is possible and desirable. If I have
>given more space to one than to the other, that is where I stand, but I
>claim that I have not ignored cultural factors, which are discussed
>throughout the text. The paragraph in the Conspectus (pp.188-9) which Dr.
>Hilton quotes, was intended merely to draw these together, not to
>introduce new material or concepts at this stage.
>
>He notes some other areas which merit further exploration, including
>issues of gender and health and the important role of advertising. I fully
>agree. There was material at hand to do so indeed, to write separate
>monographs on each drink, as Hilton observes - but for the publisher's
>constraint of length and my own preference for a survey of a neglected
>area of consumption history in a single volume. There is scope and need
>for much more, and I await the contributions of other scholars with great
>interest.
>
>April 2000
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