Introduction: Alcohol, age, generation and the life course

This book is about alcohol and its role in people’s lives. Lives which unfold as we age and move in and out of different roles and responsibilities and across which alcohol, drinking and drunkenness are likely to offer different rewards, pose diverse risks and harms and mean different things. Consistent with wider developments in social theory emphasising temporality and dynamic processes of change over time (e.g. May, 2011), the book explores how the centrality, or marginality, of alcohol to our lives changes significantly as we age. From youthful initiation and experimentation in adolescence, to the culturally expectations of the rituals and rites of passage that punctuate the journey into and through adulthood, alcohol is involved with both mundane daily routines and with special occasions. Across many cultures, alcohol is often drunk at important occasions and significant moments in life: to celebrate a birth, to congratulate a marriage and to console the bereaved. Indeed, in all cultures where alcohol is widely consumed it appears to play some functional role in marking out special events, festivities and ceremonies. Yet, it is often in the minutia of daily life that the social and cultural uses of drinking alcohol are most keenly felt. As the chapters of this book illustrate, within each specific cultural context alcohol means different things to different people and, in being situated in biographical and generational time, observable and often sticking differences characterise the use and purpose of alcohol amongst different age groups and generation cohorts.