The Evaluation of Impact

Ethics for Researchers : Facilitating research excellence in FP7

Alcohol, Drinking, Drunkenness (Dis)Orderly Spaces

Young people's drinking has declined markedly in Australia over the past 15 years, and this may be linked to changing norms and values around health. We take the view that healthism-a discourse that privileges good health and renders people personally responsible for managing health-has become pervasive, creating new pressures influencing young people's alcohol practices. Through interviews with 50 young light drinkers and abstainers, we explored these notions of health and alcohol. Although health was not the only reason that participants abstained or drank lightly, many avoided drinking to minimise health risks and to pursue healthy lifestyles. Their understanding of health came from multiple sources such as the media, schools, parents-and often reinforced public health messages, and healthist discourse. This discourse influenced how participants perceived health norms, engaged with health in everyday life and managed their alcohol consumption. Because the need to be healthy incorporated bodily health, mental health and social wellbeing, it also created tensions around how young people could drink while maintaining their health. This highlights the importance of health as a key consideration in the alcohol practices of light drinking and abstaining young Australians, which could help explain broader declines in youth drinking.

"No one associates alcohol with being in good health": Health and wellbeing as imperatives to manage alcohol use for young people

Background

In the early 2000s, alcohol use among young people began to decline in many western countries, especially among adolescents (ages between 12–17 years old). These declines have continued steadily over the past two decades, against the backdrop of much smaller declines among the general population.



Argument

Hypotheses examining individual factors fail adequately to provide the necessary ‘big picture’ thinking needed to understand declines in adolescent drinking. We use the normalisation thesis to argue that there is strong international evidence for both processes of denormalisation of drinking and normalisation of non-drinking occurring for adolescents in many western countries.



Conclusions

Research on declining adolescent drinking provides evidence of both denormalisation of alcohol consumption and normalisation of non-drinking. This has implications for enabling policy environments more amenable to regulation and increasing the acceptability of non-drinking in social contexts. Normalisation theory (and its various interpretations) provides a useful multi-dimensional tool for understanding declines in adolescent drinking.

Declining drinking among adolescents: Are we seeing a denormalisation of drinking and a normalisation of non-drinking?

Legitimizing and negotiating abstinence: Young adults' narratives about practicing situational and long term abstinence in Denmark.

In the present article we explore and discuss the gendered aspects of how flirting among young people is an integrated part of a night out among young adults in Denmark, specifically a night out in mainstream bars and clubs. Empirically, we base our analysis on 140 qualitative interviews with regular alcohol users between 18 - 25 years of age. Drawing on Ahmed's (2006) notion on orientation in combination with Thorne's (1993) notions on gender play and borderwork, our aim is to explore and discuss how flirting - for these young people - become an unavoidable interactional practice in Night Time Economy (NTE) contexts, which, in some cases is experienced as easy and enjoyable, and in others as uncomfortable and challenging. In the analysis we specifically focus on how gender norms related to the NTE is navigated and/or challenged by our participants, in relation to flirting. On this basis, we show how the gendered structures of the mainstream NTE are, in some instances, supportive of its participants flirting practices and experiences, and challenging in other cases. In conclusion, we emphasize that the young people relate challenges to queer flirting as well as heterosexual flirting, and that notions of risks in this context relate to risks of marginalization, rather than health risks.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1455072518807794

Playing with gender borders: Flirting and alcohol consumption among young adults in Denmark

In existing recovery studies, binary distinctions between ‘spoiled’ identities defined by drug-related practices and relationships on the one side, and ‘un-spoiled’ drug-free identities on the othe...

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Disturbing the ‘spoiled-unspoiled’ binary: performances of recovering identities in drug-experienced youths’ friendship narratives

While research on youthful drinking is extensive, the literature has been geographically skewed towards urban settings. As a potential corrective to this, our focus in this paper is on youthful dri...

Maria Dich Herold

Papers

Legitimizing and negotiating abstinence: Young adults' narratives about practicing situational and long term abstinence in Denmark.

Playing with gender borders: Flirting and alcohol consumption among young adults in Denmark

Disturbing the ‘spoiled-unspoiled’ binary: performances of recovering identities in drug-experienced youths’ friendship narratives

‘Congenial drinking’ and accomplishments of place-belongingness among young people in rural Denmark

Drinking comfortably? Gender and affect among Danish pre-partiers.