‘Just choose the easy option’: students talk about alcohol use and social influence

Previous research into young people’s drinking behaviour has studied how social practices influence their actions and how they negotiate drinking-related identities. Here, adopting the perspective of discursive psychology we examine how, for young people, social influences are bound up with issues of drinking and of identity. We conducted 19 focus groups with undergraduate students in Australia aged between 18 and 24 years. Thematic analysis of participants’ accounts for why they drink or do not drink was used to identify passages of talk that referred to social influence, paying particular attention to terms such as ‘pressure’ and ‘choice’. These passages were then analysed in fine-grained detail, using discourse analysis, to study how participants accounted for social influence. Participants treated their behaviour as accountable and produced three forms of account that: (1) minimised the choice available to them, (2) explained drinking as culture and (3) described resisting peer pressure. They also negotiated gendered social dynamics related to drinking. These forms of account allowed the participants to avoid individual responsibility for drinking or not drinking. These findings demonstrate that the effects of social influence on young people’s drinking behaviour cannot be assumed, as social influence itself becomes negotiable within local contexts of talk about drinking.     

Binge drinking vs. drunkenness. The questionable threshold of excess for young Italians

The use of a standard definition of ‘binge drinking’ can potentially offer the advantage of ‘objectifying’ the concept of excessive drinking. Nevertheless, the term has become somewhat confusing, as it is often used as a synonym of drunkenness, making cross-cultural comparison difficult. The present study investigates the meaning Italian young people attribute to binge drinking, to explain the gap between self-reported rates of drunkenness and episodes of binge drinking found by comparative youth drinking surveys. About 134 face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted, targeting adolescents (aged 15–17) and young adults (aged 22–24) who had admitted to drinking excessively. In addition, an online forum was created, using a video clip as a stimulus and asking for web users' comments (132 were analysed). Results show how in the view of Italian bingers, binge drinking does not necessarily entail drunkenness, but only being tipsy. This is what they aim at when they drink, while they have negative attitudes and expectations regarding intoxication and its effects. This boundary establishes the concept of excess and marks the threshold between socially acceptable and unacceptable drinking. In conclusion, the concept of binge drinking cannot be used as a synonym of drunkenness, which young people in Italy judge severely.     

Queer youth,intoxication and queer drinking spaces

Research on intoxicating substances and gender has developed considerably in the last 30 years, especially in the social sciences as feminist scholars highlighted the contradictory discourses about young women’s intoxication. Nevertheless, there still remain significant gaps if we are to fully understand the role and meaning of intoxication for all young people and not merely for heterosexual, cisgender young people. As a way of exploring the possible limitations of this legacy, we will examine the qualitative data from 52 in-depth interviews with self-identified LGBTQ young people. Our analysis explores the relationships between meanings of intoxication and sexual and gender identities, drinking spaces, and the extent to which notions of masculinity and femininity influence alcohol consumption and drinking practices among LGBTQ youth. As gender expressions among young people, especially those who identify as LGBTQ, become increasingly nuanced and fluid, understanding the role of social and cultural practices of alcohol consumption in the performance of sexual and gender identities may increase our understanding of the ways in which sexuality and gender influence alcohol consumption.     

Positioning,strategizing, and charming: how students with autism construct identities in relation to disability

Contrary to views that young people with the label of autism are incapable of engaging in collective cultural practice, this article examines how they construct identities through social interactions to belong, compete, and participate. In a multi-sited ethnography of high school students with disabilities, we focused on two students as they move across contexts of school, debate team, and home. Over two years of interviews and participant observation, these students demonstrated nuanced efforts to distance themselves from the ‘autistic’ label. These acts of positioning illuminated how they negotiate identities with the knowledge their interactions shape how people perceive their participation in different contexts. By following them across informal and formal environments, we could see how they transition across multiple social worlds and appreciate the combined power these contexts have on youth identity.     

‘Maturing out’ as normative standard: qualitative interviews with young adult drinkers

Framed within a life-course perspective, this paper analyses the contents of the phenomenon ‘maturing out’ of adolescent drinking. We identify five dimensions of change that young adults’ drinking habits are expected to undergo when they reach their mid-twenties: using alcohol to maintain and develop existing relationships instead of building new relationships; drinking in differentiated ways instead of always to get drunk; controlling one’s intoxication instead of transgressing limits; considering the day after drinking instead of ‘living for the night’; and drinking to ‘chill’ and not to ‘cope’. Maturing out, as described by our interviewees, is only loosely connected with the taking on of adult roles and responsibilities (related to e.g. work and family). Rather, maturing out is a powerful social norm urging young adults to change their drinking habits, regardless of their individual life situation – a status-forcing mechanism casting those who do not adapt as deviants. The analysis centres on 24 qualitative interviews with Danish 25–27-year-olds identified as ‘heavy drinkers’ in a preceding population survey.     

Digital photographic practices as expressions of personhood and identity: variations across school leavers and recent retirees

Over the last two decades, digital photography has been adopted by young and old. Many young adults easily take photos, share them across multiple social networks using smartphones, and create digital identities for themselves consciously and unconsciously. Is the same true for older adults? As part of a larger mixed-methods study of online life in the UK, we considered digital photographic practices at two life transitions: leaving secondary school and retiring from work. In this paper, we report on a complex picture of different kinds of interactions with visual media online, and variation across age groups in the construction of digital identities. In doing so, we argue for a blurring of the distinctions between Chalfen’s ‘Kodak Culture’ and Miller and Edwards’ ‘Snaprs’. The camera lens often faces inwards for young adults: tagged ‘Selfies’ and images co-constructed with social network members commonly contribute to their digital identities. In contrast, retirees turn the camera’s lens outwards towards the world, not inwards to themselves. In concluding, we pay special attention to the digital social norms of co-creation of self and balancing convenience and privacy for people of varying ages, and what our findings mean for the future of photo-sharing as a form of self-expression, as today’s young adults grow old and retire.     

A struggle on two fronts: boundary drawing in the lower region of the social space and the symbolic market for ‘down‐to‐earthness’

In this article we use qualitative interviews to examine how Norwegians possessing low volumes of cultural and economic capital demarcate themselves symbolically from the lifestyles of those above and below them in social space. In downward boundary drawing, a range of types of people are regarded as inferior because of perceived moral and aesthetic deficiencies. In upward boundary drawing, anti‐elitist sentiments are strong: people practising resource‐demanding lifestyles are viewed as harbouring ‘snobbish’ and ‘elitist’ attitudes. However, our analysis suggests that contemporary forms of anti‐elitism are far from absolute, as symbolic expressions of privilege are markedly less challenged if they are parcelled in a ‘down‐to‐earth’ attitude. Previous studies have shown attempts by the privileged to downplay differences in cross‐class encounters, accompanied by displays of openness and down‐to‐earthness. Our findings suggest that there is in fact a symbolic ‘market’ for such performances in the lower region of social space. This cross‐class sympathy, we argue, helps naturalize, and thereby legitimize, class inequalities. The implications of this finding are outlined with reference to current scholarly debates about politics and populism, status and recognition and intersections between class and gender in the structuring of social inequalities. The article also contributes key methodological insights into the mapping of symbolic boundaries. Challenging Lamont's influential framework, we demonstrate that there is a need for a more complex analytical strategy rather than simply measuring the ‘relative salience’ of various boundaries in terms of their occurrence in qualitative interview data. In distinguishing analytically between usurpationary and exclusionary boundary strategies, we show that moral boundaries in particular can take on qualitatively different forms and that subtypes of boundaries are sometimes so tightly intertwined that separating them to measure their relative salience would neglect the complex ways in which they combine to engender both aversion to and sympathies for others.     

There are two sides to every story: young people’s perspectives of relationship issues on social media and adult responses

This paper reports on a recent research project undertaken in the UK that investigated how young people negotiate their identities and relationships online, including how they experience interventions by adults. Drawing on qualitative interviews with young people in two schools and a voluntary youth organisation in England, we argue that young people engage rather successfully in practices of self-governance. Our findings based on this sample of young people’s agentic practice and care for their peers challenge some dominant perceptions of young people’s online practices as risky and/or harmful to themselves and/or others. Furthermore we found a lack of evidence concerning the effectiveness of, and need for, interventions orientated around surveillance and zero tolerance.     

Being alone or becoming lonely? The complexity of portraying ‘unaccompanied children’ as being alone in Sweden

Research has largely focused on ‘unaccompanied minors’ as a vulnerable group at risk of developing psychological problems that affect their health. Separation from primary caregivers is considered one of the foremost reasons for these young people’s proposed loneliness. Thus, the official and ascribed identity is that they are lonely and that loneliness is their major problem. But research has seldom given the young people themselves an opportunity to express their views in an attempt to trace the often situational, dynamic and complex nature of social and emotional life. The present article analyses how ‘unaccompanied minors’ talk about everyday life and themes related to loneliness. The authors followed 23 ‘unaccompanied minors’ during a period of a year through ethnographic observations and qualitative interviews. Results: Loneliness may occur when these young people experience lack of control in managing life and when they feel no one grieves for them; loneliness may be dealt with by creating new social contacts and friends; loneliness may be reinforced or reduced in encounters with representatives from ‘the system’; the young people may experience frustration about being repeatedly labeled ‘unaccompanied’ and they may create a resistance to and critical reflexivity towards this labeling.     

The construction of intellectual disability by parents and teachers

This study examines how disability is constructed by significant adults in the lives of young people with intellectual disability. Specifically, we are examined how parents of those affected by intellectual disability and teachers in special schools construct intellectual disability in talk. Using focus group interviews, we examined whether stigma might be recreated or sustained within the family and school settings of those affected by intellectual disability. Parents and school staff constructed disability as negative, articulating difference from ‘the norm’, which was claimed to drive social isolation for affected young people. There was also evidence that parents and teachers attributed less agency to young people affected by intellectual disability. Discussion orients to how parents and teachers, see themselves as advocates for those with intellectual disability highlight, whilst at the same time recreating pervasive and subtle distinctions between children with and without intellectual disability.     

Communication and Supervision of Alcohol in the Family: Parental Perspectives

It is now well acknowledged that parents can have a central role in supporting sensible alcohol use and reducing alcohol misuse amongst young people. However, little research has considered how communication and supervision in relation to alcohol actually takes place within the family. Drawing upon interviews with the parents of young people aged 13–17 years (n = 40), this article describes the strategies that many parents use in communicating, monitoring, and supervising alcohol use within the family. The findings revealed that many parents lack the guidance needed to convey ‘sensible drinking’ messages to young people, and wish for greater information and support about young people and alcohol.     

‘That right level of intoxication’: A Grounded Theory study on young adults’ drinking in nightlife settings

The present study examined the meaning and functions of drinking across different nightlife settings (e.g., bars, dance clubs) in a sample of Italian young adults. A Grounded Theory recursive and iterative process of data collection, through 10 focus group interviews, and data analysis revealed the complex and dynamic nature of young people's experience of drinking in nightlife settings. Results indicated that three major categories of social nightlife settings associated with different meanings and uses of alcohol: a more moderate social drinking in bars, a pursuit of a desired level of intoxication in dancing settings, like nightclubs, with festivities and celebratory settings most associated with alcohol abuse and heavy drunkenness as a mean to maximize the celebration and the uniqueness of the event. The core category emerging was related to the collective social process of youngsters optimizing alcohol intake throughout the night to find and maintain a desired level of intoxication (‘just the right buzz’) in dancing settings, to reach a controlled disinhibition to get what they consider positive outcomes minimizing negative ones. Results can be informative for other cultural regions too where differences in the drinking experience across nightlife settings have not been fully addressed yet.     

The discreet charm of the children of the bourgeoisie: economic capital and its symbolic expressions at an elite business school

We address a largely neglected issue in contemporary research on cultural class divisions: economic capital and its associated lifestyles and symbolic expressions. Using qualitative interviews, we explore how adolescents from wealthy elite backgrounds, namely students at Oslo Commerce School (OCS), traditionally one of the most prestigious upper‐secondary schools in Norway, demarcate themselves symbolically from others. They draw symbolic boundaries against students at other elite schools in Oslo, more characterized by backgrounds with high cultural capital, accusing them of mimicking a ‘hipster’ style. Within the OCS student body, we describe identity work centring on styles of material consumption and bodily distinctions. The most salient dividing line is between those who manage to master a ‘natural’ style, where expensive clothes and the desired bodily attributes are displayed discreetly, and those who are ‘trying too hard’ and thus marked by the stigma of effort. We also show some interesting intersections between class and gender: girls aspiring to the economic elite obey the ‘rules of the game’ by exercising extensive control over their bodies and adhering to demanding bodily norms for their weight and slimness. Such rules are less evident among the boys, where a lack of discipline, unruliness, hard partying and even fighting constitute parts of the lifestyle valued. This article contributes to the field of cultural stratification, highlighting the importance of the ‘hows’ of material consumption when expressing elite distinction. It also adds new insight to the research field of elite education by showing how a mastery of ‘high‐end’ consumer culture is involved in fostering favourable dispositions at elite schools.     

Binge drinking in adolescence – social stratification and the collectivity of drinking cultures

Research investigating what shapes young people’s drinking habits is of great importance. This study aimed to analyse the relation between close social networks and adolescents’ drinking habits and the extent to which close social networks may explain differences in binge drinking among social groups. Data from the ‘Stockholm Survey 2012’ were analysed. The Stockholm Survey was a census survey administered to students in academic years 9 and 11, with a response rate of 76%. Ordered logit models were used to estimate relations between the frequency of binge drinking and the independent variables. Parental educational level is associated with adolescent binge drinking, as students with more highly educated parents are more frequent binge drinkers. Parents’ willingness to offer their teenagers alcohol and peers’ drinking habits are also associated with adolescent binge drinking, with a more permissive parental attitude and a prevalence of drinking among peers increasing the risk. Both parents’ willingness to provide alcohol and peers’ drinking habits may statistically explain a large portion of the observed differences in adolescent drinking by parental education. Close social networks are an important factor influencing adolescent binge drinking, and they may explain a large portion of the differences between social groups.     

Working with Older People with Alcohol Problems: Insight from Specialist Substance Misuse Professionals and their Service Users

Significant numbers of older people worldwide have a drinking level or pattern which places them at risk of harm. In England, older people are more likely to be admitted to hospital for an alcohol-related condition than younger people and levels of alcohol-related harm are increasing fastest in this population. Whilst alcohol problems in older people are highly treatable, they frequently go undetected or ignored. The aim of this study was to develop guidelines for health and social care workers on what intervention strategies are likely to work best with older drinkers. Insight from alcohol practitioners who specialise in working with older people and the perspectives of older people receiving alcohol treatment were gained through focus groups and individual interviews. This paper reports some of the key findings including a perception that health and social care workers often did not intervene when alcohol misuse was suspected because of ageist attitudes and false beliefs about older people's drinking. Participants however acknowledged that social workers faced difficult choices in relation to the ‘right’ of older people with alcohol problems to continue to drink and the ‘risk’ associated with them doing so. The implications for social work education and training are discussed.     

Shifting Symbolic Boundaries: Cultural Strategies of the Animal Rights Movement1

How do activists create cultural change? Scholars have investigated the development and maintenance of collective identities as one avenue for cultural change, but to understand how activists foster change beyond their own movements, we need to look at activists’ strategies for changing their targets’ mindsets and actions. Sociologists need to look at activists’ boundary work to understand both the wide‐sweeping goals and strategies that activists enact to generate broad‐based cultural changes. Using data from participant observation and interviews with animal rights activists in France and the United States, and drawing on research on ethnic boundary shifting, I show how activists used two main strategies to shift symbolic boundaries between humans and animals, as well as between companion and farm animals—(1) they blur boundaries through focusing and universalizing strategies and (2) they cross boundaries physically, discursively, and iconographically. This study contributes a new theoretical and empirical example to the cultural changes studied by scholars of social movements, and it also provides a useful counterpoint to studies of symbolic boundary construction and maintenance in the sociology of culture.     

Building inclusion,maintaining marginality: how social and health services act as capital for young substance users

This paper draws on Bourdieusian concepts to examine the social mechanisms driving service ‘choices’ for marginalised young substance users. In doing so, it problematises the individualised understandings of ‘choice-making’ common in the existing literature. The paper uses interview data collected from 26 young substance users to describe the resources they bring to their service encounters, the capitals that they acquire through these interactions, and the ways in which these are mobilised within the fields in which they operate. The analysis finds that services acted as capital-building settings – participants acquired material resources and opportunities for skill-building, and they built relationships that contributed to a positive sense of identity and belonging. But the exchange potentials attached to these capitals were restricted by the logics of service fields that cast them as deficit and limited their opportunities to build productive forms of social capital. By revealing the social mechanisms behind service ‘choices’, the analysis suggests that the most effective services are those that maximise the opportunities for their young clients to build ‘weak ties’, such as with a diverse range of adults who themselves possess resources, and those that acknowledge the identities that young people already possess as rational and self-managing.     

‘Oh they drink here harder I think’: young people and alcohol consumption at three New Zealand secondary school formals

The New Zealand media sensationalises the issue of teenage drinking. It also frames school formals (balls or proms) and associated after parties as problematic sites, since young people may drink to excess at such events. This article explores the alcohol consumption patterns of a group of year 13 students on the night of their school formal. Adults' permissive attitudes towards their own and young people's alcohol consumption on the night are discussed to highlight how drinking is almost necessary for socialisation in a New Zealand context. The majority of student participants reported that they drank in moderation on the night and some were intolerant of intoxicated peers. This poses a challenge to New Zealand media depictions of the school formal and after party as ‘drunken affairs’. Some international students did drink to excess at unofficial after parties organised by students and/or parents in two of three participating schools. Rather than this reflecting negatively on the students concerned, such behaviour can be read as a reflection on New Zealand's binge drinking culture. This article concludes with suggestions for how schools can create safer after parties which may reduce the chances of young people engaging in ‘risky’ drinking behaviours at such events.     

Family or friends: what counts more for drinking behaviour of young adults? / Familia o amigos: ¿qué pesa más en los hábitos de consumo de alcohol de los jóvenes?

The scientific literature stresses the importance of culture and social environment in determining what people think about alcohol consumption and consequently do. Several pieces of research have proved the influence on young adults’ alcohol use of proximal social contexts of their family and peers. The present study aimed at investigating the influence of family behaviours and norms compared to the peers’ influence in a context where the culture of alcohol is changing between the different generations. Data were collected by means of a self-report questionnaire on a sample of 598 young adults (average age 22.20 years). The variables investigated were socio-demographic characteristics, the alcohol consumption of parents and friends and the parents’ and peers’ approval of alcohol consumption. The results confirmed the role of family and friends in influencing young adults’ consumption of alcohol, stressing a difference between perceived behaviours and norms. The perceived consumption of parents and friends influenced the participants’ consumption. On the contrary, the effects of the approval of drinking were limited. Globally friends had a stronger influence on alcohol consumption in comparison with family.