British Binge Drinking: Policy or Culture? (by Andrea Gortze)

(This is part of a series of short analyses by students in the Sociology of Drink class at the University of Minnesota. Authors are credited by name when they have allowed me to do so.)

The readings this week deal primarily with patterns of heavy drinking in different circumstances around the world. I will engage primarily with the Hayward and Hobbs reading, “Beyond the binge in ‘booze Britain’: market-led liminalization and the spectacle of binge drinking,” which ties binge drinking in Britain to the NTE, or "Night Time Economy," a new facet of the post-industrial economy that emerged from a policy introduced in 2003 which removed regulations dictating closing times for bars. 

If the authors are correct, the 2003 Licensing Act had led to a massive increase in binge drinking in Britain. This act amended the licensing process for establishments serving alcohol, enabling them to get licensed to stay open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in some cases. They attribute this policy to an increase in crime and heavy drinking, especially among young people. There are positives to the NTE, the piece mentions that it generates an additional 7 billion pounds for the British government, but Hayward and Hobbs conceive this as insufficient justification for the social ills it creates, saying “the NTE [is] a criminogenic zone that … negatively [impacts] upon their (the Labour Party’s) own crime and social order targets.”

I argue that this is an insufficient examination of binge drinking in the UK, as it fails to account for the “northern European drinking culture” that we discussed earlier in the semester. Hayward and Hobbs say that “the NTE has had a transformative influence upon British cities,” but seem to undermine their own argument in several places. They cite examples of Victorian and Edwardian concern over massive drinking, and acknowledge that such behavior was much more strictly regulated at the time, and bring up the fact that in the mid-twentieth century there was also a great deal of concern over levels of alcohol consumption in the UK, though the regulations they find fault with weren’t introduced until the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty first. Neither of these cases is addressed at all by their theory that the NTE created by the 2003 Licensing Act caused a binge drinking culture of crime and hedonism. 

It is my experience that within a northern European drinking culture, which the United States and the United Kingdom are both examples of, binge drinking is always the default among young people, and changes to liquor laws have very little effect on this. For example, in the state of Minnesota, there are continually discussions about changing the state’s “Blue Laws,” and this discussion never seems to center around organizing a movement of college students who want easier access to alcohol.

Alcohol consumption patterns are deeply rooted in culture, and are not as easy to alter as the authors of this piece seem to believe. It stretches the imagination to say that people will be more likely to binge drink simply because bars are open later. These laws may affect when and where people drink, but the authors do not sufficiently support the case that they also affect how people drink. Seeing as their argument is based in the social ills that come from elevated rates of binge drinking as a result of this law, they do not provide sufficient support that there is a true elevation in the tendency of British youth, or anyone else, for that matter, towards drinking in excess under an NTE economy. They cite a variety of scholarly sources, but it is hard to access their voracity without a detailed account of methodology, results, level of statistical confidence, etc, and they do not do independent research for themselves. While they may have a case that is able to circumvent the concerns listed above, they do not argue it in a sufficiently detailed way to convince a critical reader.

That said, there are some questions we should consider: 

• Under what circumstances, and with what  could a similar policy (of round the clock liquor sales) be adopted in the United States? In a city like Minneapolis, would the effects be much different from what Hayward and Hobbs describe? 
• How did this law affect drinking in private residences? For example, were house parties or incidents of “pre-gaming” at houses decreased because of the easier access to liquor in public places?
• It is not terribly common in my experience in the United States for people to leave a bar or club after closing and go back to someone’s house or apartment to continue drinking for long periods of time, but is that the case among other people’s social groups? How common was this in the UK before and after this law went into effect?
• What is the degree of public support for this policy today? If its consequences are truly so bad, is there a great deal of public disapproval? Is there any chance of it being repealed?

Socializing in Drinking Places

(This is part of a series of short student essays on Sociology of Drink. I will attribute posts by name when students have given me permission to do so.)

by Amber Johnson

As I am trying to put my thoughts into words I look around at my surroundings. I am sitting in a coffee house, surrounded by individuals who are buried in their own works. The loud coffee machines drown out most of the noise, but during those brief moments of silence I hear pages turning, keyboards clicking and the faint sound of music coming from the person’s headphones next to me. Besides three girls who are chatting over lattes in the back of the coffee shop, everyone else seems pretty engrossed in their own worlds. I want to explore the different places we encounter socializing and drink. We have all experienced places were civil societies meet to discuss the weather versus the places people go to get drunk and explore social boundaries. The question is how can we tell the difference between the different places? What is to keep a drunk person from entering the coffee house I am currently sitting in (besides the fact that they do not serve alcohol) and keep a person looking to read their book with a beverage out of a bar on Friday night? We have all heard that saying “there is a time and a place for that” usually followed by “and it is not here.” Well I think that very saying can be applied to understanding the different places where one goes to drink alone versus where one goes to drink to socialize.

There are many cues that indicate that this a place where people go to be alone. There is the silence, although not as silent as a library, there is not the normal chatter you hear at a restaurant or bar. People are on their electronics or have their heads buried in a book. Many have chosen to put in headphones to drown out the rest of the world surrounding them. This is not a private establishment and there are no signs that say “please, no talking.” So why is there not more socializing between the coffee house costumers? Would people be annoyed if I started going up to them and asking them about their day right now? I saw the perfect opportunity to test this theory out when I noticed a girl from one of my classes sitting alone at a table. She was sipping on a hot beverage and reading something on her laptop. As I approached her table I also noticed she had her headphones in. It took me a few tries to get her attention, but when she finally noticed me she took out her headphones and turned her attention to me. I proceeded to ask how she was doing and if she felt ready for our upcoming test. After a few minutes of small talk I could feel our conversation beginning to dwindle. I decided to explain this memo I was working on and asked her about how she felt about me interrupting her studying. She said she had never really thought of a coffee house as being a quiet place, but now that I had presented it in that way she agreed that she mostly went to coffee houses in order to get away from distractions in her own house and focus on her homework. She was not bothered by the fact that I came up to talk to her and small talk is completely acceptable; however, as soon as I left she put her headphones right back in her ears and immediately dove back into her laptop.

This was my recent experience in a coffee house on campus in the early afternoon. However, depending on the location and the time of the day the atmosphere in a coffee house could vary. We learn in our readings how coffee and tea drinkers are a community of individuals. That it is true that many people like to enjoy their hot beverage with a book or newspaper, yet I know many people who enjoy “getting to know someone over a cup of coffee.” Just recently at work, a co-worker was asking me about the best place to meet someone he had just recently started talking to on Tinder. Another co-worker suggested dinner. I suggested a coffee house. My reasoning was because this was basically a blind date with someone he met on an app. A dinner date is more sophisticated, whereas a coffee date is more laid back. Coffee houses are also a great place to catch up with some friends, just like the three girls who I saw chatting in the back corner. However, this could still be interpreted as individuality. The girls are chatting in the corner or the couple is holding hands with their heads bent close together, but are they really being social? A stranger still would not feel comfortable approaching them. Based on my previous knowledge, the readings and my current observations I have come to the conclusion that coffee houses are a place for individual preference. Although, there are some practices of socializing in coffee houses, many find restaurants and bars to be more accommodating to the "outgoing." You wouldn’t find someone raising a toast or buying a round of coffees for strangers. Most likely you will find people enjoying their individual time and space.

On the opposite end of the socializing spectrum are bars. Saturday night I went out with some friends to Wild Bills in Blaine. Most of my bar experiences had been in college bars, so it was fun to try some place with a little bit of a different (and slightly older) crowd. The bar took up most of the space with a few tables on the outskirts and a large open floor for dancing and mingling. My friends and I went straight for the bar first where we stood to order our drinks. My one friend was closest to the bartender and she ordered the first round without asking. Once we were handed our drinks we moved out of the way towards the open floor. Wolfgang Shivelbusch mentions how the function of the bar has changed over time and over space. The bar was created to separate the workers from the customers. Its main function in Germany and France is to only serve liquor, and not be a place to sit down. However, the longer the bars, like in England and the United States, the more likely you are to find people sitting at a bar. The rule of thumb being that the longer the bar the more regulars you will see. Wild Bills had a pretty long bar, however it also had a pretty large crowd. For this reason most people were buying drinks and leaving the bar to find another place to enjoy it.

Another important thing I noticed at Wild Bills was that, like my friend, many people were buying rounds. Later in the evening, we had a group of people come up and ask to sit at our table with us. Could you imagine if this happened at a restaurant? People would be very offended and annoyed, yet in a bar setting it was normal. We begin to converse with these complete strangers and one of them even went up and bought the next round. To an extent, this was a very nice concept because we never had to fight the large crowd at the bar. However, when it was finally my turn to buy the round I spent way more money in one round then I planned to spend all night. I felt just like the guy in our readings who had to leave the bar to go home and get more money. The guys had insisted on letting them get the round again, but I knew how much money they had already spent on my friends and me so I felt obligated to return the favor. It was interesting to read these stories last week and then go to the bar and actually experience them. I never really noticed before just how often people buy rounds for one another. Now that I have been paying attention I realize my friends do it a lot. It seems like a strange concept, why doesn’t everyone just pay for their own? I think Schivelbusch hits it on the money when he talks about it being a socializing thing. When someone comes to your house, what is one of the first things you ask? “Can I get you something to drink?” It is the perfect opening line for every generation, age, gender, race ect. If you want to start a conversation with someone, what better peace offering then offering to buy them a drink. We have already learned that over the centuries drinking has been a way for people to create social bonds. In our first week of class we were all assigned to write memos about alcohol use in our families. Most of the stories had to deal with how alcohol created or strengthened relationships in families. Some were about how parents met over a glass of wine, others were memories about having their first drink with their father.

Drinking is used in many different ways. Saturday night, alcoholic drinks were used by some girls who went out to the bar for a good time and to meet new people. Today, a hot beverage is consumed by one of those very same girls to stay focused and finish her homework. Like places, certain drinks are more acceptable by society during certain times and in certain places. While drinking a cup of coffee on the morning train is completely acceptable, drinking a shot of tequila is not. There are always certain cues to look for when entering a place. People who have their heads bent low over their computers with headphones in are least likely to want to be interrupted, even if you have the nicest intentions. While people at a bar are more likely to sit right next you and engage in conversation, it is a place where people go to be sociable.

Confessions of a Liquor Store Employee

(This is part of a series of short, exploratory class writing from students at the University of Minnesota enrolled studying the Sociology of Drink. Some authors wanted their names used, others preferred to be anonymous for public posts.)

by Jacqueline Hess

For the last year I have worked in a liquor store that specializes in craft beer in South Minneapolis. When I started, my mom, who was a bartender through college, told me that in her experience (therefore she said it more as a fact than an observation) that “vodka drinkers drink twice as much as anyone else." I wanted to look at how drinks signal social status, and how liquor store employees create mental "types" to make sense of their customers (like everyone does, I suppose).

Over the last year I have seen the same guy come in every day, sometimes twice a day, and buy a case (24 pack) of cheep beer (Coors light, Natural Ice, Bud Light, etc.), and a 375 mL (We call it a pint) of Karkov vodka, the cheapest we sell. He is an older (65+) white male, who comes in looking dirty, smelling, and pays in cash. When I say I see the same guy coming in, I mean to say that we have several different guys who match the same description coming in every day. Mostly they refuse to engage in any conversation, even the, “Hey, how are you doing today?” is brushed off with a scoff and a scowl.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have people who come in less frequently, once or maybe twice a week, looking for the latest and greatest craft beer. They are willing to spend $10-$20 on one bomber (750 mL bottle) and like to talk to the staff about their favorite aspects of a certain beer or a certain brewery. Most of these craft beer heads are younger, 25-35, come in dressed much nicer than the case + pint guy, but not overly dressed, typically male, but some female, and are more excited about the culture behind the beer than the drinking to get drunk parts of beer. These are the people who, like we talked about last week, would fit in with the casual daily drinkers of the south, where the functioning alcoholics from above would be associated with the binge drinkers of the north.

Of course we have the “good” spirit drinkers (Vodka, Whiskey (scotch and bourbon), Gin, Rum, Etc.), those who come in frequently, but infrequently buy a $15-$50 bottle, often from a local distillery, and would be offended if I offered them anything from lower than the middle shelf. This drinker is typically 35-50, appears to be middle class, isn’t afraid to ask for opinions or to ask about something new. This drinker, much like the Craft beer heads, give a vibe that they are more interested in the social aspect of the drink.

I do want to point out that I am generalizing groups of people here. But in any line of work, this happens. Humans don't come in an endless varied spectrum. Sooner or later, and rightly or wrongly, we begin to notice types. Three months ago I began working at a new location, in a middle class suburb. Because we are still new we are getting a lot of first time people in every day, but after the first month we already have some of each kind of regulars.

In particular, I enjoy a woman who comes in frequently and has been very open in telling me quite a bit about her life. She is a mother of two kids, she used to only drink German white wine, and when we opened she started doing a build-your-own 6-pack of craft beer (a special thing we do in our store). Since that first visit in she has grown a love of all things craft beer. She comes in twice a week to buy, then each night she drinks and rates her new beer and posts it on her blog that she started since becoming a customer in our store.

A big difference I’ve seen from the Minneapolis location and the suburb location is that the guy who buys a case of beer (although, in the suburb, it is rarely paired with a pint of anything) is usually lower-middle class, going out on his boat, and buying a cheep beer because he knows all his friends are going to be drinking it too. So the stigma against suburban macro-beer drinkers is less harsh than the stigma against Minneapolis macro-beer drinkers, partly because they have never taken the time to try any of the craft beers we have available, just choose to drink what they have always known.

After talking to coworkers who have been in the business for at least as long as I have, they seem to agree that most of what someone drinks has to do with one of two things, their socioeconomic status, or their addiction. One said pointed out, “The guy who comes in and buys a pint every day is doing it for one reason, if he has it, he will drink it. Whether it is a pint or a liter, if its there he (or she) will drink it. It’s a matter of control, not preference.” Personally I see this as more of a Psychological issue than a Sociological one, but it was worth pointing out. A different co-worker pointed out that the guy who comes in every day is spending more overall than the guy who spends $50 on one bottle even though he has fewer resourses (because he often makes less money). 

When I asked a third co-worker if there was a correlation between class and what people drink, she didn't want to be pinned down. We talked about the "pint a day" crowd as well, and she agreed with coworker 1, that it’s all about control rather than economics. It would be cheaper in the long run to buy a larger bottle, but if it were a bigger bottle they would drink that too. She also points out that certain higher socioeconomic status people try too hard to let everyone know that they are of a higher status, letting the bottle they buy work in the same way their car works, to show others how much money they make and often try to put the idea out there that they are better than you based on what they buy. Coworker 3 has only worked at the suburb location, so she can’t compare the difference in the two stores, but even working one day a week she can tell who is a regular and who is not.

Beer is a Problem, Why Not Coffee?

(This is part of a series of short, exploratory class writing from students at the University of Minnesota enrolled studying the Sociology of Drink. When student authors have given consent for me to post their names along with their essays, I will do so.)

by Meghan Schmidt

What struck me as  fascinating in chapter two of Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s Tastes of Paradise was the speed at which coffee was implemented into European diets. Here was this new substance that made people feel energized and productive, which was in stark contrast to the homebrew commonly consumed by most people. Coffee seemed the perfect complement to the lifestyle of the time period. For those who did not drink, for religious or other personal reasons, coffee became a beacon of opportunity to excite and enhance the human experience. This new, mysterious drink gained popularity so quickly it had become a normalized expectation that people consume it to stimulate their minds. Schivelbusch writes, 

“And inasmuch as time is money, to quote Benjamin Franklin, coffee indirectly proved to be a productive resource, or what we today might call a first-rate efficiency factor. In this sense, not to drink any coffee would be almost as great a sin for the puritanical bourgeois as wasting time itself” (39).

This particular quotation caused me to think a lot about our society and our coffee habits and expectations. When someone says they are tired or are running late, it is often suggested they grab a quick cup of coffee to help boost them up. We generally expect people to be running on all cylinders and maximizing their productivity all day, every day and tend to blame workers rather than systems for inefficiency. That may be more of a criticism on our capitalistic society rather than the effects of coffee. I digress.

What I am interested in discussing is how we have become so blasé about caffeine addiction and why and how people choose to drink coffee. Did people have a natural curiosity or craving for a buzz, or was there some sort of external factor?  I am also curious to know the speed at which coffee is implemented into people’s lives. How long does it typically take for someone to start drinking coffee on a regular basis?  In my experience, it has become perfectly acceptable to use “I haven’t had my coffee yet” as an excuse for being absent minded or inefficient. I have also heard, “I can’t function without having coffee everyday” or “I’m not a real person until I’ve had my coffee.”  Being an occasional coffee drinker myself, I can understand the sentiment behind what I have heard people say. And while many of the people who make these comments may be dramatizing or embellishing their feelings, caffeine certainly is an addictive substance of which a lot of people have some level of dependency on. If someone discloses that they feel they cannot get through their day without drinking alcohol, many people would see this as a cause for concern and would probably encourage the person to seek help. I recognize that alcohol addiction and caffeine addiction are not comparable in terms of the physical and mental health concerns that come along with them, but why do we turn a blind eye to addiction of any kind? Where do we draw the line for acceptable addiction? At what point do we consider something to be a harmful addiction? And why has frequent, if not extreme or excessive, coffee consumption long been accepted- basically since its implementation? These are the questions that plague my mind. 

I recently watched an episode of the show My Strange Addiction in which it featured a man and a woman who were addicted to using coffee enemas. Yes, you read that right. Up to five hours of their day were spent administering themselves with coffee enemas. Now, I understand that this is an extreme and strange addiction (it’s right there in the title of the show!). But it did cause me to think-what is it about coffee that makes it such an acceptable addiction to have? How often does it get out of hand or out of control? The coffee enema folks’ addiction began when they became regular coffee drinkers. Eventually they were seeking a stronger caffeine high, because conventional coffee consumption methods were just not giving them the buzz they longed for. So, their addiction escalated to an unusual and potentially very dangerous level. This caused me to wonder: when it comes to coffee, how much is too much? Is having too much cause for concern, as it would be with any other substance?