Drinking Games and Rite of Life Projects

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present a social comparison of modern youth culture and the local traditions regarding the drinking of alcohol in Italy and Norway. We argue that the use of alcohol in `wet and dry drinking cultures' in northern and southern Europe has grown more similar. Young people, in both countries, drink beer and spirits at weekends, holidays and during the period of their final exams for intoxication, transition to a new phase of life and celebration purposes within the peer group. The modern innovations of practice combine a ritual structure of traditional forms of `rite of passage' (Turner, 1969; Van Gennep, 1960) with modern individualistic rites (Beck, 1997). In the modern local and global youth culture, use of alcohol for intoxication purposes is the key symbol for `free flow' in the phase of transition from childhood to the individual life project of creating one's social identity. This mixing of old ritual structures and modern reflexive individualization rituals has led to us coining a new concept of `rite of life projects'.