Cultures of Intoxication: Young Women, Alcohol, and Harm Reduction

Abstract

Much attention has been paid in the last decade to the “cultures of intoxication” of modern Western societies such as Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. This has manifested in an intense focus on the amount of alcohol that young people in particular consume per session and their resultant practices. This article explores young women's drinking cultures and focuses instead on their social motivations for socializing in specific places as well as their emotional connections to these particular spaces. The role of alcohol is reflected on within these motivations and connections in relation to the way it engenders particular practices. Places of risk (as well as pleasure) are identified and considered in terms of harm-reduction interventions. Young women's drinking practices are also positioned within a neoliberal social context, producing tensions in their engagement with, and negotiation of, cultures of intoxication. Harm-reduction initiatives need to speak to these tensions and to avoid producing campaigns based on conservative ideals of femininity and respectability.