David --
There is an interesting book about
20-somethings in Paris which sheds some light on this. Below is an e-mail
I put on another list a year ago (with a review of a book about youth drinking
in Spain which is also interesting). Note that Pekka Sulkunen some time
ago did an analysis using Bourdieu's concept of social distinction to talk about
changing fashions in alcoholic beverages in France. An abstract
follows.
Incidentally, Sweden is now a wine culture, in the
sense that wine contributes more to alcohol consumption than either beer or
spirits. Over half of the wine consumed here is "bag in a box" wine, so Swedes
may be said to be reproducing the tilt towards vin ordinaire in the
wine cultures of the past. European convergence has now gone beyond the
corssing-point on some dimensions: the Irish now drink more than the Italians.
Robin
Sulkunen-P. Drinking in France 1965-1979: An
analysis of household consumption data. British Journal of Addiction,
84(1):61-72, 1989. (102442)
Alcohol consumption has diminished in France
for three decades. In this respect, France is an exception to other
industrialized countries. However, in one respect France conforms to a
regularity found in longitudinal time-series studies comparing different
countries: traditional beverages, in this case, wine, have given place to new
drinking, beer and imported spirits. In this sense, drinking patterns have
become modernized and now resemble those found in other Western industrialized
countries. The article, based on a series of household consumption surveys that
include purchases of alcoholic beverages by households, studies in what way this
modernization is taking place. A breakdown of the data by sociodemographic
groups shows that saturation as such does not explain the change. The groups
that already have been at the lowest level of consumption, the middle classes,
have diminished their consumption further and the other groups, the peasantry
and the working class, have followed them. The development has been parallel
both in big cities and rural areas. The analysis by region reveals that in
France the use of alcohol and especially wine is no longer related to alcohol
production, the way it is in international comparisons, producing countries
being also the heaviest consumers. On the other hand, consumption patterns, as
reflected in the beverage composition, have not levelled out between regions.
One conclusion of the study is that the culturally dominating social dimension
in France is that of class. 18 Ref.
___________________________
(from a posting in July
2004:)
I picked up an interesting book in Paris:
Jacqueline
Freyssinet-Dominjon & Anne-Catherine Wagner, L'alcool en fęte -- maničres de
boire de la nouvelle jeunesse étudiante (Party drinking: ways of drinking of the
new student youth). Paris: L'Harmattan, 2003. ISBN 2-7475-5613-1 €24.00 (24
Euros)
The book is based on qualitative interviews with 226 students in
France aged 18 to 29, with some bias in representation away from students "the
most centred on their studies".
The authors found the rules of drinking
in the group studied somewhat in evolution, with informants often contradicting
themselves, and insisting that "I do not judge" others along with describing the
rules (p. 18).
"The consumption of alcoholic drinks was dissociated from
the everyday activities of life. It is in the name of this principle that two
ways of drinking are condemned [by the students], which are habitually
considered as opposites."
"The first is -- no surprise here -- that of
the alcoholic, of whom the image recurred regularly" (p. 20). The alcoholic is
presented stereotypically, often as a stranger to their universes, even if some
mention family members. Even the heaviest drinkers have little chance to
identify with this portrait. The alcoholic "is evoked with a mixture of
indignation and commiseration". He is "drunk in the morning. He is violent. He
consumes nearly exclusively red wine." More than anything, he is "not young". An
alcoholic drinks "every day, and cannot conceive of passing a day without
drinking".
"It is in the name of these principles that the youth take
care to mark their distance from another way of drinking, that of the moderate
everyday drinker, which is to say often that of their parents." Barbara (aged
19), who drinks 6-8 glasses of whiskey and cola every Friday and Saturday, says
that even someone who drinks only a half-bottle of wine, if they drink it every
day -- "for me that person is an alcoholic". (p. 21) The association of drinking
with food is explicitly rejected: another informant says "I cannot reconcile
alcohol and eating; it leaves me with a dirty taste in my mouth. I prefer to
drink water or a cola with food" (p. 20).
The dailiness of consumption,
even of a small quantity, disquiets the conscience of these students.
Conversely, the rule is "I'm not a drunk, I don't drink every day".
"This
generation thus reverses the [opposition] habitually established between
alcoholism and 'drinking well'..... This system of opposition is absent among
the questioned students.... Drunkenness in itself is quite rarely condemned by
the students. Instead, 'dependence' (defined by the fact of drinking every day)
seems disquieting.... The two figures [the moderate everyday drinker and the
alcoholic] can be all the more easily reconciled because the daily moderate
drinker and the alcoholic are associated with the same beverage, little
appreciated by the youth: red wine.... 'For me red wine has really too much
connotation of alcoholic'" (p. 23). It is associated with the parental
generation, but also with the working-class world.
"Drinking is above all
a festive act. That is the first norm and the most important in the student
population" (p. 24) It is associated with a binary division of time, with a
"necessary rupture" between the time of work and the time of going out. One such
division is between summer vacation and university term-time. A second is
between the weekdays and the weekend. Barbara, again, explains that she only
drinks on nights when she can sleep in the next day. The accounts also speak of
"an alternation between periods of control and of letting go".
How the
evenings and consumption develop is described (pp. 32-35). Four types of
drinkers are described (pp. 36-40): the non-drinker or drinker only of small
amounts (36%); the regular moderate drinker "or 'adult' drinker" (4%); the
weekend drinker (46%), described by the initials of Friday, Saturday, Sunday
("VSD"); and the "'drinker for the drinking's sake' of an extended high-schooler
status" (14%).
It is noted that to a considerable degree the typology
revolves around attitudes to drunkenness. Females were more likely to seek a
state of "gaiety", while males were often less circumspect about seeking
drunkenness (pp. 43-46). A two-page spread of quotes on how many glasses to
drink ranges from one to 14 and more. Though some admit it is sexist, informants
are less accepting of a woman who drinks a lot. "The reasons advanced reveal a
built-in conception of the nature of a woman, sweeter, more fragile and thus
less well adapted to strong alcohol" (p. 51).
This summarizes just some
of the beginning of the book, which goes on to a more detailed analysis of ways
of drinking and also attempts an analysis of the influence of alcohol
advertising, in the wake of the Loi Evin limiting alcohol advertising in France.
I thought particularly this early part of the book was worth summarizing here,
because the findings are so striking and contrary to the image of "continental
drinking" so cherished in the Nordic and anglo-saxon
worlds.
Robin
__________
NEW BOOK:
Artemio Baigorri,
Ramón Fernández y GIESYT
BOTELLÓN: UN CONFLICTO POSTMODERNO
Ed.
Icaria, Barcelona, 2004
http://www.icariaeditorial.com
The
book BOTELLON: UN CONFLICTO POSTMODERNO (Botellón: a postmodern
conflict)
is the result of a systematic work of research carried out by
Research
Group in Social and Territorial Studies from University of
Extremadura
during years 2001-2003. It shows, not only the knowledge
obtained from
the research about this phenomenon, the "botellón", but
also, by means of
the use of diverse techniques as qualitative as
quantitative, a good
example of Action Research applied to prevention of
alcohol consumption
in young people
The "botellón" is a massive meeting of young people, in
opened spaces of
free access, in order to combine and drink alcohol and
spirits which
they have previously acquired in commerce, listen to music
and speak.
It shows a kind of new conflcit, nevertheless. Traditionally,
conflicts
has been determined by production (class struggle) or by
social
beliefs (nationalisms, religious conflicts). Nevertheless, the
conflict
related to "botellón" is focussed on the consumption scope, the
main
factor of grouping and creation of identities in contemporary
society.
In that sense, we can speak of a postmodern conflict. But also,
it's a
postmodern conflict because it's, in fact, a social divertimento,
one
of those conflicts which take part in the show, in which all
fight
against all, and where there is an only winner, never present,
never
explicit: in this case, the multinational corporations of alcohol
and
spirits.
The authors carried out a research on habits of
nocturnal leisure in
youths, focussed on the phenomenon of "botellón" in
around the region
of Extremadura (Spain). By means of the comparison of
their results
with other data available about other regions in Spain and
other
countries, we can verify its global character, in the essential, of
this
kind of phenomena, even they acquire similar names in other
countries.
The "botellón" isn't a specific Spanish phenomenon, but
responds to
the tendencies on nocturnal leisure we can observe in
Europe.
In the region of Extremadura, the "botellón" wasn't considered a
problem
by itself, but the problem was related to those youngsters who go
out in
the nights, drink and even consume drugs without their parents
apparently
being conscious of this. Those youngsters are our future
and
who we can lose by the way if we aren't able to articulate, not
only
substitute policies, but also attractive policies for the own
young
people with a principal purpose: to move them away from a kind of
leisure
based on drug consumption, as well legal as
illegal.
Adults, above all since the middle of last century XX, extended
urbi
et orbe a model of nocturnal leisure focussed on alcohol.
Alcohol
consumption has never been so much intense or extended as
people
believe. People don't drink because they have to do it or because
the
peer group commands to it. Simply, people drink because the
dominant
global cultural model imposes it.
Prof. Artemio
Baigorri
-----Original Message-----
From: Alcohol and Drugs
History Society [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of David Fahey
Sent: Friday, September 16, 2005 5:23 PM
To:
[log in to unmask]
Subject: fewer wine-drinkers in
France
Noticed an AP story in today's New York Times re the decline of
wine-drinking in France: almost all the French who drink wine regularly are over
35, just over half the French population drink wine, and the number of French
wine drinkers has dropped by a million over the last five years. May I ask
ADHS why? Comparative data for other countries? I think that in the
USA wine drinking is more common now than a generation ago, and beer-drinking
and whiskey-drinking are what are in decline.