Ever had to use the ubiquitous “it was the alcohol talking” excuse to extract yourself from an embarrassing situation? Well not anymore. Social anthropologist Kate Fox argued in an article on the BBC that the anti-social behaviour and violence commonly associated with alcohol binges are not linked to the “chemical effects of ethanol”, but to our cultural norms and values. Thus the British problem with alcohol lies not in the fact that its chemical properties cause us to infringe social rules, but in the fact that we believe it does. In other words, it is a self-inflicted problem.
Alcohol impairs “reaction times, muscle control, co-ordination, short-term memory, perceptual field, cognitive abilities and ability to speak clearly” when consumed in large doses, but, argues Kate Fox, it does not cause us to say ‘"Oi, what you lookin' at?" and start punching each other’. When we drink alcohol we behave according to our cultural beliefs about drinking alcohol, thus if anti-alcohol campaigns propagate messages about the anti-social effects of drinking we will behave accordingly.
This idea is corroborated by the huge cultural variations in the way people approach alcohol. The UK, US, Australia and Scandinavian countries have an “ambivalent” drinking culture in that it is associated with violence, promiscuity and a loss of inhibitions. However Latin and Mediterranean cultures have an “integrated” drinking culture in which alcohol is not associated with such anti-social behaviours because it forms a part of everyday life, almost on a par with tea and coffee. It is not unusual to have a glass of wine at lunch and children are raised with the belief that drinking is not some forbidden sin, and indeed learn to associate it with family gatherings.
It would be easy to conclude from this that the integrated drinking culture simply features a lower level of consumption, but this could not be farther from the truth. These cultures have a higher per-capita alcohol consumption than the ambivalent drinking culture.
Experiments have shown that even when given placebos, people tend to behave according to their cultural beliefs about the effects of alcohol. Thus the British, who believe it causes disinhibition, will promptly shed their inhibitions when given a placebo drink. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy where the more we are bombarded with messages concerning the anti-social effects of drinking, then the more we tend to act in anti-social ways. Furthermore, if the cause of this deplorable behaviour lies not in yourself but in the alcohol, then you have a hall-pass for all sorts of anti-social behaviour.
Kate Fox goes on to argue that alcohol education campaigns should change their focus so as to tackle these cultural fallacies and reinforce the fact that alcohol does not cause the loss of social inhibitions and that, more importantly, we are always in control of our actions. This would attach a stigma to anti-social and violent behaviour when drunk, rather than erroneously excusing it.
One question that this article raises in my mind is this: why do the UK and US, among others, have an ambivalent drinking culture? I would argue that the ambivalency aspect is not exclusive to their attitude to drinking, rather it pervades most facets of society. One of the reasons for this cultural belief is that these societies are burdened with an excess of social rules, which leads to a deep-seated hypocrisy regarding “liberating” activities such as drinking. Thus whilst I am looked down upon for having a glass of wine at lunch time (during the day, shocking), it is perfectly acceptable to go out at night (because drinking at night is arbitrarily normal), get absolutely hammered and behave in all manners of undignified ways. When I try to explain that having a drink during the day at meal times is perfectly normal, even when alone, the conclusion that my friends draw is that it is acceptable to drink “all day long”; the element of excess pervades their attitude to drinking.
Society, in lumbering us with a host of restrictive social rules, has created a dichotomous and hypocritical culture where we are encouraged to wear the mask of self-righteousness and suppress many natural instincts. This leads to a fundamentally unbalanced culture which oscillates violently between two extremes, and fails to grasp that being “liberated” lies not in unscrewing the cap once in a while to let out some steam, but in never putting on the cap in the first place.
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