Andrew Bengry-Howell

Inhabiting the contradictions: Hypersexual femininity and the culture of intoxication among young women in the UK

This paper contributes to debates on post-feminism and the constitution of contemporary femininity via an exploration of young women’s alcohol consumption and their involvement in normative drinking cultures. We view femininity as a profoundly contradictory and dilemmatic space which appears almost impossible for girls or young women to inhabit. The juxtaposition of hyper-sexual femininity and the culture of intoxication produces a particularly difficult set of dilemmas for young women. They are exhorted to be sassy and independent – but not feminist; to be ‘up for it’ and to drink and get drunk alongside young men – but not to ‘drink like men’. They are also called on to look and act as agentically sexy within a pornified night-time economy, but to distance themselves from the troubling figure of the ‘drunken slut’. Referring to recent research on young women’s alcohol consumption and our own study on young adults’ involvement in the culture of intoxication in the UK, we consider the ways in which young women manage to inhabit this terrain, and the implications for contemporary feminism and safer drinking initiatives.

Social marketing, individual responsibility and the “culture of intoxication”

Purpose – Social marketing initiatives designed to address the UKs culture of unhealthy levels of drinking among young adults have achieved inconclusive results to date. The paper aims to investigate the gap between young peoples perceptions of alcohol consumption and those of government agencies who seek to influence their behaviour set within a contextualist framework.Design/methodology/approach – The authors present empirical evidence from a major study that suggests that the emphasis of recent campaigns on individual responsibility may be unlikely to resonate with young drinkers. The research included a meaning‐based and visual rhetoric analysis of 261 ads shown on TV, in magazines, on billboards and on the internet between 2005 and 2006. This was followed by 16 informal group discussions with 89 young adults in three locations.Findings – The research identified the importance of the social context of young peoples drinking. The research reveals how a moral position has been culturally constructed ...

Methodological innovation and research ethics: forces in tension or forces in harmony?

This article is an exploration of the tensions inherent in the interaction between ethics and methodological innovation. The authors focus on three cases of innovation in qualitative research methods in the social sciences: netnography, child-led research and creative research methods. Using thematic analysis of data collected through semi-structured interviews with the innovators and commentators on the innovations, they discuss issues of ethical responsibility, democratisation of research, empowerment and the relationship between research and the academy. This article highlights the ways in which innovation is about reflexivity as well as new techniques. It shows how innovation may be about managing risk rather than taking risks: the innovators are cautious as much as creative, operating within a culture in which procedural ethical regulation acts to limit methodological development and in which they (and other users of their method/approach) communicate the safe qualities alongside the innovative qualities of their approach.

The discursive constitution of the UK alcohol problem in Safe, Sensible, Social: a discussion of policy implications

In this article, we critically reflect on the constitution of the UKs alcohol problem in the governments ‘Safe, Social, Sensible’ policy document, referring to findings from a 3-year ESRC funded study on young people, alcohol and identity. We suggest that discursive themes running throughout ‘Safe, Sensible, Social’ include ‘shared responsibility’ for implementing a ‘cultural change’, ‘youth and binge drinking’ and the need to promote ‘sensible’ levels of alcohol consumption to individual drinkers. We argue that, in constituting the problem around these themes, the policy document risks diluting responsibility and obscuring the role of government, media and alcohol manufacturers. In addition, the way young drinkers are constituted carries a risk of isolating this group as both cause and effect of the alcohol problem, placing an unrealistic burden of responsibility on local communities and agencies and exacerbating the gap between policy assumptions and the lived reality of young drinkers within their cultural context. We conclude that alcohol policy requires a more substantive, clearly specified and evidence-based approach which acknowledges the complexities of drinking contexts and drinker motivations in the allocation of responsibility and formulation of policy. In particular, policy needs to address the role of legislation and licensing laws, and the branding and marketing activities of the drinks industry in the structure of UK alcohol consumption.

The allure of belonging: young people's drinking practices and collective identification

Drinking to intoxication now forms an increasingly normalised part of most young people’s social lives. Research on young people’s alcohol consumption indicates a pattern of increased sessional heavy drinking in the UK from the early 1990s, although there is some recent evidence that this trend is starting to level off (Measham, 2008). We have explored this issue in a recent study that examined the role of drinking in young adults’ social lives in relation to the diverse ways in which alcohol is now marketed and advertised to young people. In this chapter, we focus on the significance of belonging to a social friendship group for young people’s drinking cultures. Young people’s alcohol consumption revolves around a collective culture of intoxication that is based firmly in informal mixed and single-sex friendship groups (Griffin et al., 2009). Drinking, as many alcohol researchers have pointed out, is a practice through which we are located (and locate ourselves) in terms of gender, class, age, religion, ethnicity and national identity (Wilson, 2005).

Young adults and ‘binge’ drinking: A Bakhtinian analysis

Abstract In this paper, we use Bakhtins theory of carnival in a literary analysis of young peoples accounts of the role of alcohol in their social lives. Bakhtinian themes in the focus-group transcripts included the dialogic character of drinking stories, the focus on parodic grotesquery, ribald and satiric laughter, and the temporary subversion and reversal of social norms and roles in a world turned ‘inside out’. We suggest that our analysis of the UKs drinking ‘culture’ hints at a previously untheorised complexity and force, and points to a deep contradiction between young peoples lived experience of alcohol and government policy discourses based on appeals to individual moral responsibility. We conclude that the carnivalesque resonance of drinking is such that the UKs alcohol problem will continue to worsen until the availability and cultural presence of alcohol is subject to stricter controls.

Self-made motormen: the material construction of working class masculine identities through car modification

This paper explores how motorcars and car-based cultural practices operate in the construction of young working-class masculine identities. It draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted during the summer of 2002 with young male car modifiers from the Midlands and North Wales who associated with the British cruising scene. Although this study is broadly framed by the youth cultural world of cruising, it does not approach car modification as a collective cultural phenomenon or draw on subcultural theory, but instead examines young mens relationships with their cars in terms of general theories of consumption and identity and theories of cultural production. The car modifiers participating in this study frequently resisted calls to collectivity and repeatedly endorsed a heavily individualised discourse of consumption. As consumers of the motorcar, they constituted themselves as absolutely individual on the basis of their ownership of modified cars that they constituted as culturally unique. Car modification operated as a set of identity practices organised around the active consumption and symbolic manipulation of standard motorcars and the cultural production of idiosyncratic signifiers of masculine identity. Through car modification, young working-class men discursively distanced themselves from the mass of standard car-owning subjects and constituted themselves as ‘unique’ car-owning individuals who were culturally privileged. This claim to privilege was predicated on their capacity to produce highly conspicuous motorcars, which they viewed as a source of considerable cultural capital.

Young Peoples’ Binge Drinking Constituted as a Deficit of Individual Self-control in UK Government Alcohol Policy

In this chapter, we reflect on the discourses of deficit theme in the context of our study of young people and alcohol in the UK, and in light of the way the UK’s alcohol problem is constituted in public policy discourse. We chose one policy document in particular because it came directly from the UK Government cabinet office and focused prominently on young people. This was called Safe, Sensible, Social: The Next Steps in the National Alcohol Strategy (Department of Health 2007). The document was produced in a climate of moral panic over ‘binge drinking’ (Measham 1996), which it defines (p. 3) as ‘drinking that leads to drunkenness’ and its damaging economic, social and health implications. It sets out the rationale for policy at national and local level. The stated overall aim of policy as expressed in the document (p. 1) is to promote ‘a sensible drinking culture’. We explore further the implications of the differing possible definitions of ‘binge’ and ‘sensible’ drinking below.

Parental interpretations of “childhood innocence”: Implications for early sexuality education

Purpose Despite general recognition of the benefits of talking openly about sexuality with children, parents encounter and/or create barriers to such communication. One of the key barriers is a desire to protect childhood innocence. The purpose of this paper is to explore parental interpretations of childhood innocence and the influence this has on their reported practices relating to sexuality-relevant communication with young children. Design/methodology/approach In all, 110 UK parents and carers of children aged between four and seven years were involved in focus group discussions. The discussions were transcribed and thematic network analysis was subsequently applied to the data. Following the reading and re-reading of the transcripts for meaning, context and content, individual comments and statements were identified within the data set and grouped to generate themes. Findings Childhood innocence was commonly equated with non-sexuality in children and sexual ignorance. Parents displayed ambiguity around the conceptualisation of non-innocence in children. Parents desire to prolong the state of childhood innocence led them to withhold certain sexual knowledge from their children; however, the majority also desired an open relationship whereby their child could approach them for information. Originality/value UK parents have a strong desire to maintain the social construction of their children as inherently innocent. This discourse is affecting the way in which they communicate about sexually relevant information with their children.

Talking relationships, babies and bodies with young children: the experiences of parents in England

Abstract Parents often find themselves ill-prepared for the moment at which questions of a sexual nature arise, or when children display signs of playful behaviour that can be interpreted as sexual. How these behaviours and questions are dealt with establishes the foundations on which children begin to interpret relationships, their bodies, those of others and the sexual world in which they live. In this study, the views and experiences of dealing with early childhood sexuality education, along with the ways in which communication had occurred, were collected from 110 parents in London and southern England during focus group discussions and analysed using thematic analysis. Parents who had chosen to communicate with their children reported a range of justifications as to why childhood sexuality communication was considered necessary and had, indeed, occurred. Six key themes were identified: communication prompts, the need for truth, the threat of ignorance, exposure, healthy and positive relationships and openness. Findings reveal that many parents are making strategic decisions about how to discuss relationships and sexuality with their young children. By highlighting the central trigger points for early parent-child sexuality communication, findings can be used to aid the development of relevant practice responses to support less confident parents to communicate effectively.