Dwight B. Heath

Uses and Misuses of the Concept of Ethnicity in Alcohol Studies: An Essay in Deconstruction

The importance of ethnicity in relation to patterns of alcohol use and its outcomes is widely recognized but imprecisely reported. A deconstructionist approach analyzes five dominant models of ethnicity: as bureaucratic category, race, national heritage, religion, and special population. Each usage is found to be imprecise and unreliable, and many of the usages are garbled, with inappropriate comparisons commonly made among them. Despite methodological weaknesses in scientific terms, many such studies have been insightful and have offered useful support for the importance of sociocultural factors. Further specification of the nature of ethnicity, emphasizing social learning about alcohol, with increasing attention to intraethnic variation, holds promise for increasing our understanding.

Alcohol Use among North American Indians A Cross-Cultural Survey of Patterns and Problems

There is a certain irony to the fact that alcohol has recently come to play a variety of important roles in the lives of many native populations throughout North America. This is one of the few major world areas where almost no indigenous alcoholic beverages existed prior to contact with European colonial cultures. In most regions, alcohol became an important item in transcultural trade and diplomacy as the frontier of White settlement advanced, and the reactions of diverse Indian* groups were often reported in more colorful detail than were other aspects of their cultures. Drunken comportment by Indians became a focus of ethnic stereotyping and was often associated with high rates of arrest, violence (against self and others), health problems, and other issues that became foci of concern among Indians and others. In many instances, deleterious effects of drinking have been exaggerated and beneficial effects have been overlooked.

Women and alcohol: cross-cultural perspectives.

A review of the worldwide literature about women and alcohol contradicts many stereotypes and raises some new questions, interpretations, and practical implications. Norms, values, attitudes, and expectations may be at least as important as physiological differences between the sexes with respect to patterns of drinking and their outcomes. Women have been drinking as long as men have throughout history, and they drink about as often as men in many cultures; in a few instances, they even seem to drink more, in spite of the fact that the physical impact of a given dose of alcohol is greater for women. In nonindustrial societies, women usually have more easy access to alcoholic beverages; in fact, they often monopolize production and predominate in the distribution system. A cross-cultural perspective shows that too narrow a focus on the social, psychological, and physical problems that excessive drinkers incur has severely hampered the understanding of womens diverse roles with respect to alcohol.

Anthropological Perspectives on the Social Biology of Alcohol: An Introduction to the Literature

It is apparent that throughout human history the drug most widely used for altering human consciousness has been alcohol.* It is probably the oldest, and certainly now the most widespread mind-altering drug, but it is also distinctive in its versatility. In various times and in various contexts, human beings have used alcohol as an energizer or tranquilizer, as a “super-ego solvent” or sacred symbol, as a medicine or food, as a social leveler or source of subjective feelings of power, and for a host of other social or symbolic functions.

The War on Drugs as a Metaphor in American Culture

George Bush had been President of the United States for half a year, elected by a landslide victory and inaugurated in a time of welling chauvinism and superficial prosperity. The American people seemed eager to hear his plans when he gave his first televised address in August of 1989. Whatever disappointment there may have been over pressing needs that were not mentioned, his call to arms in the war on drugs struck a responsive chord. During the next several months, the media was full of feature stories, editorials, news reports, and background accounts about “the drug menace,” the “war on drugs,” and a host of other approaches to drug use and its deadly impact. At one level the imagery of war could be viewed as just a metaphor, a rhetorical device virtually guaranteed to galvanize public opinion, demonstrate the speaker’s decisiveness, rally support, and draw a sharp line between “us” and “them.” No longer a wimp, as he had earlier been characterized, Pres. Bush had identified a common enemy, announced a firm stand, and promised to take action to “defeat” the other side. Such rhetoric on the part of other presidents had been applauded in connection with the “war on poverty” and the “war on illiteracy,” as it had been earlier with the “war against drink” and, probably, in a series of other pseudoevents in American history.

Quasi-science and public policy: A reply to robin room about details and misrepresentations in science

A so-called “consensus document,” based on minuscule and questionable evidence, was submitted to World Health Organization as basis for recommendations about alcohol control policies throughout Latin America. That typifies a broader problem whereby scientific findings are not so much ignored as misrepresented for political convenience. Room and Heath agree that reliance on legislative controls may not be effective as a means of reducing alcohol-related problems, and could pose a danger of increasing authoritarianism.

American Experiences with Alcohol

This book offers unusual strengths in several fields: It is a collection that sheds new light on important aspects of American culture; it incorporates a variety of fresh approaches that anthropologists have only recently brought to bear on the study of alcohol use and its outcomes; and it gives us insights into the several meanings of alcoholism that have rarely been articulated, despite the enormous volume of literature that exists on the subject. The contributions all appear here for the first time, and they are presented in styles that are clear and generally concise and well organized, without being monotonous or formulaic.

Book Review: Thomas M. Wilson (ed.), Drinking Cultures: Alcohol and Identity. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005

Hannerz guides the reader towards a picture of the ghetto unified by the ‘things in common’, including the numbers game, bootlegging and, above all, ‘soul’. Together, these provide a shared outlook on life for ghetto dwellers, but always in interaction with so-called mainstream society – an idea fundamental to Hannerz’s analysis. Put simply, for Hannerz, ‘ghetto dwellers tend to be bicultural’ (p. 192). As a critique of the ‘culture of poverty’, a term coined by anthropologist Oscar Lewis, Hannerz proposed a ‘soft’ concept of culture as ‘largely situational’ (p. 183). This is a modification of, on the one hand, an understanding of culture as a rigid frame reproduced from generation to generation and, on the other, a portrayal of the poor as victims of a class system from which there is no escape. With his soft culture concept Hannerz struck a balance, we might say, between structure and agency – a theme that has continued to occupy students of poverty and marginality. Retrospectively, it also seems to open up the material in Soulside to considerations of resistance and strategies of survival among the poor, rather than mere selfperpetuating pathologies as Lewis and his followers had it. Yet, it feels as if the concept of ‘soul’ could have been given even more prominence in Hannerz’s analysis, as an interesting, ethnographic foil to the redefined culture concept. Furthermore, Hannerz was keenly aware of the limitations of the urban community study approach he had adopted. Here, he first begins to hint at the amorphous networks of social relations criss-crossing geographical boundaries and spaces – a notion developed in his well-known work on urban networks and cultural complexity. At a time when spatial governance, modes of surveillance and the privatization of space have become paramount themes in urban anthropology, the publicness of the urban life depicted in Soulside appears remarkable. One could attempt, in Hannerz’s spirit, a dispassionate rather than a nostalgic revisiting of streetcorner society. One could enquire, for example, into the place-making practices of the ghetto dwellers, and the ways in which people made sense of, managed and manoeuvred within an environment they perceived to be, as Hannerz repeatedly notes, difficult and dangerous. Soulside is open to this kind of re-reading, which takes the city to be not merely a setting but a product of the sociality so magnificently portrayed by Hannerz.

Selected Contexts of Anthropological Studies in the Alcohol Field

Anthropologists have made contributions out of all proportion to their small numbers among the multidisciplinary groups that conduct research on alcohol use and its outcomes. Among topics concerning which these contributions have been especially valuable are: social organization, intracultural variation, institutional analysis, symbolism and norms, and cross-cultural comparison. A brief note on each of the variously authored chapters in this section shows how it illuminates one of those topics.

The dead who were mute speak the unspeakable: Ethnohistory in action

William B. Taylor. Drinking, Homicide and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979. xvi + 242 pp. Maps, tables, appendices, notes, bibliography, and index.