States of Intoxication: The Place of Alcohol in Civilisation 9781138093607, 9781315106724

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The contemporary social pathology of alcohol
Is alcohol use, and the use of psychoactive substances pathological or normal?
What are alcohol pathologies?
Looking for the red thread out of the labyrinth
Intimations of the red thread
Long-term historical processes: the state
Overview
1. The evolutionary origins of control
Introduction: limits of constructionism
Self-control in social psychology and economics
Economics
What are psychoactive substances?
The pervasiveness of intoxication in nature
The evolutionary origins of intoxication
Why do animals consume psychoactive substances?
Intoxicants, evolution and the civilising process
2. The social origins of control
Introduction: a sober Edenic past?
Biological and cultural limits on alcohol consumption
Socialising drinkers into cultural traditions: learning limits
Conclusion
Notes
3. Alcohol and the ritual process: identity
The ritual process and civilising processes
Rites de passage
The function of rites of passage – structure and meaning
Communitas: social drinking
Pseudo communitas – inclusion and exclusion
Conclusion
Notes
4. Alcohol and the ritual process: decontrolling
Decontrolling: anti-structure
Enclosure in ritual – controlled de-controlling
Ritual and reflexivity
Conclusion
Notes
5. The limits of ritual
Introduction
Problem deflation
Deritualisation, disenchantment and the quest for re-enchantment
Power
6. Proto states and potlatches
The monopoly mechanism and permanent liminality
Civilising processes: centralisation
Alcohol potlatches
The potlatch in Bronze and Iron Age Europe
The origin of the potlatch
Stabilising an unstable order
The potlatch and sacrifice
The end and persistence of potlatches
Alcohol and civilisation
Alcohol potlatches and the origins of agriculture?
Taming and unstable order?
Conclusion
Note
7. Subversive states: the case of Russia
Alcohol and internal peace
Russia
Colliding with Soviet state formation
The Soviet state
Conclusion
8. States, revenue and interdependence
Alcohol and revenue
Why alcohol is suitable for taxation
Interdependence, commercialisation
Alcohol, interdependence and commercialisation
Alcohol and proto-bureaucracy
Conclusion
Notes
9. The politics of centralisation: consumption and taxation
Consumption: alcohol and status competition
Alcohol taxes and centralisation
Alcohol tax and democratisation
Notes
10. Peace, violence and trauma
Introduction
Alcohol and political dissent
Intoxication and killing
Enervation
Psychoactive substances and international rivalry
Trauma
Collision cultures
Conclusion: anti-imperial and anti-alcohol
Notes
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

States of Intoxication

This book provides an illuminating perspective on alcohol use, drawing on approaches from both anthropological research and historical sociology to examine our ambivalent attitudes to alcohol in the modern West. From anthropological research on non-Western, non-modern cultures, the author demonstrates that the use of alcohol or other psychoactive substances is a universal across human societies, and indeed, has tended to be seen as unproblematic, or even a sacred aspect of culture, often used in a highly ritualised context. From historical sociology, it is shown that alcohol has also been central to the process of state formation, not only as a crucial source of revenue, but also through having an important role in the formation of political communities, which frequently are a source of existential fear for ruling groups. Tracing this contradictory position occupied by alcohol over the course of history and civilisation, States of Intoxication sheds light on the manner in which it has produced the very peculiar modern perspective on alcohol. John O’Brien is a Lecturer in Sociology at Waterford Institute of Technology.

The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization

Breaking decisively with the often ideological and moralistic approach of treating problems of health and well-being as discrete and individual problems to be addressed in isolation both from one another and their broader social contexts, this series pursues the investigation of the ways in which contemporary malaises, diseases, illnesses and psychosomatic syndromes are related to cultural pathologies of the social body and disorders of the collective ésprit de corps of contemporary society. It avoids reductive psychological and biomedical understandings of pathologies – including depression, stress-related illnesses, eating disorders, suicide and deliberate self-harm – to focus instead on the socio-cultural contexts in which they occur, examining the radical changes to social structures and institutions, and the deep crises in our civilization as a whole to which such conditions are connected. The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization thus welcomes manuscripts from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives across the humanities and social sciences – sociology, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, politics, economics and cultural studies, as well as from the fields of medicine social care, therapeutic practice and the healing arts – that explore the fruitfulness locating health and well-being not simply in the individual body or soul, but within a trans-disciplinary imagination that takes into account the integral human person’s situatedness within collective social bodies, particular communities, entire societies, or even whole civilizations. Series editors Anders Petersen, Kieran Keohane and Bert van den Bergh

Late Modern Subjectivity and its Discontents Anxiety, Depression and Alzheimer’s Disease Kieran Keohane, Anders Petersen and Bert van den Bergh States of Intoxication The Place of Alcohol in Civilisation John O’Brien For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ The-Social-Pathologies-of-Contemporary-Civilization/book-series/ASHSER1434

States of Intoxication The Place of Alcohol in Civilisation

John O’Brien

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 John O’Brien The right of John O’Brien to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: O’Brien, John (Sociology lecturer), author. Title: States of intoxication : the place of alcohol in civilisation / John O’Brien. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. | Series: The social pathologies of contemporary civilization | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018002284| ISBN 9781138093607 (hbk) | ISBN 9781315106724 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Drinking of alcoholic beverages--Government policy. | Alcoholic beverages--Government policy. Classification: LCC HV5081 .O63 2018 | DDC 362.292/561--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018002284 ISBN: 978-1-138-09360-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-10672-4 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books

To Marjory, Anne and Kathleen

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Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction

viii 1

1 The evolutionary origins of control

19

2 The social origins of control

29

3 Alcohol and the ritual process: identity

41

4 Alcohol and the ritual process: decontrolling

59

5 The limits of ritual

71

6 Proto states and potlatches

88

7 Subversive states: the case of Russia

107

8 States, revenue and interdependence

120

9 The politics of centralisation: consumption and taxation

135

10 Peace, violence and trauma

153

Conclusion

172

Bibliography Index

174 190

Acknowledgements

Above everyone else, the greatest debt in bringing this book to fruition is owed to Kieran Keohane, who has been a constant source of support, and inspiration. I am particularly grateful to all of those involved in all of the fun and stimulating symposia, and the communities that sustain them, that are the background to the book, from Allihies, Blackwater Castle, Florence, Acquapendente, to Lesvos. I am very grateful to all of those involved in International Political Anthropology, who have developed many of the concepts that are the foundation for this book, including Arpad Szakolczai, Agnes Horvath, Bjørn Thomassen and Harald Wydra. I would also like to give thanks to my colleagues in the Moral Foundations of Economy and Society Research Centre: Lorcan Byrne, Jill O’Mahony, James Cuffe, Ray Griffin and Tom Boland, as well as Manussos Marangudakis and Aleksandra Nesic from the Cultural Trauma summer school. The classes of Stephen Mennell, Tom Inglis and Kieran Allen in UCD, first exposed me to sociology, and their stamp is on this book too. The students of WIT have helped me a lot through their liveliness and attention, and by being able to bounce ideas off of them, over the years. I must single out Irena Loveikaite, Kirsty Doyle, David Dwyer and Kelly Fitzgerald in this regard. There are too many colleagues and friends that deserve thanks to mention them all. But I have to mention the following people: Paul Clogher, Jennifer O’Mahoney, Philip Cremin, Niamh Maguire, Jonathan Culleton, Michael Howlett, Richard Hayes, Séamus Ó’Diollúin, Jacinta Byrne-Doran, Amin Sharifi Isaloo, James Fairhead, Gerard Mullally, Tina Kinsella, Carmen Kuhling, Phil Brookes, Peter Fortune, Conor Cashman, Kevin O’Farrell, Eimear Kellet, Adele McKenna, Sarah O’Farrell, Shane Donnelly and Marie Power. Final thanks go to my parents, grandmother Anne, the O’Briens, the McDonalds, Kavanaghs, Lynches, Mooneys and Healys, and Tony, Mary and Dermot, Niall, Áine, Aisling and Conor, John, Marie, John and Eilish.

Introduction

I am still waiting for a philosophical physician in the exceptional sense of that word – one who has to pursue the problem of the total health of a people, time, race or of humanity – to muster the courage to push my suspicion to its limits and to risk the proposition: what was at stake in all philosophizing hitherto was not at all ‘truth’ but something else – let us say, health future, growth, power, life. (Nietzsche 1974: 35) The duty of the statesman is no longer to violently push society toward an ideal that seems attractive to him, but his role is that of the physician: he prevents the outbreak of illnesses by good hygiene, and he seeks to cure them when they have appeared. (Durkheim 1964: 75)

The contemporary social pathology of alcohol The aim of this book is to attempt to locate some of the sources of the social pathologies concerning the use and understanding of alcohol in contemporary civilisation. It will do this in a strange manner perhaps by largely focusing on past and distant societies, as the social pathologies of the present are the product of long-term process, that can only be understood by reaching into the past. Sociologists have been accused of retreating into the present (Elias 2009), assuming an ahistorical focus on contemporary social issues, with the consequent loss of perspective and capacity to understand the meaning and significance of the phenomena that they observe. Thus, the nature of the study could be described as an anthropologically informed historical sociology of alcohol. In order to understand the place of alcohol in the present, it is necessary to take such a perspective, as when standing within a society, particularly one that is at the heart of a process of globalisation, it is very difficult to perceive its strangeness, particularity, let alone its potentially pathological character. Engaging with anthropological research on alcohol use conducted in nonWestern societies is especially fruitful in this regard, as it helps us to hold up a mirror to ourselves with which to examine the strangeness of modern drinking cultures. Similarly, by engaging with historical-sociological research on alcohol, we can gain some glimpses of the geneses and path of the key processes that are

2

Introduction

shaping alcohol use, promotion, and regulation. Addressing a pathology demands a diagnosis, and to do this, it is necessary to stand back from the issue, avoid the heat that it generates, the conflict between industry boosterism, public health problematisers, moral panics that play out in the public sphere, and symbolic violence over competing claims for the legitimacy or degeneracy of different lifestyles.

Is alcohol use, and the use of psychoactive substances pathological or normal? Alcohol is tied very closely with the idea of pathology. The demon drink, intemperance, addiction, alcoholism, and the range of outcomes such as poverty, ill-health, domestic problems, loss in productivity and so on, are prominent ideas. Speaking of alcohol in a positive manner, extolling its virtues, in the public sphere, outside of highly aestheticised forms of consumption such as wine tasting, is generally taboo and drugs and alcohol have come to be typically discussed in terms of social problems such as crime, addiction and health costs rather than their role in providing pleasure and inspiration. Indeed, it could be said that alcohol researchers display a pathological interest in the pathological, with their insights differing markedly with the everyday experience of the majority of people, for whom the primary motivation for drinking is the experience of pleasure (in terms of sociability, through how alcohol use is embedded in other pleasurable activities such as meals, not simply through its physiological impact). There is a cultural prejudice towards the ‘serious’, that produces a bias towards an interest in the ‘pathological’ and the ‘problematic’ in social science scholarship. One cause of this is a hegemony of economistic form of thinking, which focus primarily on productivity, pushing other values, like spirituality, community, meaning, pleasure into a secondary position. Humans have been defined as homo sapiens, man the thinker, homo faber, man the worker, but rarely by the moniker homo ludens, man the player. Leisure in general and not just the topic of alcohol is a neglected area, likely because the value commitments of social scientists intrude on their studies. Following the argument of Elias and Dunning (2008: 3–4) its neglect is due to the fact that it is on the negative side of a number of dichotomies such as work-leisure, mind-body, seriousnesspleasure, economic action-non-economic action. Bancroft (2009: 79) highlights the issue by noting that while the majority of books on psychoactive substances (the use of which, of course, frequently represent a departure from productivity) are a litany of horrors, cars, which represent a backbone of the economy and our consumer society, could be written about ‘without any obligation felt on the part of the author to mention the many people killed or maimed in car accidents’. Another cause of the problem perspective is the market forces in the advocacy and punditry businesses, which favours Jeremiads rather than Pollyannas, as market position is achieved by identifying problems, and elaborating their gravity (Pinker 2011: 296). It is consequently important to stand

Introduction

3

back to view the issue in a way that is not quite so enmeshed in modern perspectives, and the cacophony of voices of critics as well as boosters. Virtually all human groups have consumed alcohol, and all consume some form of psychoactive substance, making it as a result, by definition, a normal behaviour. Psychoactive substances are consumed across cultures regularly, frequently daily, with daily life structured around tea, coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, and ‘drugs’ of various type. Indeed, intoxication is a normal and pervasive mental state, with a wide variety of techniques, including the use of such substances to change the self and world (Bancroft 2009: 5), including more broadly: dance, sensory deprivation, meditation, hypnotherapy, psychotherapy, ritual scarring, pilgrimage and ritual; typically combined in different ways in different occasions. Thus, in contrast to the shame, moralising and secrecy that surrounds much of the discourse on drinking and ‘drug use’, it is safe to say that they are normal behaviours. Sherratt (1995a: 34) notes how psychoactive substances such as alcohol, can be seen as integral to the constitution of culture. They have been fundamental to the nature of sociality and an active element in the construction of religious experience, gender categories and the rituals of social life. No ethnographic or culture-historical account is complete without a consideration of these matters. They have been central to the formation of civilizations, the definition of cultural identities and the growth of the world economy. In the contemporary world alcohol stands out as one of the most widely used psychoactive substances, with some of the others being caffeine, nicotine and betelnut. A more important point considering the unusual cultures of modern societies, is that all societies use psychoactive substances and alcohol use is a feature of most cultures from at least Neolithic times, and in the contemporary world it is a near universal element of culture. This invites the question, when considering the normality, deviance, or pathological character of alcohol, of whether the transition to agriculture, which alcohol is intimately associated with, is dysfunctional somehow. It is enough to raise this question here, though Chapter 6 will give some indication of what an answer to this impossibly huge question could be. Regardless, in all of the societies that have used alcohol, it is far from a marginal feature of life, and its ritual significance can be seen in the huge elaboration of the paraphernalia of drinking in the archaeological record, for instance with the mixing vessels of ancient Greece and Rome frequently made and decorated by the best metal workers and painters (Heath 2000: 118). In addition, ‘[c]ompilers of slang dictionaries have repeatedly noted that this is one of the semantically richest aspects of life, elaborated more than most’ (Heath 2000: 125). Its centrality can be seen in the fact that in many languages the verb ‘to drink’ and the noun ‘drink’ refer primarily to alcohol (Heath 1995a: 2). In Czech for example, the word for beer pivo comes from the same root as the verb ‘to drink’ ‘pít’, which is cognate with and parallels the

4

Introduction

common English word for alcohol ‘beverage’ from the Latin bibere (to drink) (Hall 2005: 65) and there are numerous other examples. This point extends to the sphere of liminal play that drinking is integrated within, as Huizinga (1970: 44) notes that ‘play’ is much more fundamental in language than its opposites, ‘seriousness’ and ‘earnestness’. Consequently, alcohol use, as a particularly prominent subset of the use of psychoactive substances in general, is not only normal but a very significant aspect of civilisation. Yet, alcohol is very widely considered to be a serious, if not one of the most serious social problems by medical and social science researchers, international agencies such as the WHO, politicians, and the public. Attempting to disentangle the confusion over alcohol as a thing that is pervasively used, used for pleasure, central to many cultures, yet a source of great concern as a cause of a myriad of problems is the purpose of this book.

What are alcohol pathologies? It is evident that alcohol has real deleterious effects, though its connection to these is tricky, as epidemiological studies can only show statistical relationships, rather than causation. Alcohol related death and disability constitute around 4% of the total cost of life and longevity according to the WHO, placing it as the fifth most serious risk factor globally, even when taking into account the beneficial effect of alcohol for coronary heart disease (Babor et al. 2003: 71, 73). The associations with these costs are also well established. A central variable that contributes to the costs associated with alcohol is the manner of consumption, as drinking to intoxication is a much greater risk factor than moderate consumption (23–4). Low frequency of drinking with high levels of consumption per session is associated with social problems such as accidents, injuries and interpersonal violence. In contrast, the high levels of consumption in the model of regular moderate consumption of Mediterranean societies, tends not to lead to social problems. It can however lead to dependency and forms of tissue damage such as cirrhosis (19–20). In terms of beverages consumed, spirits consumption carries a slightly elevated risk, with alcohol poisoning more common with it. However, cultural associations are the most important factor, as in the USA and UK beer is more implicated in hazardous drinking than spirits (42). Understanding associations is one thing, but understanding the dynamics that are at work is quite another. For example, the very nature of the problem is quite obscure, with the concepts employed vaguely defined and historically contingent, despite how these tend to be presented as static, almost Platonic concepts. The question of what the social pathology of alcohol problems in fact is constitutes a very tricky question. The principle category when defining the health, economic and social impact of alcohol is the WHO sponsored concept: ‘alcohol problems’. A short genealogy however reveals the manner in which seemingly solid scientific definitions are in fact historical and social constructions. ‘Alcohol problems’ is a continually evolving entity, and it is debatable whether it is reaching higher degrees of precision, with its status as a valid and

Introduction

5

reliable concept being quite questionable, and with the fact that it is not an objective category being beyond doubt. As Levine (1984: 45) states ‘key terms have been defined vaguely and used ambiguously … statements which sound authoritative and factual are often guesses, opinions, and ideology; and … different authorities use the central terms in wildly different ways’. The terms used in this discourse, compared to the unscientific earlier ‘alcoholism discourse’, ‘have often been no less fuzzy, ambiguous, confusing and loaded with hidden assumptions’ (59). Nineteenth century temperance movements had defined alcohol problems through a moral discourse with a dash of pseudo-science overlaying this. Following the experiment with prohibition in the USA and other states, the dominant discourse became that of ‘alcoholism’ and ‘alcoholics’, with the rise to precedence of the disease concept. This was the source of the addiction concept. While it is popularly thought to be a scientific and biological reality, in fact, addiction is a concept that is specifically an aspect of Anglo-American modernity, with an exact equivalent lacking in other languages. ‘Addiction’ has links to words such as ‘diction’ and ‘dictation’. Like these, it derives from the Latin for ‘say’ or ‘relate’: dicere, which is linked with the Greek deicnunai: ‘show, point out, bring to light’. In Roman law the word addicere signified ‘a giving or binding-over of something or someone by sentence of a court: the assignation of slave to master, debtor to creditor’. This term developed into the defunct English verb ‘to addict’, meaning ‘to bind, attach, or devote oneself or another as a servant, disciple, or adherent, to some person or cause’. From these meanings, it gained its contemporary sense of ‘a compulsive attachment to a behaviour’ (Farrell & Redfield 2002: 2). It is interesting that in its roots there is a performative quality to the term, expressing a ritual designation of a person as having a certain identity. Of course, this performative meaning became occluded in modernity, instead becoming a part of medico-legal discourse, constructing a pathology and identity. From the 1960s this began to be replaced by a new discourse of ‘alcohol problems’, ‘alcohol-related problems’ and ‘alcohol abuse’ (Levine 1984: 45). One of the reasons for the emergence of the new concept were the definitional problems that ‘socially undesirable’ outcomes to alcohol consumption raised, as it is a particularly hazy terrain frustrating attempts to map it. In the origins of the concept it was used to refer to controversies or disagreements about the use, or non-use of alcohol, and drinking behaviour that was defined as a problem, or interpreted as a problem by the consumer, the social conditions that are the outcome of people’s drinking, and drinking that is a response to social conditions, and the social responses to these difficulties, which manifest in health, behavioural and moral outcomes. Thus, it appears to be a category about which consensus is not possible, as it is an inherently interpretive category, related to perceived conformity to historically contingent social roles (Levine 1984: 45, 53). Second, and related to this, is the fact that ‘alcohol problems’ is a political concept, more than a scientific one (Bacchi 2015: 3). In certain cases, ‘the fuzzy concepts of the alcohol problems discourse were part of an elitist and

6

Introduction

bureaucratic view of social and economic problems’ (Levine 1984: 49). In other cases, it allowed the accommodation of the interests of different agencies, such as the state, professionals, experts, researchers, insurers and so on, rather than clarifying an underlying bio-psycho-social dynamic. Alcohol has long been an issue which competing agencies, from Churches and sects, to various professions, political movements and politicians, had been derogated and had to address in some way, and also through which they could seek to own a social problem and budgets linked with this, and thereby further their various agendas. Casting alcohol as a ‘problem’, as in the ‘alcohol problems’ framing, raised the issues prominence, meeting the needs of agencies, and researchers for profile, funding and so on. The ascent of the concept reflects how the previously dominant framework of ‘alcoholism’ and the ‘disease model’ began to fragment in the 1950s and 1960s, due to growing unhappiness with it from the disciplines of sociology and social work that were growing in power and influence, and which sought a more social framing of the issue. Led by alcohol sociologists the professional language for alcohol was changed, leading ultimately to the ‘problems framing’, which was established in the WHO by the 1980s. Room (1984b) explains that this ‘provided a fairly stable rapprochement between psychiatric traditions of insistence on the importance and entitivity of addictive phenomena’ and the emergent epidemiological and social science traditions of ‘disaggregation’ of alcohol-related problems (Bacchi 2015: 24–5). Through this more complex disciplinary field ‘alcohol problems’ were differentiated from a simple health framing, to a broader conceptualisation, encompassing health, economic and social problems, which however only created further epistemological difficulties. The addition of ‘economic harms’ for example constructs a model of the economic subject, which is entirely historical, and shaped by contemporary rationality, with the DSM-5 defining ‘educational or occupational harm’, as one indicator of ‘alcohol problems’, assuming a particular type of self-controlled, selfmanaging subject, attuned to the norms of industrial or professional occupations. Thus, the concept of ‘alcohol problems’ as Bacchi (2015) suggests, is in need of problematisation, through seeing it as a product of expert forms of knowledge, discourse and institutions. If the contemporary language is in such difficulty, then what should we do?

Looking for the red thread out of the labyrinth The aim of this work, as with sociology in general is to produce a more adequate means of orientation, attempting to make clearer the processes that shape our lives, and the compulsions that keep them in motion and give them direction (Elias 2000: 210), and engaging in the clarification of the values and frameworks of understanding of our societies, without projecting values (Weber 1978). Just as in psychoanalysis, the problem we are faced with is often a disguised alternative problem. Unclearly articulated cultural and political tensions, shape how psychoactive substances and their use is thought of. It is often a proxy for

Introduction

7

cultural and political attitudes and anxieties. Just as Theseus required the red thread provided by Ariadne to find his way out of the Labyrinth he entered, to do this we need guides. One of the difficulties in studying social pathologies however are the guides on offer. As Szakolczai (2013) in this series notes, one of our greatest problems is the intellectual language that we have inherited, with which to examine the world, which has the effect of ‘leading us astray in the dark Dantesque forest of pathologies’. The problem is firstly with the psycho-medical approach which narrowly frames the topic, and is highly specialised, tending to take an individualistic perspective, involving a clinical or therapeutic viewpoint that reduces issues to the body, psyche or the self (Goodman & Lovejoy 1995: 132). The acceptance of the genetic inheritability of alcoholism is a part of modern common-sense (Lester 1988: 1), and indeed, there does seem to be a genetic, evolutionary basis to difficulties with alcohol (Levey 2004: 284; Dudley 2000: 8). Above the individual level and the fact that alcoholism runs in families, there is a belief that certain populations/‘races’ are more susceptible to alcohol-related problems on the basis of biological differences, such as the firewater myth about Native Americans. Despite many unfounded racialised stereotypes, groups do in fact differ in their susceptibility to the aversive effects of ethanol ingestion, perhaps based on the different level of exposures of different populations to ethanol historically (Dudley 2000: 8, 10). This emphasis on race as a variable in tolerance to alcohol became less prominent in the period 1945–1970 for obvious reasons, but has returned now (Heath 1987: 26, 47). Sex is another prominent biological factor. Alcohol consumption, and higher levels of consumption is more of a feature of males than females, amongst primates (Milton 2004: 310), as well as humans cross-culturally, shown for example by Child et al. (1965) in a study of pre-literate societies. The reason for this may be that male fitness is less negatively affected than female fitness, as alcohol generally has a greater impact on females as they tend to be smaller, have more fat and so less water with which to dilute the alcohol and have less of the enzyme that helps metabolise alcohol, meaning that they are more vulnerable to its adverse effects (Heath 2000: 73), as well as being exposed to the negative effects of alcohol on reproductive functions (Milton 2004: 310). The idea of genetics having a simple causal relationship to drinking outcomes is however highly problematic. While the role of genetic inheritance is clear in the transmission of relatively simple traits such as eye colour and blood group, such simple cause and effect logic does not apply for concepts such as the nebulous social pathology that has been labelled ‘alcoholism’. Rather ‘the highest levels of organismic function are involved, embracing the most complex developing and evolving relationships of humans as social beings’ (Lester 1988: 2). There is also no evidence of a link between human ‘alcoholism’ and one gene or a constellation of genes. Even in the most restricted way of thinking about the role of social factors, they must have at least some effect as no human population mates randomly, with genealogies reflecting ‘social and aesthetic norms, personal tastes, arbitrary social categorisation, and so forth on top of

8

Introduction

genetic factors’ (Lester 1988: 2). The fact that most drinkers do not become ‘alcoholics’ and that ‘alcoholism’ runs in families is heavily mediated by socialisation (Wilson 1988: 257). Then there is the profound effect of environmental factors. When thinking of the role of social factors and genetics on a broader level, it is instructive to think about the corresponding case of intelligence. The variation from person to person in the ability to do arithmetic, whatever its source, is trivial compared to the immense increase in calculating power that has been put into the hands of even the poorest student of mathematics by the pocket electronic calculator. The best studies in the world of the heritability of arithmetic skill could not have predicted that historical change. (Lewontin et. al. 1984: 116–7, cited in Lester 1988: 5) The habitual use of alcohol can be understood in neurobiological terms, with alcohol use being linked with the effects it has on the central nervous system, with a genetically determined sensitivity to the reinforcing and aversive effects of ethanol. This involves ‘reinforcement’ where the neuronal circuits of the brain that provide a rewarding consequence in response to consumption. ‘Tolerance’ develops, promoting a greater intake of ethanol as a result of the diminishment of the aversive and reinforcing effects of it. Finally, ‘dependence’ develops, whereby certain symptoms emerge if the intake of alcohol is terminated (Tabakoff & Hoffman 1988: 30, 32–3, 35). The question is the extent to which the physiological impact of ethanol is mediated by social learning and where the balance lies. In emphasising the importance of social learning, it should be noted that ethanol does not produce reinforcement in the same manner as other psychoactive substances such as opiates and barbiturates, as it does not interact with a specific set of receptors like these drugs. Ethanol is also different from other drugs in its lack of potency, needing to be consumed in much larger amounts (Tabakoff & Hoffman 1988: 31, 33, 35). So, the impact of alcohol is much less direct than other drugs. Indeed, the moderate nature of its effects widens the scope with which its effects may be experienced in a very similar fashion to the increasingly mild forms of tobacco consumed in the West which has facilitated a great openness in the moulding of how it is experienced by social context and understandings (Hughes 2003). In summary then, it is important not to deny biological factors, but to emphasise the importance of social factors, and thereby frame alcohol consumption as a ‘biopsychosocial phenomenon’ (Levin 1990). What and how people drink is not due to a ‘collection’ of individual actions and their outcomes, but is more a function of ‘collective’ life, such as ‘the technology of brewing and distilling, agricultural practices, systems of marketing, and a variety of other customary features in that society than it is of the biochemistry or pharmacology of any beverage’ (Heath 1988: 357), or individual vulnerabilities to them. An unfortunate lacuna is that many studies ignore that meaning (in other words, culture) is at the centre of human conduct and hence

Introduction

9

the fact that the focus should be on use and context. It is axiomatic that social and cultural factors must be considered alongside biological (bio-chemical reactivity to alcohol) and psychological factors though (Heath 1988: 396–7; Cox 1988: 148, 154). As Zinberg (1984) noted in order to understand what impels someone to use an illicit drug and how that drug affects the user, three determinants must be considered: drug (the pharmacologic action of the substance itself), set (the attitude of the person at the time of use, including his personality structure), and setting (the influence of the physical and social setting within which the use occurs). As will be shown in greater detail in the following chapter, the defining characteristic of humans, which is very important to remember in the context of the hegemony of medical and biological reductionism, is that they have escaped biological determinism through their evolved capacity for culture, meaning that the crucial determinant for them is the intergenerational learning process that they are a point in. An important aspect of these is the institutionalising of experiences in the form of rituals, traditions and habits, which structure the use of alcohol. One of the most pernicious misconceptions stemming from the psychomedical approach is the idea that psychoactive substances have an effect that is unmediated by intention or the interpretation of what their effects will be. The view is that the active chemicals of these substances alter brain function, as an input effects an output, producing the experiences related to their use, ignoring how social factors shape intoxication. In every society though, people learn what culturally acceptable drunken behaviour is and are aware that getting drunk in the wrong way will lead to sanctions. Psychoactive substances, and some in particular are nonetheless presented as ‘chemicals that take away human agency, autonomy and reason’ (Bancroft 2009: 22). Alcohol and other psychoactive substances are however consumed (typically) in a cultural context of controlled decontrolling where, as Bancroft (2009: 52) notes, ‘[t]hose taboos that are broken tend to be broken in a socially acceptable, carefully defined manner’, and the disinhibition that occurs through the use of alcohol has an established social role that is carefully constructed and managed. For example, it allows desires that cannot be expressed in sober life to be satisfied and things that cannot be said in sober life to be expressed. Users must also learn how to properly ingest substances, which may take a considerable degree of skill, and how to interpret the feelings that the substance elicits, as shown by Becker (1963) for example in smoking marijuana. Expectations about what the effects will be are thus crucial (McAndrew & Edgerton 1969). For example, it is interesting how alcohol has gender-specific effects in some of the effects that it causes, relating to the lowering of sexual inhibitions, boastfulness, assertiveness and aggressivity (Bancroft 2009: 56). All of this is true not simply for ‘soft’ drugs like alcohol, but for ‘hard’ drugs too, such as heroin.

10

Introduction

A similarly pernicious idea is that psychoactive substances have a consistent and ongoing effect on the user. The origins of the idea can be found in temperance movements, whose value positions gained a veneer of scientific credibility. This has however been shown to be a very limited idea, for example in the research of Cahalan and Room (1974), which showed a tendency for ‘alcoholism’ to not be a permanent state, but something that people who were experiencing problems with alcohol matured out of, and by Norman Zinberg’s (1986) work on GIs returning from Vietnam, whose addiction to opiates disappeared once they were removed from the context of their initial usage. The difficulty is also with the traditional domain of social pathology itself, which is a traditional focus of social science, related to the Durkheimian tradition, seeing society as a functional unity, that nonetheless could be beset by dysfunction. This Scylla has as its pair the Charybdis of rational choice theory, which has little concern for values (in other words culture), focusing solely on a utilitarian calculus concerning units of health, social relationships and productivity. Thus, one approach is excessively static and normative, while the other precludes constructive statements about meaning and values, restricting itself to statements about measurable outcomes. Through reference to anthropology and historical sociology, it is hoped that the problems of excessively static, relativist and normative, and economistic perspectives are avoided. The place of alcohol in culture is rather dynamic, but not chaotic, as it is shaped by consistent long-term processes, in particular directions, and its use and understanding are shaped by the changing function of alcohol as these processes develop. A key interest of the book is thus the historical socio-genesis of pathologies related to alcohol consumption, and the longue durée of its development. Through integrating anthropological with historical research, consistent features of drinking cultures are demonstrated, with striking regularity in the centrality of alcohol to gift relations, as described by Marcel Mauss (1992), rites de passage, as described by Victor Turner (1969), potlatch rituals (Riches 1984), and the monopoly mechanism (Elias 2000). Recalling C. Wright Mills (2000), psycho-medical approaches could be pejoratively labelled ‘abstract empiricism’, while the undesirable excesses of Durkheim and Hobbesian rational choice theory could be labelled ‘high theory’. ‘Social administration’ is last in his triumvirate of the inadvisable in social science, where social science becomes subordinated to the immediate needs of management and social policy, depriving it of the necessary intellectual freedom to roam broadly and interconnect diverse areas in search of new insights, and to avoid being the handmaiden of the state and its objectives. Social pathology could be said to have a bad name, as it is associated most closely with this social administration strand of sociology, that is not critical of society as a whole, but rather has a ‘tinkering’ orientation, seeing certain malfunctions in the overall functional system, that the sociologist can rectify. This work in contrast lacks pragmatic policy recommendations, instead simply seeking to understand the dynamics of social pathology related to drinking cultures, with an acceptance that how such pathologies can be responded to adequately is too

Introduction

11

difficult a question for the present. It is enough to tentatively seek to reveal the dynamics at play, and poorly thought out solutions, and worst of all, utopian solutions, that have all too often shaped alcohol and drugs policy, causing more harm than good, and having even caused devastation. The unwillingness to offer policy recommendations is due in part, to the insight of Szakolczai (2013) who argues that the concern should not be about social pathologies in contemporary, but rather about the social pathologies of contemporary civilisation, meaning that the issue is not one of tweaking an undesirable feature or two, but about the fundamental features of civilisation, which may be one thing to recognise, but a very different thing to address. Thus the focus of the work is not merely on the obvious and visible outcomes of chronic and acute medical conditions, and social problems such as interpersonal violence and productivity losses (for example, see Babor et al. 2003), but also on a pathological transformation of sociability itself, with broader consequences for quality of life, a sense of well-being, a benevolent cultural environment, and the possibility of secure and positive identity formation, and that the problem perspective can itself be seen as problematic and a sign of social pathology.

Intimations of the red thread However, perhaps some tentative points can be made. Most importantly, in order to properly understand drinking cultures a two-pronged approach is necessary, focusing firstly on a cross-cultural analysis of different societies, and secondly on the historical formation of societies. Such a comparative study of modern contexts with non-modern societies and their own pasts, provides an important reference point with which to view the present. This corresponds to the method of Max Weber, who attempted to systematically compare civilisations, and the work of Norbert Elias seeking to identify long-term directional processes of historical change. Today such approaches swim against powerful intellectual currents, which focus more on contingency, relativism, and epistemological doubt. These emphases have been valuable in some ways, as they helped to challenge the Eurocentrism, progressivism, and evolutionary thinking that dogged some classical sociological thought. However, there is a major cost to tacking too far in this corrective direction, as Pomeranz (2000: 411, cited in Goody 2002) notes that ‘focussing almost exclusively on exposing the contingency, particularity, and perhaps unknowability of historical moments – makes it impossible even to approach many of the most important questions in history (and in contemporary life)’. Linking the insights of anthropology with historical sociology is a crucial endeavour. Though this was a feature of Durkheim (1915) and Mauss’s (1992) form of sociology, and today certain scholars are attempting to bring these disciplines together in their own way (Szakolczai 2009a, 2008; Horvath et al. 2015), they have long been estranged. For example, both Max Weber and Norbert Elias were not well informed about small-scale, non-literate societies, focusing instead on the development of major civilisations. At the same time,

12

Introduction

much of anthropology developed a different blindness in the twentieth century. Under the influence of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, history and comparison was rejected in favour of a fieldwork and direct observation of ‘function’ and ‘structure’, rather than historical formation (Goody 2002; Mennell & Liston 2009). Sociologists of the same era mirrored them, through adopting research largely limited to the contemporary, which Elias (2009) lamented, as ‘the retreat of sociologists into the present’. Consequently, our focus should be on sameness, as well as differences, and also directional change when seeking to understand drinking. Differences Alcohol is very widely used, and where it is not, it is typically a very significant substance whose rejection has a high symbolic charge, as in parts of the Islamic world, and India. Despite its ubiquity, there is a wide variation of patterns of consumption across cultures and time periods, indicating that the pharmacological effect of ethanol cannot be the sole variable accounting for the changes in conduct that occur when people drink. While there is a pharmacological impact, there are great differences in its effect from one society to another, as well as from one context to another within a society (McAndrew & Edgerton, 1969; Leigh 1999: 216). Because a single substance such as alcohol can have very different meanings and uses both within and across societies, it is evident that something very different from biochemistry and physiology is involved. In a global perspective alcohol can be considered a food, complement to food, and poison, stimulant to appetite, and aid to digestion, tonic, medicine, and harmful drug, elixir, potion, or ‘a tool of the devil’, energizer or soporific, sacrament of abomination, aphrodisiac or turn-off, euphoriant, and depressant, adjunct to sociability or means of retreat, stimulant or relaxant, tasty nectar or godawful stuff, exculpatory, or aggravating, with respect to blame, god’s gift or a curse, analgesic and anesthetic, disinhibitor or knock out, etc., etc. (sic). (Heath 2000: v). Alcohol also produces a wide range of emotions and behaviours across different cultures, including ‘calmness, joviality, passivity, indolence, affability, tolerance, sociability, generosity, volubility, confidence, loquaciousness, sentimentality, gaiety, euphoria, animation, tenderness, tranquillity, boastfulness, jocularity, silliness, laziness, effusiveness, vivacity, cheerfulness, relaxation, drowsiness, peacefulness etc.’ (Fox & Marsh 2010: 16). Sameness: scale and cross-cultural patterns Despite the manifest differences in how alcohol is used and perceived in different cultures, a striking observation that has continuously surfaced in research

Introduction

13

on alcohol is the non-problematic nature of drinking cultures in what we may call ‘simple societies’, and in contrast, the problematic nature of drinking culture in what could be termed ‘complex societies’. The cause of the difference is the differing basis of the social order in the two types of society. In simple societies, this is the ritual process and gift relations, while in complex societies it is a range of macro-level processes, with the one focused on in this book being state formation processes. In complex societies, traditional mechanisms of social integration and regulation are undermined, and the culture of everyday life that drinking occasions are a part of are regularly disrupted, laying the ground, as we shall see, for alcohol-related social pathologies. It is difficult however to talk about cross-cultural patterns, as opposed to the particularity and difference of local cultural patterns. Similarly, there is the question of stereotyped differences between large-scale and small-scale societies. However, such comparisons and contrasts do have some merit. There are certain recurrent features in the position of alcohol in culture, allowing Heath (2000: 160) to note that ‘it is striking that drinking often seems to serve similar purposes in very different cultures and contexts’. The question of the nature of crosscultural patterns can be answered through the work of foundational figures in anthropology: Victor Turner and Marcel Mauss. Following their work, I propose that there is a certain sameness beneath the singularities of different cultures, with the recurrent features being Turner’s (1969) rites de passage, as well as Mauss’s (1992) ‘gift relations’. Drinking occasions mark and provide structure to temporal and life-course transitions, and offer ‘time-outs’ from routine and roles within social hierarchies, and are thus characteristic of the liminal, middle phase of a rite of passage, and also cultivate social integration through the dramatisations of sharing that occur within them, with the act of sharing drinks central to companionship, and associational life in general, finding expression in archetypal images in Western Civilisation, such as in the Last Supper and Plato’s Symposium. Certain anthropologists may dislike the above position. However, such a contrast is important for avoiding modernocentrism and Eurocentrism (see Eisenstadt 2002). Contexts outlined and concepts developed in social and cultural anthropology can and should be related to modern societies. Such an approach is important not only in understanding the place of alcohol in culture, but also in understanding societies in general. This is because the distant and different cultures of non-modern, non-Western societies serve to hold up ‘a mirror of the other’ to ourselves (Szakolczai 2000: xviii). Through the culture of the other we can observe our own strangeness, peculiarity and contingency through a comparison with the patterns of human existence of these small-scale societies. Such a project is particularly important, as anthropological research on alcohol has produced, as has already been indicated, a startling finding that raises questions about the character of modern societies. This is that while alcohol is used extremely widely through both history and cross-culturally, ‘the idea that it is associated with problems is absent in many cultures, and the idea that it might be a major factor in the aetiology of a debilitating disease is

14

Introduction

highly unusual’ (Heath 1988: 398). So, in simpler societies as well as Mediterranean societies alcohol use tends to be less problematic. This raises the question of what it is about North European, and particularly Eastern European, and Anglo-Saxon modern culture that renders alcohol such a problematic part of it. The question of ‘small-scale’ versus ‘large-scale’ or ‘complex’ societies is equally tricky. However, in another sense it can be seen as quite straightforward through the historically contingent existence of the brute fact of the state. On the one hand, there are societies that are literally non-state in character, lacking its aspects such as a monopoly of violence and taxation, in the shape of an army, judicial system, and administrative apparatus. There are other situations where the state is weak and not particularly influential in many areas of social life. In these situations, community and informal hierarchies and informal social control does the work of maintaining the social order. A distinction between ‘complex’ and ‘simple’ societies has been noted early in social scientific alcohol research, by one of its pioneers, Seldon D. Bacon (1962), who sought to answer why in complex societies alcohol consumption was more problematised. His answer was a Dukheimian diagnosis that the secular and individualistic nature of complex societies increases the function of drinking as a symbol and mechanism of social integration, while the culture simultaneously provides weaker social controls, and makes alcohol incompatible with many spheres of life due to the increased degree of interdependence and need for coordination in them, with alcohol also acting as a (not always adaptive) technique of emotional management for dealing with the strains of such a complex and rationalised society. In contrast, anthropologists plying their trade in ‘simple’ societies have noted that despite the pervasiveness of alcohol use, alcohol is typically seen as socially integrative, and culturally constructive (Heath 1988: 398; Douglas 1987). One of the classic studies in anthropological research on alcohol illustrates this point. The Bolivian Camba are a peasant community, who consumed an alcoholic beverage that was amongst the most potent customarily consumed beverages, typically having an 89% ethanol content. Despite this, and the fact that they often drank to the point of ‘frequent and gross inebriety’ (Heath 1958: 28), they nonetheless appeared to not suffer from dependence or alcohol-related problems (Mandelbaum 1965). The cause of their immunity was seen to be the highly ritualised, socially integrative form that consumption took, as well as the strong consensus on the meaning of alcohol and its consumption. Thus, alcohol research contains the idea of a contrast in the place of alcohol in culture based on the contrast between organic and mechanical solidarity. While this is certainly a somewhat crude contrast, the book will attempt to explore one dimension of the difference: the role of the state historically and in the present. Nonetheless, an ideal-type distinction, between ‘complex’ and ‘simple’ societies, though conceptually useful, can be criticised, particularly by those sensitive to the nuances of particular cases as too rough. Societies labelled as simple share features of societies labelled as complex and vice versa (Berreman 1978: 226–8, 234).

Introduction

15

However, the contrast could be described as the key problematic of social theory and classic sociological thought, with Marx (the transition from primitive communism to property relations), Durkheim (mechanical to organic solidarity), Weber (traditional and charismatic to legal domination), Simmel (metropolis, money); as well as cultural anthropology, for example in Turner’s contrast of the liminal with the liminoid, distinguishing small-scale, with largescale societies. So, despite its problems, it is difficult to abandon. Thus, while being sensitive to clumsy generalisation, as Berreman notes, ‘we can nevertheless agree, I think, that there is some residual consistency, legitimacy, and analytical utility in the kind of bipolar, ideal type categorizations’ (Berreman 1978: 228). Thus, the key problematic of the study is to try to identify one of the causes behind the particularly problematic drinking culture of Anglo-Saxon (now going global), Northern European and Eastern European modern societies, and Mediterranean societies as they move closer to Anglo-Saxon models. Outside of the ‘core’ modern regions, there is also the periphery, where indigenous groups have suffered cultural trauma through colonisation, displacement and marginalisation. The question is how has something that was symbolic of community and life become a social problem. The answer offered is that ‘the soil of associational life, gift relations and ritual processes are being eroded and filled by alternative substances’ (O’Brien 2009), in order to feed the growth of the state and legal-bureaucratic domination.

Long-term historical processes: the state The differences in the understandings of alcohol and ‘drunken comportment’ is not chaotic and relativistic, but shaped historically. The different cultural programs of modernity, are historically contingent, and rooted in specific worldviews. One of the major civilisational cleavages in the understanding and effect of alcohol, for example is the contrast between ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ societies. The former are South European wine drinking cultures, where drinking is banal, an everyday activity, typically consumed as an aspect of meals, and where overt intoxication is rare. The latter are North European beer and spirit drinking cultures, where alcohol is a special substance, set apart from everyday life, whose use frequently aims at and leads to intoxication. ‘Cultural remission’, and outcomes such as interpersonal violence tend to be lower in wet than dry cultures (Levine 1992; Room 2001). Historical thinking though is often not engaged with due to social scientists’ ‘retreat into the present’ (Elias 2009), and evolutionary thinking that sees certain societies as the model that others are moving towards, rendering the examples of past and distant societies irrelevant (Eisenstadt 2002). However, there are several related long-term historical processes that have shaped the modern relationship with alcohol, such as the development of spiritual and philosophical movements (as indicated in the example above), the growth of capitalism, regimes of biopower, and social reform movements. It is not possible to cover

16

Introduction

all of these in one book, so the focus here is on state formation, as this is probably the most fundamental process in transforming the place of alcohol in culture. The broad pattern is a growing authority and involvement of the state and public sphere in the micro level and community level that drinking occasions take place in, and a move from heavily ritualised drinking to individualcompetitive behaviour, involving a move from dependence on the group, to quasi-rituals in which individualised actors seek to establish position in social hierarchies. The concept of civilising process, developed by Norbert Elias (2000), is central. It explains the long-term processes of psychological and behavioural change, which are caused by state formation, the centralisation of political power, growing peacefulness within societies, combined with increasing social interdependence, along with imperatives to compete through social display, rather than physical violence, which results in heightened levels of social and self-control in people’s psychological makeup. There has been a transformation in psychology and the quality of social life through processes of state formation, with a turning point in the history of states at the transition from centrifugal forces, where there is a tendency towards political fragmentation and ever smaller units, to centripetal forces as states become ever larger, holding more prodigious territory and resources. Monopolisation of tax and violence by the central ruler is the mechanism that drives this process towards increasing scale, as the ability to enforce taxation provides the ability to fund the means of violence, that in turn allows for greater ability to enforce taxation and so forth. Alongside centralisation, there are ever-increasing degrees of interdependence. Internal pacification through the monopoly of violence and taxation allows for a more predictable social environment so people can plan for the future rather than focus on immediate needs and dangers, meaning that specialisation is possible, and as more and more specialists come to rely on the goods and services of other specialists, so they find themselves in a relationship of mutual dependence. In addition, as the monopolies held by the central ruler become more secure and the territory they control expands as a result, so the administrative tasks multiply, meaning that they can no longer be supervised personally, so that they cease to be private monopolies but public monopolies. The argument of the book follows Elias’s theory, seeing that the above has resulted in a social pathology, as states have continuously intervened in the everyday and community level of drinking occasions and rituals, harnessing them to serve imperatives, such as maximising tax revenue, and policing the public sphere to manage political dissent, or to engage in scapegoating exercises; and the mode of alcohol use, or the use of rival psychoactive substances has also become an important stake in the struggle between contending social groups, with much of the concern and debate around drinking culture explainable as the tip of the iceberg of struggles to legitimate the culture of one’s own group, and attack the culture of rival groups (see Gusfield 1986). This has resulted in alcohol usage being frequently problematised and problematic in state societies. The heart of the social pathology is this contradiction in state formation

Introduction

17

processes, that was particularly acute in the early modern period, but is nonetheless a consistent feature, that while states rely, at times very heavily on revenue associated with alcohol (or other psychoactive substances), the consumption of these substances is also associated with the formation of dissident communities that leads to a cycle of promotion of use and repression, that disorders the context of usage, disordering the fabric of traditions, rituals and hierarchies that orders consumption. The second source of the social pathology is the competition between social groups through the symbolic violence of consumption and style of life, and the denigration of that of rival groups, which alcohol, as one of the earliest and most important consumer goods is important in. Through this, a contrast between integrated and competitive modes of consumption are evident. As noted previously, in small-scale societies, as documented by anthropologists, in contrast, drinking has generally been shown to be ritualised, often sacred, and an act that is linked to the continual reaffirmation of social bonds, hierarchies and the social order.

Overview This book offers an analysis of how the process of state formation has produced social pathology in relation to the use of alcohol and other psychoactive substances in contemporary civilisation. A central concern is the basis of self and social control that allows people and communities to minimise harmful outcomes from drinking. The central argument is that the timeless basis for providing the capacity for controlling the nature of alcohol consumption so that its effects are benign, has become disrupted over the course of the civilising process. While civilising processes can go into reverse, through a breaking of the state’s monopoly of violence and taxation (Elias 1996), civilising processes are in themselves decivilising, as while state formation advances it subverts other bases of the social order, producing social pathologies relating to alcohol. The outcome is a great increase in the scale of political units, in internal pacification and in social complexity, paralleled by an outbreak in permanent liminality. The rituals that alcohol and intoxication are traditionally enclosed within are moments of liminality, where structure, rules and hierarchies become more fluid. State formation fatally undermines the fabric of ritual life, resulting in liminality escaping its bounds, and drinking culture at large becoming characterised by formlessness. The book traces this process through four phases in the dialectic between civilisation and decivilisation. Chapters 1 and 2 examine the evolution of the capacity for self and social control. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 examine how alcohol has been traditionally structured by its location within the universal practices of rites de passage and gift relations, as outlined by Victor Turner and Marcel Mauss. Chapter 6 offers a suggestion for how the traditional ritual context of alcohol consumption becomes undermined, through them metastasising into potlatches: competitive rituals based on the logic of mimetic desire, that escalate out of control, and that are associated with excess and violence. Finally,

18

Introduction

Chapters 7, 8, 9 and 10 deal with the place of alcohol within highly centralised and complex states. It shows how under competitive pressure these replaced groupings focused on potlatches, and how they transformed the understanding of alcohol to being a source of revenue to be harnessed, but also a source of disorder, creating a fantastic reversal, where the symbol of life, community and sociable pleasure, became one of the main social pathologies.

1

The evolutionary origins of control

Introduction: limits of constructionism There are limits to the extent to which the manner of alcohol use is a contingent historical construction. It has already been noted in the previous chapter that beneath the variety of individual cases, there is an underlying pattern of rites de passage and gift relations in drinking cultures, which will be discussed in depth in Chapters 3 and 4. There is a further limit to constructionism and the relativism of the form of drinking occasions: the biological-emotional level of behaviour, particularly the evolved capacities of self and social control. The sociology of emotions refers back to Darwin (1859, 1872) and contains the idea that a portion of human behaviour is relatively hardwired through instinctual behavioural repertoires that have been evolved, which nonetheless must be socially activated. This is definitively not a scientistic, reductionist argument, as the philosophical traditions of pragmatism and symbolic interactionism for example were profoundly influenced by Darwin and the interface between evolutionary potentials and their social activation through meaningful interaction (see Mead 1967; Blumer 2007). ‘Drunken comportment’ (McAndrew & Edgerton 1969) is the classic statement on the socially constructed nature of the experience of alcohol consumption. They showed that consumption forms a culturally constructed ‘time out’ from routine, sober conduct, in which people can escape from normal role expectations. Escape though was shown not to be through pharmacological disinhibition, but rather through the symbolic cue that alcohol consumption consisted of. Thus, the critical element on behaviour was shown to be the ‘expectancy effect’, rather than the actual physiological impact of ethanol. One of the strongest sources for evidence of this was from ‘balanced placebo’ studies in experimental psychology, where it has been shown that expectancy effects are greater than the actual level of alcohol consumed (Room 2001). The results of these studies come with a significant caveat though, as they only hold for situations in which relatively small amounts of alcohol are consumed, after which the deception breaks down. Other studies have shown that physical aggression (which can be seen as something that is legitimised by the cultural code of consuming alcohol) is in fact related to the quantity of alcohol

20

The evolutionary origins of control

consumed also. This has been theorised as being due to ‘alcohol myopia’, where alcohol effects cognition by reducing the range of cues that are perceived in a situation, so that the capacity to interpret the meaning of cues is reduced, and also distal ones are ignored in favour of only the most immediate ones, militating against inhibition (Room 2001). Thus, there is a limit to the ‘drunken comportment’ thesis.

Self-control in social psychology and economics The essence of everyday life is the resisting of desire, and the heart of socialisation and civilisation is the learning of the capacity to regulate desire, through learned social controls. Psychoactive substances represent a challenge for this, as they result in disinhibition and sensual/perceptual distortion (Bancroft 2009: 51). For some this would not be a problem, as the inheritance of the masters of suspicion: Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud cast doubt on the benefits of self-control, casting it as ideology, a slave morality unfit for a ‘blond beast’, or repression and prevention of abreaction. However, contradicting this romantic view of the discontents of self-control, positive outcomes in almost every dimension of life have been shown to be predicted by self-control (Baumeister & Tierney 2012: 1; see Mischel & Mischel 1987). People categorised as ‘alcoholics’, in contrast, present a range of behavioural characteristics that all centre of problems with self-control. Associated behaviours are emotional lability, impersistence, disinhibition, impulsivity, hyperactivity, aggressiveness and attention deficit disorder. Difficulties with physical control are manifested in related symptoms of static ataxia (loss of balance) and essential tremor (uncontrollable shaking). Also, when alcoholics describe their pre-alcoholic self, they often report hyperactivity, impulsivity and anti-social behaviour (Tarter et al. 1988: 73, 76, 77; Cox 1988: 155). At heart, self-control promotes social harmony, and the ability to maintain constructive relationships. It is likely that it evolved exactly for this purpose, as an adaption to living in complex social hierarchies, and the need for each member of the group to attune their behaviour toward others, which often would involve the denying of impulses (Baumeister & Tierney 2012). The capacity for self-control firstly has a biological aspect, and is heritable to an extent (Pinker 2011: 601). This is evident firstly in the physiological impact of alcohol, which diminishes the capacity for self-control (Tangney et al. 2004), reducing the capacity for self-awareness to feedback about the self, that self-control is oriented to (Hull 1981). In every person, the capacity for self-control also has a limit, before ego-depletion occurs, meaning for instance that attempts to limit alcohol intake are more difficult following attempts at self-regulation regarding some other end (Muraven et al. 2002; Muraven et al. 2005). Glucose is at the heart of this, as evinced by the fact both that alcohol lowers blood glucose levels, hence its link in lowering self-control (169), and the fact that diabetics, who suffer from problems in regulating glucose levels, have greater problems with self-control, including alcohol abuse (Baumeister & Tierney 2012: 46).

The evolutionary origins of control

21

The capacity for self-control is also cultural, with self-control firstly facilitated by orienting action to a horizon, composed of ideals or goals, which are clear, non-conflicting, and which mix proximal and distal ends. The immunising effect of these for alcohol-related problems is shown by how people with addiction problems tend to have restricted time horizons, with only the most immediate goals (in behavioural economics this is known as ‘delay discounting’ (Baumeister & Tierney 2012; Petry et al. 1998; Mitchell et al. 2005; see also Bickel & Johnson 2003; Bickel & Marsch 2001)). This is an issue of impulsecontrol, of delaying rewards for a more appropriate time, relevant to substance abuse and a range of compulsive behaviours, and is particularly severe in individuals with ‘dual addictive disorders’ (Petry 2001). Martin Daly and Margo Wilson (Wilson & Daly 2006) have speculated that self-control varies within an organism as a means of discounting the future on the basis of the stability or instability of their environment and how long they will live (Pinker 2011: 607). This theory is developed by Wilkinson and Pickett (2010) to explain a range of harmful behaviours, including problematic alcohol and illicit drug use, which tend to cluster at the bottom of the social hierarchy, due to the more difficult and unpredictable lives that people have (see also Marmot 1997; Britton & Marmot 2004; Britton et al. 2004). Another factor is ideals or goals that are somehow transcendent. If self-oriented thinking and impulses can be reoriented outwards, toward other-focused objectives, lofty thoughts that are abstract and long-term, focusing on enduring ideals, then self-control is likely to be stronger (Baumeister & Tierney 2012: 163–5). It is for this reason that religious people are less likely to develop unhealthy habits, such as alcohol abuse, illicit drug use, or smoking (see McCullough & Willoughby 2009). Secondly, self-control is facilitated by self and social surveillance. People who engage in self-monitoring are more disciplined and more conforming to their own values, and standards in general. Alcohol however reduces self-monitoring (Hull 1981). Furthermore, there is a strong link between reputation: the importance of public information about a person, and self-control. Thirdly, self-control is facilitated by what could be called ascetic techniques, aimed at training, disciplining and developing the capacity of the self to regulate itself, for example through the making of ‘precommitments’, the development of habit, so that responses will become automatic, requiring little self-control. In addition, incentive systems, of rewards and punishments, policed by individuals or agencies outside of the self, are important, providing they are designed effectively so that punishments are mild, quick, consistent and certain (Baumeister & Tierney 2012: 111–12, 120, 135, 151, 158, 199). This closely mirrors the classic recommendations of Cesare Beccaria, the founder of utilitarian thinking on deviance, on how to minimise ‘unwanted’ behaviours. It also chimes with the contextual factors that Elias (2000) argues support self-control, as external conditions such as deeper interdependence with others, act as a social control on behaviour, that also stimulates self-control. Religions and philosophical communities have been important in developing methods for instilling self-control (Baumeister & Tierney 2012: 171–2, 175),

22

The evolutionary origins of control

offering social supports, goals and ideals, monitoring, techniques for building self-control, and punishment and reward systems. For example, St. Augustine, a reformed hedonist, established the framework for how to develop self-control within Christianity. Alcoholics Anonymous is an interesting phenomenon in this regard too. It is designed on the model of a Christian sect, and as such is unscientific in design, yet appears to be effective to an extent, being ‘[a]ll in all…at least as good as, if not better than, professional treatments costing much more’ (Baumeister & Tierney 2012: 173; see also McKellar et al. 2003). The reason for this is that it enshrines the principles of self-control: establishing goals, monitoring the behaviour of members, for example through chips, reputation, sponsors, by removing people from temptation by filling up their evenings, linking mundane actions with transcendental goals, and strengthening goal orientation through the emphasis of speaking at meetings. Fourthly, self-control is set by overall cultural standards. Ruth Benedict (1936) speculated on the existence of Dionysian and Apollonian cultures, and Geert Hofstede (1993) saw cultures as differing along six dimensions, one being long-term versus short-term orientation, and another being indulgence versus restraint, which has relevance for the degree of self-control related to alcohol use.

Economics The model of humanity from Enlightenment thought is of the utility maximiser: the rational agent, acting on the basis of rational choice. Addiction poses a problem for this perspective, as it appears to represent a contradiction of this presumption, demonstrating the weakness of the will, self-destructive drives, or the dominance of impulse over reason. However, Enlightenment thought has sought to explain ‘deviant’ (personally or socially harmful) behaviour from the beginning, for example in the pioneering work of Beccaria. Becker and Murphy (1988) frame the seeming difficulty here with a quote from Shakespeare: ‘Use doth breed habit’. Consumers seek to maximise utility according to their ‘stable preferences’, while trying to predict the consequences of their choice in the future. The problem with an item that is addictive for a person, is that current consumption will increase future consumption of the item in order to receive a similar level of utility, due to the effect of reinforcement and tolerance, and because of this amplifying effect on consumption, the ‘steady state’ is unstable. Consumers of this type of good tend to be ‘present oriented’, unlike the ‘future orientation’ of consumers of beneficial goods, as more will have to be invested to achieve the same level of utility, while for a beneficial good less will be. Thus, allocation of resources will focus on the present. This paints a picture of the dire situation that compulsive users find themselves in, pursuing present utility, with future crises inevitable, as the difficulty of satisfying future demand for the substance closes in. The beginnings of addictive consumption though can often be found in life-cycle events causing anxiety, which raise the utility gained from the substance. Thus, while the pattern of

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consumption could not be described as ‘happy’, the consumer would be less happy if they did not have the addictive good. Nonetheless, even ‘addictive’ substances seem to be quite responsive to incentives and disincentives. For example, Becker & Murphy (1988) note that the first Surgeon General’s report on smoking was published in 1964, revealing some of the true costs of consumption, and by 1975 per capita consumption of cigarettes had reduced by 34%, and the most harmful products by even more. Thus, in this theory, the ‘addict’ who says that they want to stop but does not, is no different from the single person who says that they want to marry but are not able to: neither anticipate sufficient benefits to change the status quo. The difficulty with psychology and economics however is that despite their valuable insights into the link between self-control and alcohol, they are a-historic, not demonstrating the processes that are shaping this aspect of society. These processes are cultural, historical and also evolutionary, with the three levels profoundly connected. To understand these, we need to temporarily shift focus from society to biology, to lead us back to society.

What are psychoactive substances? Psychoactive substances are substances that act on the central nervous system, changing perceptions and emotional responses. Neurotransmitters transmit stimuli between the neurons of the central nervous system, and are crucial for perception, emotional responses and muscular movement ‘acting as lock-keepers along the canals of our sensual perceptions and our experience of external stimuli’ (Gerritsen 2000: 15). The active components of psychoactive substances are structurally similar to these endogenous neurotransmitters, and this is why they can produce certain emotional states and change perceptions (14–16). They may be divided into different categories: psycholeptics dull the senses, and can be further divided into analgesics (dull pain), sedatives (calm, sedate) and hypnotics (induce sleep); psychoanaleptics stimulate the senses; and pschodysleptics have a disruptive effect. However, this standard classification is not entirely straightforward as many substances have more than one of these properties, effects depend on the quantity consumed and the effects are also shaped by the social significance of its consumption. Another way to classify psychoactive substances is to divide them into alcohol, alkaloids and synthetic intoxicants. Alcohol is produced through creating ethanol from sugar and/or starch. Alkaloids come from plants, with major varieties including tobacco, tea, coffee, cocoa, quinine, hashish, marijuana, opiates, coca, betelnut, khat and peyote. In the late nineteenth century synthetic intoxicants emerged with chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry. Major products include barbiturates, tranquilisers (e.g. Librium, Valium, Seresta), amphetamines, LSD, rohypnol and methadone. After a period of regular consumption, the nervous system adapts and the original effects of the substance declines, while simultaneously it cannot easily function without it, as deprivation of it causes discomfort, pain and distress (Gerritsen 2000: 12–16).

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The pervasiveness of intoxication in nature As noted in the previous chapter, the use of psychoactive substances is universal cross-culturally and historically. The long history of use of alkaloid-containing plants can be seen in how in some, the wild variant no longer exists, as is also evident in the case of alcohol, where many of the tree crops that it is based on can only reproduce through grafts. Because the extent of problematic use of psychoactive substances amongst humans appears to be unique in nature, their use is often thought of in general as a purely human phenomenon. However, the ingestion of and deliberate use of psychoactive substances is an aspect of evolution in general, and is by no means limited to humans. Many animal species consume psychoactive substances including both alkaloid-containing plants and fermented fruit (Gerritsen 2000: 1, 14, 19). Siegel (2005: vii) notes that ‘[a]lmost every species of animal has engaged in the natural pursuit of intoxicants’, and that this has been a fact of natural life long before humans. It seems that this is not accidental, as they have an innate capacity to identify psychoactive substances and for their behaviour to be modified through their experience with them (3, 34). Examples include bees that consume the intoxicating nectar of certain orchids, cats sniffing catnip, birds consuming inebriating berries, elephants eating fermenting fruit, monkeys snacking on magic mushrooms, goats seeking out intoxicating lichen, coffee beans and khat. More examples are Koala’s dependence on eucalyptus leaves (if reared on them, they will die through the process of withdrawal), jaguars’ consumption of yaje, deer and peyote, reindeer and the psychoactive mushroom amanita muscaria, also known as fly agaric and pigs and truffles. Alcohol is one among a broad variety of psychoactive substances, but it is a very significant one as it is pervasive, with many wild fruits and foods containing enough sugar to be fermented naturally and with all insects and animals affected in the same way by it, and attracted to it (Siegel 2005: 11, 42, 65, 103–4).

The evolutionary origins of intoxication The focus of subsequent sections of the book will be on the impact that the struggle for survival of states, caught in the bind of international competition had on drinking culture. However, the very emergence of psychoactive substances was rooted in a comparable high stakes battle. The evolutionary origin of the chemical compounds that constitute psychoactive substances is in the defences developed by plants as a part of their struggle for survival among other species. Plants developed an array of chemical defences as well as physical defences such as stiff tough leaves, growing in ecological niches, disguise, as well as bristles, thistles, barbs and spines. These defences are not straightforwardly designed to discourage browsers through lethal threat, as many plants rely on animals to disperse their seeds, so the strategy often is to limit feeding rather than killing the animal directly (Siegel 2005: vii–viii, 27, 29).

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These plant defences have a long provenance. As early life emerged in the pre-Cambrian era organisms probably developed such capacities. Most significant however are angiosperm plants, which emerged in the late Palaeozoic around 345 million years ago and which began spreading widely in the Cretaceous period when they became the dominant form of plant life. Angiosperms are significant in that they possess a sophisticated array of chemical defences and also because a very large proportion of them possess such qualities. The typical effect that these have is to cause a bad taste, distorting sensation, to have a deleterious effect on digestion, inhibiting enzymes, interfering with vital processes within the cells of animals and disturbing reproductive capacity. Most significant for us are alkaloids, which are contained in nearly one-third of angiosperms and which have the effect of causing a bitter unpleasant taste, dizziness, sickness or death. They are also constitutive of the major hallucinogens and mind-altering drugs (Siegel 2005: 27–30; Sullivan & Hagan 2002: 392). Animals coped with this challenge through developing a range of capacities. Through sense cells their presence can be identified, and through learning it can be established how to approach or avoid them. Biochemical mechanisms have been evolved to detoxify the plants, such as special barriers like the one that surrounds the brain in higher mammals, special tissues they may be channelled away into, enzymes to break down the compounds, with the liver being particularly important, and the buccal membrane in the cheek as a possible adaption for absorbing plant chemicals, and the capacity to develop tolerance. Feeding strategies develop to reduce the risk of taking in excessive amounts. Some insects have even evolved the capacity to ingest plants so as to retain their alkaloids, which could then be used as a toxic defence against their own predators (Siegel 2005: 4, 30–4; Sullivan & Hagan 2002: 393). Alcohol, of course, is a product of a different evolutionary process, resulting from the fermentation of sugars in fruit, grain, milk and honey by yeasts, and which, until the emergence of agriculture was a far less plentiful and significant substance.

Why do animals consume psychoactive substances? Animals consume psychoactive substances for a number of related reasons. The first and most uninteresting factor is through accident, for instance when areas are overgrazed or crowded or when they move into unfamiliar areas, which may force them to feed on unfamiliar plants. More significant is the related range of reasons that centre on managing emotional economies. Crucial here is the use of psychoactive substances as a means of coping with anxiety, which psychoactive substances reduce, to the benefit of the animal. An example of this is how cats will refuse to consume alcohol in any appreciable amounts, but when they are rendered neurotic and fearful, for instance through the repeated administration of mild electrical shocks, alcohol is consumed as a means of dissolving the tension it is experiencing. A similar pattern can be seen in captive animals. While animals in the wild use intoxicants the frequency of consumption is low and low doses are

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also preferred, whereas in contrast, captive animals develop more habitual use and prefer stronger doses. The explanation for this may be due to mental states of depression and suffering produced through confinement, which the animal combats through seeking mental states of exhilaration, stimulation and happiness through intoxication and the tranquilising, sedating effect of alcohol (Siegel 2005: 48, 53, 77–80, 87–8, 112–3, 120; Alexander et al. 1981). While acute levels of use are a feature of chronically stressed captive animals, more moderate pursuit of psychoactive substances for the reason of stress relief may be a feature of natural environments. Stress is an adaptive response to challenging environments, but when this persists for extended periods of time, it can lead to a range of maladaptive behaviours, as well as energy depletion due to the continuous activation of neurotransmitters (Sullivan & Hagan 2002: 396). ‘In the case of early humans, the exploitation of exogenous [neurotransmitter-analogues] may have prevented NT-depletion, and allowed users to tolerate prolonged stress states in aversive conditions’ (Sullivan & Hagan 2002: 396). Nonetheless, the strategy may have limited usefulness. In an experiment by Ellison (1977) rats were placed in a large, spacious and stimulating environment and were given unlimited access to 10% alcohol. The stress of being on the bottom of the social hierarchy through suffering the lack of access to various resources caused some of the animals to develop habits of heavy alcohol consumption. However, this practice instituted a vicious circle as these drank early in the morning, ate less food, were generally inactive and stayed in their burrows much of the time, also becoming less dominant in the colony, losing contests to establish status. In contrast, the king rat in each of the different colonies was an extreme non-consumer of alcohol, while those in the middle adopted a sociable pattern of consumption, with the peaks occurring just before feeding and just before sleeping and with days of considerable alcohol consumption, with intervening days of little consumption (Siegel 2005: 114–15). The fact that there is little intoxication in the wild raises the tantalising possibility that Freud may have been on to something in Civilization and its Discontents, that animals do not bear the same burden of repression and anxiety as humans do in the confinement of civilisation. On the other hand, civilisation provides a level of security that animals lack, allowing a dropping of the guard through intoxication. Another reason why humans and other animals have consumed psychoactive substances is for the energy dividend it provides. Alcohols are an indicator of sugary, energy rich food to frugivores, with their odour plume facilitating the locating of fruits. However, frugivores have a strong preference for ripe fruit, over decomposing fruit containing higher quantities of ethanol (Milton 2004: 308; Dudley 2000; Dominy 2004). Vertebrates and fungi stand in a competitive relationship over fruit sugars, as vertebrates and plants cooperate through the former’s consumption of fruit to facilitate the seed dispersal of the latter (Levey 2004: 285). The ripening process lowers the defences of fruit that make consumption of it prematurely by dispersers aversive, making it more attractive to them, but through this a race for nutritional reward between microbes and

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vertebrates is set in motion, as the fruit becomes vulnerable to predation by microbes. Fungi, to protect themselves after colonisation, instigate fruit rot through the production of ethanol, which renders the fruit repulsive to foragers, and which also reduces the growth of other microbes (Dudley 2000: 4; Levey 2004: 286–7). Despite animals’ tendency to avoid decaying fruit, ethanol does offers a direct nutritional reward itself also (Dudley 2000: 6). Psychoactive substances such as betelnut and coca leaves are also largely thought of as foods that impart energy and stifle fatigue, rather than as mindaltering (Sullivan & Hagan 2002: 392). Substance seeking compensates for neurotransmitter deficits, particularly in instances of nutritional privation, so that neurotransmitter analogues from plants substituted for dietary neurotransmitter precursors, thereby saving energy. Furthermore, many psychoactive substances have significant nutritional value in themselves (Sullivan & Hagan 2002: 392, 395–6). There is also the possibility that attraction to substances is driven by ‘benign masochism’, where adult pleasures, that must be learned through overcoming fear, disgust or pain is due to a reward for exploring possible experiences and tastes to expand the knowledge of the environment in terms of new food sources, medically useful substances and so on (Pinker 2011: 555–6), illustrating the continuity in the pleasures of early humans, and drinkers of black coffee, heavily hopped beer, dry wines and single-malt whiskey.

Intoxicants, evolution and the civilising process Civilising processes, as described by Elias (2000) are in essence learning processes whereby members of a community, bound by interdependence develop a more sophisticated capacity to orientate themselves to one another. In one sense this is a historical process that can be seen in human societies. However, as shown by Elias (1991) this capacity for restraint for the sake of better orientation is a product of biological evolution. Through the example of intoxication, it is evident that the civilising process is indeed a capacity rooted in biological evolution and in addition, it is not only limited to humans, but is present to some extent across animal species. Animals possess an innate capacity to identify intoxicating substances through the possession of certain sense cells. However, this is also subject to modification by experience and learning. Siegel (2005: 93) explains that ‘[o]nce the drug enters the body, animals with good sensory equipment and learning abilities can evaluate the metabolic consequences’, which may lead it to pursue more or assiduously avoid it (31–2, 67–8, 113). Beyond individual learning, there is a social learning process. Siegel (96) again explains that, As far as we know, other animals have nothing approximating our human abilities to communicate information gathered from other generations… Still, the same extremely acute sensory systems and malleable learning mechanisms used by man have endowed many animals with the means for communicating information to others in their immediate space and time.

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The evolutionary origins of control Many animals inherit altruistic behaviors such as danger warning calls to alert others to particularly aversive situations…. Animal communication can also function as a source of information about more attractive prey or feeding sites.

While the process of learning by storing experiences through language is clearly less sophisticated in animals than humans, they nonetheless possess a range of pre-linguistic mechanisms that are effective. Young animals learn about safe foods from the flavour of the mother’s milk or by following her to food sources. Social rearing conditions affect the relationship between animals and psychoactive substances, even when there are biological predispositions towards a certain type of relationship. For instance, when ‘drinker’ weaning mice are housed with adult ‘non-drinkers’, the young mice drink less. Social influences also have an effect during feeding, with rats for example avoiding a novel flavour if it is encountered in the presence of a sick rat (6–7, 113). Such a learning process is essential as the consumption of psychoactive substances can be life threatening, and frequent intoxication will not allow survival in the wild, as it reduces physical control, attention and problem solving and causes confusion and difficulty in orientation, and makes animals vulnerable to predation. Dependency is another risk, which will cause the animal to pursue intoxication over and above other pursuits. Intoxication is particularly problematic for social animals, as it may cause them to act in strange and socially inappropriate ways, not fulfilling their duties, such as ignoring their young, and disturb the hierarchy of the group. For this reason, a standard response is for the group to segregate these animals (Siegel 2005: 11, 49–50, 71–3, 75, 108).

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Introduction: a sober Edenic past? A crucial difference in the nature of consumption between humans and nonhuman animals is that, apart from highly unusual contexts, animals do not engage in compulsive patterns of consumption. On the one hand this may be an evolved capacity, as this would make them vulnerable to predators. However, it must be remembered that the challenge of a ready access to powerful psychoactive substances is not something that many species have had to face in their evolution. In contrast, these substances have become to differing degrees readily available to humans. This is particularly through agriculture, which provided the capacity to produce and store large quantities of them. Industrialisation and refinement widened this availability further. Culture has also allowed the more effective use of substances through the development of techniques such as smoking, sniffing, anal administration and injection. This presents human societies with the problem of controlling the use of these (Gerritsen 2000: 20–1). As we can, and will see, the problem of control has intensified over the course of civilisation as humans have gained greater mastery (though this control often leads to a loss of control) over their natural and social environment. The ‘conventional’ explanation from an evolutionary perspective is that civilisation, and modernity in particular, has produced a conflict between the rewards that psychoactive substances provided to humans in evolution, and the contemporary environment, in the same way that obesity and diabetes is linked with the novel pervasive availability of fats and sugars today (Nesse & Berridge 1997; Sullivan & Hagen 2002: 389; Dudley 2000: 7). Psychoactive substances exist on a ‘nutrient-toxin continuum’, called ‘hormesis’, where low doses are beneficial, while high doses are toxic, and for most of human existence the exposure to such substances would have been low, which may explain the link between alcohol and reduced cardiovascular risk (Dudley 2000: 9–10). In contrast to contemporary refined, purified and synthetic drugs, distilled spirits and modern beers, unrefined traditional substances, whether homebrews or substances that were chewed such as betelnut, do not give immediate hedonistic hits, or take long periods to overcome the aversive side-effects of use (Sullivan & Hagen 2002: 394).

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However, emphasising the overwhelming of the evolved biological capacity to process psychoactive substances by the tidal wave of increasingly potent substances in modernity is not without its problems. The human relationship with psychoactive substances is not de novo, as we have a co-evolutionary relationship with the plants and processes that produce these substances, with our evolution taking place in a ‘substance-rich, rather than substance-free, evolutionary past’ (Sullivan & Hagen 2002: 389). While exposure to distilled and refined substances is specifically modern, there appears to be a deep history of consuming potent substances. Archaeological evidence shows that betelnut was being chewed around 13,000 years ago, and presumably far longer than this, Aborigines when first encountered by Europeans were using the nicotine containing plant pituri, and tobacco is one of the earliest cultivated plants in the Americas (Sullivan & Hagen 2002: 390). The tobacco consumed was far more potent than contemporary strands (Hughes 2003; Sullivan & Hagen 2002: 394), and betelnut, coca, khat and tobacco in their ‘chewing cultures’, were ingested through the buccal cheek cavity, which provided a direct route of administration, bypassing the stomach and liver (Sullivan & Hagen 2002: 391), in the same manner as anal insertion. Techniques were developed for managing the potency of what was ingested, such as selectivity, heating, drying, leaching, and so on. Fermentation as a technique is both ancient and pervasively used for food preservation, introducing low doses of ethanol into diets (Levey 2004: 288). Thus, humans did not once live in a Garden of Eden where they knew not of temptation. As we will see in the next chapter, the missing piece of the puzzle in understanding self and social control in the use of alcohol and other psychoactive substances is the ritual process. Nonetheless, the process of mutual evolution between ourselves and the plants (and animals through milk) from which we gain alcohol as we domesticated them and became domesticated ourselves accelerated through agriculture. Domestication of animals was necessary to gain the milk that some peoples use to make alcohol, through the sugars that are present in it. Milk though is baby food that is not meant for adults and that is not originally good for them. Lactose tolerance has only emerged through genetic changes in humans since the dawn of agriculture. Culture again drove evolutionary genetic change in human biochemistry through cultivating plants, our primary source of the sugars that alcohol is produced from. Tolerance to cereals is again possibly a novel genetic development in humans that stems from the emergence of agriculture (Dawkins 2004: 31–3).

Biological and cultural limits on alcohol consumption While humans face this problem of potential limitlessness in their relationship with psychoactive substances, through evolution they have nonetheless been bequeathed various limitations and capacities in respect of alcohol. Humans do not have a need to drink alcohol, but nonetheless most people for most of

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history have drunk, and a healthy human body can process ethanol efficiently by converting it into water and carbon dioxide, with the cumulative effects of its ingestion occurring when a person drinks faster than the rate at which they can metabolise a given quantity of it. Alcohol has an unusual effect on the central nervous system however, as initially it acts as a stimulant, though only briefly on the upswing of the curve of BAC, with most drinkers performing better in tests measuring eye-hand coordination, with it then acting as a depressant. In considering the upper limits of alcohol consumption, it acts as a poison, but in the same sense as substances that are necessary for human health such as salt, water and chromium are, with the poison being in the dose rather than the substance (Heath 2000: 123, 159, 169, 172; Heath 1988: 366). Alcohol consequently can have a negative impact on human health, most directly through poisoning. It also has other negative effects such as aggravating medical problems such as hypertension, cardia arrhythmia, and hepatitis (Heath 2000: 96–7). But the issue is with the dose, as alcohol, when consumed at lower levels has a range of beneficial effects. For instance, homebrews are nutritious and contain various vitamins and minerals that are often otherwise lacking in local diets. Wine too contains flavonoids that effect cholesterol levels in a favourable way and also anti-oxidants. Alcohol also serves as an inexpensive relaxant, which in small doses eases mental and physical stress (Heath 1995b: 342, 350). Cultural limits are particularly important for humans as they are inherently in tension with the world, as while they are a part of nature they do not integrate unquestioningly into it (Simmel 1997a). Mumford (1967: 9) noted that these limits are ‘a mode of order man was forced to develop, in self-protection, so as to control the tremendous overcharge of psychal energy that his large brain placed at his disposal’. While such limits are sometimes presented as a constraining force, they are also liberating and enabling. Behavioural limits, provided through participation in group life, are crucial as they facilitate moderate consumption, which has a range of benefits and is more adaptive than heavy drinking and abstaining. Emile Durkheim’s (1897/2002) work on suicide thus has important implications for the study of alcohol. He noted the cultural immunity of certain groups to suicide as a result of the appropriate levels of social integration and social regulation provided by their societies. A parallel example for drinking culture is Mediterranean societies which, historically possess a ‘cultural immunity’ to alcohol problems as a result of the way in which alcohol is interwoven into the ‘matrix of the personal, social, and religious lives of the people of these societies’ (Gefou-Madianou 1992: 22). It seems bizarre then that Durkheim (1897/2002) did not seem to consider ‘alcoholism’ to be a ‘social fact’ shaped by socio-cultural factors, instead seeing it as a psychiatric category, and an individual-level phenomenon (Skog 1991: 193). The basis for his assessment appears also to have little support, other than (erroneous) common sense views, and where he does express non-individualistic explanations, he cites highly speculative climactic influences. Furthermore, the

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data that he drew from was not always reliable, and he was sloppy in composing the data himself, for example including only distilled drinks in his consumption data for France. He demonstrated further naiveté by seeing problems with alcohol, only in terms of ‘alcoholism’ or compulsive use, ignoring how an overall low level of consumption, but in irregular bouts could for example be a factor in suicide (Skog 1991: 195–6, 204). His view of alcohol is all the more strange, as social pathologies related to alcohol can be fitted so easily into his theoretical scheme. The manner of alcohol use is clearly a ‘social fact’, blindingly evident in how Skog (1991: 197) notes there are clear differences in drinking behaviour between people born in Iran, Japan, France and North Carolina. People’s use of alcohol, will be shaped by the social network, social norms, understanding of alcohol, and how this shapes its regulation and supply. Furthermore, social integration, and social regulation, the two key concepts of Durkheim for understanding suicide, explain social pathologies related to alcohol well. For example, ‘alcoholics’ tend to be more socially isolated, with use associated with the experience of loneliness, and people who are more socially isolated are less well regulated by their social environment, and pathological alcohol use in turn will have a destructive effect on the relationships that a person has. Thus, egoism and anomie go hand in hand in explaining difficulties with alcohol. Social regulation is also important, as if the person is in an environment where heavy drinking is normative, they are more likely to drink heavily (Skog 1991: 200–2). Additionally, it seems that chronic alcohol use should have been included by Durkheim in his model, as it appears that alcohol abuse and suicide are related, with the possibility that they represent ‘alternative solutions’ (Skog & Elekes 1993). In any case, in contrast alcohol-related problems are more likely to emerge when drinking is pushed to the margins and hiding places, separated from community and family life and cultural limits at large. It has been found that alcohol-related problems ‘occur in inverse proportion to the ‘communal orientation’ of different groups (Heath 1987: 39) and that ‘undisrupted family rituals, including dinner and vacations work as protectors against alcoholism’ (Gefou-Madianou 1992: 4). It is of note that in cultures such as China, France and Italy (Nahoum-Grappe 1995: 80; Jiacheng 1995; Cottino 1995: 157) where drinking primarily takes place in the context of a meal, negative outcomes are less common. It has also been found that adolescents who drink illegally in bars drink in a more moderate fashion than those who drink apart from adults (Brodsky & Peele 1999: 196). The absence of such problems amongst Jews is a recurrent theme in the literature, and in line with this theory the heavy consumption of alcohol by some Jews in New York is associated with their removal from traditional orthodoxy and ritual participation (Gefou-Madianou 1992: 6). Similarly, alcohol misuse, and difficulties with ceasing problematic use amongst Native Americans has been associated with ‘enculturation’: the degree of embeddedness in traditional practices, spirituality, language and cultural identity (Stone et. al. 2006: 237).

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Socialising drinkers into cultural traditions: learning limits Symbol emancipation from biological determinism As we have seen above, ‘[t]he deliberate seeking of psychoactive experience is likely to be at least as old as anatomically (and behaviourally) modern humans: one of the characteristics of Homo sapiens’ (Sherratt 1995a: 33). When discussing the evolution of this phenotype it is important to keep in mind the peculiarity of the process of human evolution however. Through their ‘symbol emancipation’ (Elias 1991), humans became marked by cultural evolution rather than the organic evolution of other animals, making humans ‘pre-eminently a mind-making, self-mastering, and self-designing animal’ (Mumford 1967: 9). In other words, through the possibilities provided by biological evolution, cultural evolution has largely taken the place of biological evolution in humans. While humans obviously have a biological nature, simple appeals to human nature are highly problematic as human development is a complex of interactions between multiple genetic and multiple environmental factors. More than this, it is exactly human evolution that makes environmental factors so fundamental in our species. Biological evolution has bestowed on humans the capacity to communicate through symbols, which to a large extent are words, (or in other words) the physical product of the vocal apparatus. These symbols represent aspects of reality and provide humans with the capacity for communication at a unique level (Elias 1991: xiv, 18; Kilminster 1991: xvii), and are then stored and digested, producing a collective knowledge tradition which serves to orientate people in the world. Because of this, unlearned behaviours, as opposed to learned behaviours have disappeared in humans to an unprecedented extent, unlike other species where genetically determined forms of behaviour, including forms of communication are still dominant. Nonetheless, pre-verbal, more biological means of communication survive, such as smiling, groaning and crying, however, these also have become subject to learned controls (Elias 1991: 29–30, 35). The intertwining of culture with biology is so fundamental that even these evolutionary capacities must be socially activated to appear. For instance, the biological capacity for language will not develop without social interaction, and even the development of the physiology of the vocal apparatus will be stunted without this. In addition, the evolutionary capacity for self-control is shaped profoundly by social experience (Mennell 1998: 206–7). Humans then are a part of two processes, both centred on the transmission of the means of survival from generation to generation, with one being the evolutionary process, involving the transmission of genes, and the other developmental, involving the transmission of knowledge, principally through language (Elias 1991: 23).1 Biology, from the perspective of living humans moves glacially, and culture, which from the perspective of the evolution of the species moves at light speed.

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Habitus: cultural tradition Cultures, which are in essence inter-generational learning processes, address the above problem of potential limitlessness, as they involve the inculcation of a measure, virtue or appropriate limits and possibilities of conduct, expressed through norms and values. A useful term for conceptualising cultural traditions is ‘habitus’, a structure that mediates between groups and the self, patterning the individual person with the modes of conduct, feeling and taste that predominate in the group (Mennell 1994: 177). It may be conceived of as an assemblage of habits and institutions, formed through a process of adaptive change, where through feedback loops with the environment and mechanisms of comparison and trial and error, problems are solved and conduct and thought solidifies into relatively stable patterns (Bateson 2000a: 273). Thus, they may be thought of as crystallised solutions to action problems or ritualisations of social life as a means of reinforcing the social order and inhibiting its disruption2. Institutionalisation then occurs with reciprocal habituation among many actors, and is built up over the course of a shared history, where through this process these patterns gain objectivity over and above those who embody them, with socialisation amounting to the internalisation of these institutions (Berger & Luckmann 2007: 43–4, 46, 48; Bourdieu 1977) These psychic structures are however to a significant extent beyond consciousness and articulation (Mennell 1994: 177; Bourdieu 1977). This, along with their rigidity is part of their efficiency, as they demand little reflection, rather dealing with propositions of a general or repetitive basis. The institutions that habitus is formed from ‘control human conduct by setting up predefined patterns of conduct, which channel it in one direction as against the many other directions that would theoretically be possible’ (Berger & Luckmann 2007: 44). This generates social control/regulation by creating predictability, and so relieves situations of tension (Berger & Luckmann 2007: 44). Consequently, a change in the context to which habit refers is very disturbing, though eventually new habits will be formed to deal with the problem (Bateson 2000a: 274, 276). This is not to see culture as having a mechanical influence on people however, with a useful way to conceive of it being that culture is to behaviour as grammar is to speech, leaving a large scope for improvisation. The components of habitus are: first, a worldview, or in other words an ontology and epistemology, which are a series of habitual premises, acting as rules for construing experience (Bateson 2000b: 314). An aspect of this is the psychological tool of applying frames to communication to exclude certain messages and thereby to include and enclose certain messages. The purpose of this is to organise perception, avoiding overly abstract, complex thinking (Bateson 2000c: 186); second, there is self-control and restraint. The compulsions that a social constellation exerts tend to become internalised over the process of socialisation (Mennell 1998: 96). This ability for acquiring restraint through learning is vital for the survival of individuals and groups as it allows

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coordination with others in a group and is elemental for the decision-making capacity of humans as it gives us distance from our immediate spontaneous impulses (Elias 2000). Coordination with others in a group is not simply through emotional self-control, but also through intersubjective understanding. The possibility of human society is rooted in this capacity for intersubjective understanding, that is, the capacity to put ourselves in the place of the other. Such understanding is dependent not only on an understanding of the meaning of the symbols used, but also on the context within which it is deployed, that is something about the past of the user and the context their action is a part of (Schutz 2007: 32–4, 40). The inculcation of habitus through play Habitus, then is something that exists through, as well as over and above the individual. It has been shown to structure the manner in which different groups drink, ordering their practices and dispositions, for example in the shape of a middle class ‘home drinking’ habitus based on consuming wine in one’s house, and ‘traditional drinking’ habitus based on beer and spirits in lively social settings outside the home (Brierley-Jones et al. 2000), though the emphasis in research in modern settings on the role of habitus has typically been negative rather than positive, with it shown to be an expression of power relations and symbolic domination fixing people in the ‘wrong’ behaviours, rather than a social and cognitive ordering principle (see Halpern & Costa Leite 2011; Lunnay et al. 2011; MacArthur et al. 2017). The question then, is how habitus is inculcated and internalised. Considering our very topic is, in a sense, ritualised play, it is of interest that the word for ‘leisure’ in Greek is schole, the ancestor of our word ‘school’ (Elias and Dunning 2008: 77). Huizinga (1970) made the grand claim, related to this, that ‘play’ is the formative element in human culture. G.H. Mead (1967) came to the same conclusion, noting that human society is given its high level of organisation and dynamism through the interpretive capacity to take the role of the other, and controlling our responses in these terms. This capacity is learned through play, in which we learn to take the role of the other through playing it, and through games where we learn to take the role of the generalised other, the constellation of all the roles we are responding to (such as our teammates, the opposition, the referee and the audience). An aspect of this of course is imitation of models of those we are in enduring relationships of interdependence with and social superiors, which Tarde (1969: 178, 187) presented as one of the fundamental characteristics of humans, and is intrinsic to role play. People are also trained through measures that cause anxiety and displeasure for undesirable displays of instincts that cause a deviation from these models (Mennell 1998: 59). For instance, those who become impaired, or violate drinking norms in some other manner may be criticised or laughed at, so that it is learned that drunkenness is not an attractive state (Heath 2000: 78).

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Habitus and alcohol – drinking cultures Worldview Worldview is an intersubjective world, of the self-evident and given, that is the ground for perception and understanding; the reality of ‘being in the world’. The role of this in ordering drinking occasions again, has tended to be framed negatively, due to the overwhelming problem-focus of alcohol research, with a focus on the need to reorient to overall worldview of people and groups experiencing problems with alcohol. Gregory Bateson (2000b) for example, in a classic study interpreted the moderate success of Alcoholics Anonymous as being based on addressing the ‘epistemological error’ of competitive, individualistic thinking of the Western worldview, through conversion to a cooperative, integrative worldview. Spirituality has been widely seen as having a role in treatment, prominently in the case of indigenous people’s suffering from cultural trauma and deculturation, with an emphasis that recovery is linked with a re-entering of traditional worldviews (Stone 2006). But this is an aspect of movements in therapy in general, based on the principles of the worldviews of the world religions (Cook 2006; Chapman 1996). Considering the emphasis on the worldviews of the world religions and the renaissance in the traditional forms of spirituality of indigenous peoples, it is intriguing to note that these should be seen not as spiritual innovations, but as rediscoveries of tradition. In contrast to how we typically think of major spiritual leaders as creators who spark a new era, they in fact could be better seen as figures who articulate timeless traditions in a time when these are under threat, dying and coming to an end, as they, in an act of resistance seek to express the basis of the ‘measure’ (proportion, good order, discernment, recognition), and the inner force that allows people to comply with this measure (Szakolczai 2003). Emotional self-control People in the course of socialisation, through the above process, learn the ‘rules of the game’ for drinking, involving who they may drink with, who may not drink, when, in what places and in what fashion. While definitions vary, every culture has a definition of excess, which is viewed in a very negative light, with drunkenness in the sense of gross physical impairment generally being seen as dangerous for the individual and the group and as a state to be carefully avoided. In contrast with this, cultures have an ideal state that alcohol should induce. For example, rather than drunkenness and impairment, in Denmark this is defined as ‘cosiness’, in Spain it is ‘alegre’ (happy, cheerful), while in France it is ‘ivresse’ (spontaneity, gaiety) (Heath 2000: 124–5). These prescriptive and proscriptive norms that surround drinking occasions are unusual due to their intensity both in number and in the powerful emotions that underpin them (Heath 1988: 397). The actual physical response to alcohol is also culturally mediated, as ‘intoxication and accompanying changes in behaviour are a matter of cultural and

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personal expectations and understandings as well as of the concentration of alcohol in the blood’ (Babor et al. 2003: 23) and chemical, biological and other pharmaco-physiological factors, with people learning from others how to experience a psychoactive substance (Heath 1987: 19). As previously noted, double-blind experiments have shown that expectations play a very significant role in structuring the effects of alcohol (Heath 2000: 17), with people acting in a more sociable and gregarious manner when they drink non-alcoholic drinks they believe contain alcohol (Brodsky & Peele 1999: 191). Pavlov himself noted how over time the drug administration procedure was sufficient to elicit many of the symptoms of the ingestion of that substance. In addition to this, data demonstrates that Pavlovian learning in this regard is greatly affected by non-conditioned learning (non-Pavlovian forms of learning) based on expectations drawn from one’s own, and the observed experience of others (Sherman et al. 1988: 175, 179; Wilson 1988: 240). The classic social scientific study of this was that of McAndrew and Edgerton (1969) who demonstrated that ‘drunken comportment' was learned. They noted that ‘[o]ver the course of socialization, people learn about drunkenness what their society “knows” about drunkenness; and accepting and acting upon the understandings thus imparted to them, they become the living confirmation of their society’s teachings’ (88, italics in original). Thus, expectations and actual comportments will possess a regular pattern for specific populations. Likes and dislikes in taste are also learned from the group to a great extent, evident through how differences can be seen in taste preferences between different groups (Mennell 1996: 1–2). Different beverages are evaluated in radically different ways, with a beverage for some being a favourite flavour, and for others repugnant (Heath 2000: 168). Indeed humans show little evidence of innate nutritional wisdom … and individuals learn what to eat primarily through exposure to the eating habits of others. Until recently, most human societies ate time-tested diets, worked out over many generations by their ancestors. (Milton 2004: 304) Habituation forms cultural models that we learn from and that act as resources for effective action amongst the range of possible courses of action people could make. It seems that in terms of alcohol, positive rather than negative models of usage are more beneficial, as cultures with positive attitudes towards alcohol tend to experience fewer problems. In contrast cultures with a negative cultural model of alcohol usage, then people are likely to follow this and drink in a problematic manner, reproducing the model in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rather than denuding positive cultural models through restrictions on normal usage and negative messages of the associations with aggression and promiscuity for instance, positive meanings such as relaxation and sociability should be fostered (Fox & Marsh 2010: 5, 16).

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Intersubjective understanding Geertz (1973) has noted that culture is a meaningful web of symbols that guides human conduct. People’s action is on the basis of the meaning attached to things and others, with this meaning produced symbolically, through interaction, as in it people interpret other’s indications (Blumer 2007: 69). Drinks are an aspect of this symbolic world of messages, indications and communication, with alcohol contributing to the reproduction of the symbolic world firstly as it is the ‘elixir of verbiage’ (Wilson 2005: 20). However, alcohol is also an important source of non-verbal symbolic communication (Sherratt 1995b: 11; Gusfield 1987: 75–6) with it, different varieties of it, and different psychoactive substances being loaded with symbolism, signifying various meanings. Just as Douglas (1997: 36) notes for food, alcohol is a code, communicating a message. And just as she notes that we may treat the meal as a poem, we may look at a drinking occasion in the same way. Barthes (1997: 20–2) notes similarly that food and drink is a form of communication. It is a grammar, a system of signs and differences, expressing various attitudes, values and modes of experiencing and expressing the world. Alcohol is particularly useful as a symbol because much affect and value is placed in it, making it socially significant. In addition, it is prominent in people’s consciousness as it is valuable as an item of exchange, generally being seen as an affordable luxury, as a resistance has to be overcome to acquire it through processes of growing, collecting, preparation, fermentation/distillation, straining, bottling, transportation and price. There is a higher charge to alcohol as a symbol also as like poetry, drink has a ‘double significance’ of being a source of pleasure in itself, and through what it conveys (Sherratt 1995b: 14), enhancing its meaning. As a symbol, alcohol and drinking occasions are similar to words, which immediately evaporate into the sphere of memory, as alcohol (especially before improvements in storage and lifespan) is a short-lived item of material culture whose meaning must be continually reaffirmed through constant re-enactments. Through the many distinctions between different varieties in the field of drinks and the etiquette that surrounds them, even in simpler societies, they can operate as a grammar3. What this grammar communicates is the structure of the social world, communicating the meaning of events, social status, affiliation, gender differences, as well as constructing an ideal world (Thornton 1987: 102; Fox & Marsh 2010: 6). In this, the manner of symbolisation, through different drinks and forms of etiquette, is largely arbitrary, in the same way that the sounds that constitute a word are largely arbitrary, but they are nonetheless crucial in communicating meaning. But what do drinks communicate? Firstly, in many cultures alcoholic beverages, like bread, as a staple food is symbolic of life. Secondly, it communicates the nature of social relations, which often is expressed in terms of health. Conceptions of health and the body, traditionally (and currently in many popular understandings) are not medically accurate. However, they are not in fact primarily concerned with accurate physiological function and instead they are more orientated towards social relations,

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understood through the body and so have a high degree of relevance, and so are not pure myths. In fact, drink is particularly suited to communicating these types of messages. Taylor (1988: 1344, cited in Sobo 1997: 257) notes that health-related symbolism ‘establishes implicit connections between the bodily microcosm and social macrocosm’ and that ‘[l]iquids are especially privileged vehicles of this symbolism’, ‘because they possess the capacity to flow, and thus to mediate between distinct realms of being … attenuating the opposition between self and other’. Third, drinking, due to being such a fundamental act, is significant as it is unifying, because as Simmel (1997b: 130) notes, the level on which everyone meets is closer to the lowest as it is difficult to unify on higher, intellectual levels. Next to breathing, drinking is the most fundamental act and alcohol tends to be the symbol of sociability, a central human experience and so is very appropriate for this type of message.

Conclusion Alcohol and other psychoactive substances, just like a wide range of other elements in nature are not dangerous in themselves, but rather in relation to the dose involved. More than this, alcohol belongs in a group of substances that are remarkable for the mild and a-specific impact they have on the central nervous system meaning that there is a very wide scope for environmental factors in shaping how it is experienced. This means that alcohol is very much what we make of it. It must be remembered that the defining feature of humans is that they have escaped biological determinants through their highly sophisticated capacity for culture. Central here is the capacity for self and social control, beyond the simple biological capacity to process such materials. Humans have evolved this capacity for a collective inter-generational learning process as a means of orientating themselves in reality to an unprecedented level. Crucial, is the institutionalisation of wisdom in the form of rituals and traditions as a means of channelling consumption in a socially useful direction. Often these are highly effective with many groups possessing a cultural immunity to problem consumption. So just as such substances are a potential danger to the social organisation of both animal and human groups, it is the cohesion of the society that is crucial in protecting the group from difficulties. Hence, the danger, more than psychoactive substances is the breakdown of social controls to manage them, and what is at issue here is not the capacity to reject dangerous substances, but rather to use them in a proper and useful way. This might be called ‘virtuous drinking’, as it involves the internalisation of the measure and the skills to adhere to it. The human evolutionary capacity for culture is somewhat of a double-edged sword however, as it makes possible something rare in nature: a surplus, which produces the possibility for compulsive consumption through the availability of quantities not present in the natural world. Hence proper habits, rituals and traditions are particularly important for humans, as they are uniquely in danger of their own power.

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Notes 1 The development of this capacity for mind has freed us from natural determinism, from conduct driven by stimulus-response. It has further greatly enhanced the capacity for control of group life and over the environment (Mead 1967). Because of our ‘symbol emancipation’, unlike other species, humans can adapt without biological differentiation, and instead we can adapt to new environments and conditions through cultural differentiation (Mennell 1998: 202–3). The result of this is that rather than some tragic vision of humans as marionettes, being dragged hither and thither by their impulses, humans represent the rarest event in nature, as rather than being determined by their biology, they have the capacity to make life with one another more comfortable, pleasant and meaningful (Elias 1991: 11), though we have cause to be saddened with the frequency with which this does not happen. 2 Goffman directed his attention towards explicating this, inspired by how Durkheim had demonstrated that such a social order over the individual existed (Calhoun et al. 2007: 26). 3 As amongst the Lele where subtle gradations are made in respect of palm wine on the basis of the type of palm tree, its maturation, the freshness of the wine and its taste (Ngokwey 1987: 116).

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Alcohol and the ritual process Identity

Unlimited desires are insatiable by definition and insatiability is rightly considered a sign of morbidity. (Durkheim 1897: 208)

The ritual process and civilising processes Alcohol has been widely thought of as a kind of food, and often as a mundane item of consumption. However, as a potentially intoxicating substance, its use tends to be ritualised in contexts where there are strong, binding rules about drinking, and where the manner of drinking is highly symbolic socially. The critical point about rituals is their role in self and social control, as they represent a basis for civilising processes, and probably the primary and most vital basis of maintaining civilised interdependencies; certainly, more fundamental in human society than the state and its monopoly mechanism, considering their novelty from a long-term historical perspective. A key claim of this chapter is that ‘small-scale societies’, meaning societies without a complex division of social functions and a well-developed state that intervenes strongly in the lives of individuals and communities, are bound together through ritual life, and this ritual life can produce highly civilised behaviour, in the sense of drinking that is marked by high degrees of self and social-restraint. Elias, and his theory of civilising processes, has been charged by some critics as implying that there are lower levels of restraint in ‘simple-societies’, because of his supposed assertion that the degree of complexity of the social structure maps on to the degree of self and social-control (Goody 2002). Thus, it might be expected that there would be more examples of ‘uncontrolled bouts of drinking’ in simpler societies, just as there was in the Middle Ages (Goody 2002: 405). As we will see, the finding of anthropologists has been quite the opposite, with drinking in simpler societies characterised by high levels of restraint, management of emotions, consideration shown to others, with a complex grammar of symbolism regulating conduct in drinking occasions. Elias (2000) defended his choice of a starting point for his analysis in the Middle Ages, as there is no zero-point of ‘civilisation’, with every society having social standards regarding restraint, and it represented as good a starting point as any.

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It lends his analysis to misunderstanding though, as critics have understood the ‘simplicity’ of the Middle Ages, as cognate with the ‘simplicity’ of small-scale societies. The Middle Ages, however, were a highly significant moment of crisis, decivilisation and transition following the fall of the Roman Empire, which is not appropriate to compare with stable, intact, small-scale societies, not dealing with a legacy of a social order that has been torn apart. Because Elias dealt very little with anthropological research, this insight is unfortunately latent in his analysis. As Goody (2002: 407) notes: ‘In acephalous societies without elaborate systems of authority there are possibly more “internalized” constraints, certainly reciprocal ones, which may of course take the form of ‘negative reciprocity’ in the violence of vengeance and the feud’. This is because, in small-scale societies there are functional equivalents to states and social complexity, that create pressures for high levels of social and self-restraint, through longestablished, and enduring close-knit, personal relationships, interspersed with ritual occasions imposing strong external constraints on conduct (Mennell & Liston 2009: 9, 14).

Rites de passage It is necessary to refer to studies where researchers engaged in extended immersion in cultures and scenes to access the meaning and purpose of ritual action, and their logic of practice, for us to understand the processes of meaning making that result in the informal social control at the heart of a civilising process. People choose when and how to drink not as utility maximising consumers, making calculations as they seek to maximise the benefits they receive by exchanging their scarce capital for units of intoxication, social capital and sociable pleasure. Rather, choices over how to drink are based on a circle of recognition (Pizzorno 1991), concerning the shared meaning of the context of the ritual, along with the drink and its perceived effects. How people drink is shaped by the definition of how the substance should be shared within the circle, and drunk, by expectations over how it should affect participants, and the realising of the etiquette, aesthetics and ethical standards of the drinking occasion, and so on. Thus, to understand self and social control, the meaning of ritual must be grasped. In much of the anthropological and cultural-sociological literature on alcohol, there is an emphasis on variation in drinking patterns, which serves as evidence of the importance of social learning, culture and the effect of contingent political arrangements on consumption. However, there seems to be nonetheless, a universal underlying sameness beneath this variation in the shape of rites de passage, as theorised by Arnold Van Gennep (1960) and Victor Turner (1957, 1967, 1969, 1985, 1992); something that is widely recognised in the literature. While there is always a danger in offering universal readings, it is precisely the claim of Van Gennep and Turner that this social form is cross-cultural.

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Rites de passage have a tripartite structure, composed of the phases: separation, liminality and reaggregation. In the first stage, separation, the individual or group symbolically detach from ordinary time, regulated pragmatic action, their position in the social structure and the prevailing cultural conditions. They then enter the second phase: liminality. The liminal phase is a moment of inbetweenness, betwixt mundane orders of social life. As such, it involves creative playing with society’s structures, where cultural codes and meaning are discovered and formed, and where initiands participate in an experience (that can be profoundly significant and challenging) that will integrate them into the structure of society at the successful close of the ritual. While structure is concerned with roles and rules, liminality involves the absence of these. Thus, it forms a section cut out from the ordinary fabric of life, consisting of a dramatic event in contrast with the non-dramatic flow of the everyday, mundane and routine world. In the third phase, reaggregation, the passage is completed by the neophytes, and they return to the social structure, assuming a new status through their successful passage through the experience (Turner 1992: 133; 1969: 94). Rites de passage structure transition and as such, they cluster primarily around the major life transitions of birth, coming of age, marriage and death, but are a feature of very different forms of transformation involving status, rank, role, other break points in the maturation process. These rituals are also associated with changes in ecological conditions or seasons or physical, mental or emotional conditions of a person (Turner 1992: 132; 1967: 93–4). Transition, change and flux are disruptive, and sources of anxiety, and so are given structure by the ritual marking them, while also, in this moment of in-betweenness the social order is manifested, stabilising roles and relationships, as well as conferring meaning to the world. Alcohol and intoxication are cross-culturally associated with the marking of transitions and initiations in such rituals (see Fox & Marsh 2010: 6; Bancroft 2009: 59). In contemporary societies, toasts and the large volumes of wine are consumed at weddings, and parties mark whatever birthday is most significant for indicating the achievement of full adult status. It is common to share drinks and engage in the stereotype of smoking a cigar at the birth of a child, or an educational or career achievement altering one’s standing. Alcohol tends to be a feature of wakes or in funerals, in a visit to the pub after the burial of a family member or friend. Entwining such occasions with drinking is conventional (Babor et. al. 2003: 15–16; Crump 1987: 240; Douglas 1987: 4; Heath 2000: 125, 168, 196; Heath 1999: 63–4; Heath 1995c: 352; Heath 1987: 34; Smart 2005: 112; Fox & Marsh 2010: 7; Wilson 2005: 13), as can be seen from diverse cross-cultural examples.1 Other psychoactive substances tend to act equivalently in societies where the use of alcohol is proscribed, such as by Islamic codes. Kola nuts in Central Sudan for instance ‘were consumed at all the major occasions common in Muslim society, including the naming ceremonies of children, marriage and funerals, just as the nuts were shared on religious holidays’ (Lovejoy 1995: 112). At such rites drinking is often compulsory, with there at least being strong

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expectations that one will, and even in those societies where drinking is not a common occurrence, it can be important on these rare occasions, where a binge may not only be allowed but also considered imperative (Heath 1995b: 334).

The function of rites of passage – structure and meaning Identity – hatching, matching and dispatching In liminality, identity is stamped and fixed, made possible by the process where people are divested of their structural attributes and reduced to a uniform condition so that they can be fashioned anew through framing and staging ‘experience’, whereby participants feel that they have undergone something significant, in which they have powerful feelings of mutual dependence and sameness, while they are also compelled to reflect on the fundamental values of their society (Turner 1967: 101; Pedersen 1994).2 Alcohol is frequently an aspect of such rituals marking transitions in the lifecycle and stepping into a new identity, meaning that drinking culture is extremely important for the production and reproduction of identity (Wilson 2005: 3). Many cultures mark the birth of a child by a drinking occasion, and following this, drinking rituals mark the entry of the child into the community (Heath 2000: 24, 82). Heath (2000: 25) explains how [t]he Han dominant population in China have six separate rites of initiation at various stages of life for a boy, and drinking is an important part of each of them … [and] … an Orthodox Jewish boy should be ritually circumcised during the eighth day of life, at which time he is given a taste of wine and the men who are present usually enjoy a drinking party … [and how] … [a]mong the Azande, a boy’s circumcision occurs later (between six and ten years of age), but it, too, is an occasion for celebratory drinking. The consumption of alcohol is then commonly associated with the acquisition of adult status. In simpler societies, this may involve the initiation into hunting, warfare or marriage with this change in status being framed by the permission to drink (Heath 2000: 23, 82). Alcohol as a marker of transition is especially important for adult male identity though it can also be the case for adult female identity, as ‘[w]hen a Jivaro girl is welcomed back to the community after a 4-day retreat on the occasion of her first menstruation, she is honored by being given the foam from a freshly brewed batch of beer’ (5). Further on in the lifecycle, in many cultures menopause is seen as a highly empowering experience through which a woman becomes ‘like a man’ in terms of power and privileges and being allowed to drink on equal terms with men is symbolic of this (28). Following rituals marking coming-of-age, there is a cross-cultural association of alcohol with courtship and marriage, an example of which is in Eastern Zambia where a marriage is completed by pouring beer over the doorway of

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the house of the couple (Haworth 1995: 321; Heath 2000: 82), with alcohol thus serving to mark the passing of the threshold literally, in the transition to a new identity. Indeed, it was a common in sub-Saharan Africa that prospective spouses would be encountered at beer dances and beer was the primary gift that a suitor offers to the prospective bride and her family in the process of courtship (25), where for instance, A young Tiriki man offers beer to a woman he finds attractive; if she accepts, and then spits some of the beer into his mouth, they consider themselves engaged to be married (Sangree 1962). The man must then try to ingratiate himself with her father and brothers, always bringing lavish gifts of beer on his visits, until he wins acceptance. Every step in the elaborate process of courtship and marriage is marked by heavy beer drinking by the prospective groom and all of his friend. (Heath 2000: 114) Amongst the Kofyar ‘[d]uring courtship, gifts of beer signify affection, just as larger gifts of beer later are part of the bride price’ (Heath 2000: 137). In Nigeria, the bride price and gifts to the relatives of the bride can be in the form of alcohol (Oshodin 1995: 215), while in Eastern Zambia a marriage is completed when the bride is given the right, by both families to make beer for her and her husband’s ancestors (Haworth 1995: 321). In China, In relation to marriage, alcohol still plays a role at almost every step. Among the Hans (the major ethnic group in China), the family offers alcohol to the prospective bride’s family, a practice documented as long ago as the Song Dynasty (AD 960–1279).… Among the Ewenkis, once the gift is drunk, it is understood that the parents have approved the marriage. (Jiacheng 1995: 43) This basic model applies naturally for other psychoactive substances among groups that do not consume alcohol. For instance, in central Sudan courtship is tightly bound up with gifts of kola to the intended bride and her family, and these psychoactive substances are used symbolically also in the consummation of courtship (Lovejoy 1995: 113). Drinking tends to mark the initiation of a person into a specific group, clique or partnership, such as becoming blood brothers, which amongst the Chagga is marked by drinking beer mixed with saliva and blood, just as amongst gang members in the USA, ‘jumping in’, is an initiation involving alcohol that tests the toughness and commitment of the newcomer (Hunt & Laidler 2001; Hunt 2003). Drinking also marks changes in the condition of the wider community of both a positive and a negative variety. For instance, ‘[t]he victory of a favoured athlete or team in sports, or of a candidate or a political party in elections, or of a competitor in an exhibition, are all often marked by celebratory drinking’ (Heath 2000: 30).

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Alcohol and the ritual process: identity Sometimes the symbolism of drink is enough in itself, without anyone’s actually imbibing. For example, when a bottle is broken over the bow to christen a ship, or drink is poured over the winning sports team, or a bottle may be opened with a dramatic gesture and simply poured around in a public square to signal approval of victory, whether in war or at the polls. (Heath 2000: 30)

Alcohol can be used to mark the death of a leader. ‘Among the Baganda of Uganda, it is only the several widows of a recently deceased king who have the honor of drinking the beer in which his entrails have been cleaned’ (29). Drinking in addition marks minor life transitions of a positive variety such as graduation, promotion or birthdays and negative ones where ‘[t]he loss of a job, a pet, a contest, a lawsuit, or some other valued thing is often marked by “compensatory” drinking, in a negative rather than a positive mood’ (27, 30). Drinking rituals finally mark death, in funerals, wakes, commemorations of ancestors and commemorations of ancestral spirits. As Heath (28) again explains: Even after death, drinking occasions do not end. It is commonplace that a wake be held before the burial.… The undercurrent of conversation at such an event often includes specific mention that people feel as if, or truly believe that, the deceased is drinking with them.… Occasionally drinks are poured directly on the grave, specifically intended for the enjoyment of the deceased. Libations and offerings of alcohol to dead ancestors at other times are often more than figurative or symbolic, being described by the actors as comprising genuine sharing of communion in a sense that they consider quite literal. Ordering time: drinking occasions While alcohol-related liminality is in a sense timeless, escaping time’s regular ordering principles (Turner 1969: 96; Simmel 1997c), it structures time, as it is useful as a chronological concept, breaking up the flow of time, as it implies the start of a form of time with distinct qualities, such as choice, spontaneity, equality and non-productiveness, different from alternative forms of time (see Gusfield 1987: 84, whose insights will be discussed in more detail later). Alcohol is a feature of these rituals that mark temporal transitions, which are similar to music in the sense of having rhythm and harmony, with patterned undulating movements between structure and anti-structure (Turner 1969: 97), with this rhythmical movement penetrating to very fine degrees, with the experience of liminality existing on a scale ranging from occasional crescendos of rare but momentous events to regular peaks of everyday, trivial events. Before the rise of clock time, this was how time was structured in simpler societies (see Netting 1964). It is not only the cycle of consumption, but the rhythm in the production of psychoactive substances also structures time, such as through the stages of production of wine in Europe and the Near East. A related example,

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showing how this property applies to psychoactive substances generally, is the role of coca in the culture of the Barasana Indians, as amongst them ‘[p]eople say that, without coca, their day would have no structure; a myth about the origin of night describes the tedium of unstructured time when, with neither night nor coca to structure their lives, men sat around aimlessly, not knowing what to do or when’ (Hugh-Jones 1995: 53). In spite of centuries of modernity and its symbol, the mechanical clock, this mode of structuring experience has not been eliminated as the consumption of alcohol and related drinks continue to mark the movement between different parts of the day. For instance, in modern societies coffee may mark the shift from night to morning or morning to work time, or along with tea or wine with a meal, breakpoints between periods of focused activity, an aperitif the shift from morning to dinner, a coffee the end of meal time and shift back to work, alcohol the shift from work to leisure and a glass of water or a nightcap the shift from day to night (Heath 2000: 11, 14; Gurr 1987: 221, 231). Drinking rituals structure weeks, through marking the transition between one and another, by taking place largely on weekends, as well as through the Sabbath, which incorporates wine into its central rite. Drinking rituals also structure the year through the cyclical nature in drinking from year to year, as drinking occasions fall on annual ceremonies such as saturnalia, harvest (including specific annual celebrations of alcohol such as the wine harvest and Oktoberfest) or hunting trips, which act as points marking the shift from one season to another. In Roman Catholicism, festive occasions punctuate the year, in the shape of folk customs that a flavour of Christianity overlays such as Carnival preceding Lent (Heath 2000: 20). More modern metropolitan examples are New Year’s Eve, Halloween, Christmas, national holidays and periods of paid vacation. A period of liminality also seems to be a feature of the life course, with the transition to adult identity being a particularly liminal time (which Paglia & Room (1999) note is not as modern a concept as is often believed). Indeed, in most cultures the general pattern of consumption over the life course is an increase from puberty until marriage, with a subsequent gradual decline, as modern society along with other cultures define adolescence as a privileged period of deferred responsibilities and acceptance of slightly antisocial conduct, perhaps involving ‘hell-raising’ and ‘sowing wild-oats’ (Heath 2000: 79, 81; Babor et al. 2003: 50–1). Liminality also has an anchoring effect temporally, as it creates connections with the past through its role in commemorations, which may involve gift giving to the dead and communication with them, as well as in ceremonies related to the future, with drinks playing a part in gift giving and communication with the gods.

Communitas: social drinking Durkheim (1915: 206) famously noted that society is experienced as god because of the power it has over us, through the pressure it exerts, our dependence on it, and its continuity in comparison with finitude of human life.

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The sacred is experienced most sharply in ritual, because in these there is an intensification of social relations, resulting in a dramatic experience of solidarity and cohesion, which generates great excitement and effervescence. He argued that while there is great variance in the details of ritual there is a common substance to them, as ‘[t]he essential thing is that men are assembled, that sentiments are felt in common and expressed in common acts’ (386). Durkheim went on to note the difference between the mundane, everyday world and ‘effervescent assemblies’, explaining that In one phase, the population is scattered in small groups that attend to their occupations independently. Each family lives to itself.… In the other phase, by contrast, the population comes together, concentrating itself at specified places when a clan is summoned to come together and on that occasion, they conduct a religious ceremony called a corroboree.… The very act of congregating is an exceptionally powerful stimulant. Once the individuals are gathered together, a sort of electricity is generated from their closeness and quickly launches them into an extraordinary height of exaltation. (Durkheim 1915: 214–15) At this point, everything becomes sacred, as rather than utilitarian motives, the emphasis comes to be on common beliefs, traditions, ideals and ancestry. In this moment ‘they feel there is something outside them which is born again, and that there are forces which are reanimated and reawakened and each individual participates in this collective renovation’ (Durkheim 1915: 348–9). Victor Turner’s analysis of rites of passage calls this experience ‘communitas’, which is a characteristic of the liminal, middle phase of rituals, involving an intense feeling of unity and equality with others, with the liminal personae being stripped of all the markers of their position within the social order, becoming structurally indefinable with their ranking and status, property, distinguishing marks and personal qualities disregarded (Turner 1992: 137; Turner 1967: 95, 98–100; Turner 1969: 95, 102, 104, 106; see also Simmel 1997d: 122). Parallel with this is a sense of homogeneity and comradeship, with an ethic of complete equality between the neophytes, and an emphasis on unselfishness and the totality. This structure is reproduced in drinking occasions, where there is a blurring of social boundaries and in which attitudes of factionalism and individualism are suppressed, giving ‘a temporary ambience of oneness, fraternity and equality that does not exist outside’ (Driessen 1992: 73), (Hazan 1987: 217; Iossifides 1992: 92–3). For this reason, ethanol has been called the chemical solvent of social hierarchy, and communitas, referred to in everyday language as sociability, commensality, solidarity, brotherhood, equality, social bonding, is the reason most often cited for drinking, along with pleasure (which of course is an outcome of sociability itself) (Demossier 2005: 132–3; Driessen 1992: 73; Gefou-Madianou 1992: 1, 11; Gusfield 1987: 79, 82; Hall 2005: 73; Heath

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1987: 32, 46; Heath1995c: 350, 352; Heath 1999: 61, 62; Heath 2000: 196; Hugh-Jones 1995: 55; Hunt et al. 2005: 239; Iossifides 1992: 92–3; Mitchell & Armstrong 2005: 192). Hence, drinking together binds members of a group to each other, overcoming any differences and even facilitating the striking of sudden friendships with strangers3 (Heath 1999: 61). For this reason, it has a long history at the centre of associational life from the medieval guilds, to college fraternities, duelling clubs, neighbourhood ethnic clubs, professional organisations and informal clubs of pub regulars (Heath 1999: 61–2). An extremely common trope in research on alcohol however is ‘peer pressure’. This is quite a limited, and historically myopic perspective, related to a particular type of contemporary society that envisions people as rational individuals, detached from, yet threatened by corruption from wider society. Communitas is produced through gift giving, which while a feature of the everyday, becomes particularly marked at rites of passage in a dramatisation of sharing (Mauss 1992). The gift can consist of anything, as it is simply a ‘stake’, but what underlays this (potentially valueless, but perhaps prized) item is recognition of the other’s identity (Pizzorno 1991), and the obligation and relationship that it establishes between the parties, through the establishment of a process of reciprocity (Mauss 1992: 7, 11, 78). Rather than an ornament or pleasantry, decorating the real business of social life, gift giving is the original basis of the social order, prior to the state, the legal order and abstract markets (90, 104–5). Gift giving generates communitas most simply through the giving of gifts of alcohol. Reciprocal exchange of psychoactive substances4 is typical, for example in the rounds system, or how alcohol is often brought to ritual events and offered as a gift. An example of such a social institution can be seen for instance, in rural Japanese drinking culture where in the exchange of cups ‘the receiver would take the cup-usually with an exclamation of (feigned) surprise – bow his head slightly, again raise the cup (this time in a gesture of humble acceptance)’ (Moeran 2005: 31). Then there is the gift of hospitality, of which alcohol is an almost universal symbol (Heath 1995c: 352).5 Drinking also frequently takes place in the context of a meal, the paradigmatic context of sharing (Simmel 1997b). The gift of recognition of another’s presence and importance can be expressed through the serving of the other, for example through showing concern over someone’s empty cup, through a refilling of the other’s cup, and taking care to serve the other in an appropriate manner.6 This can be seen in Western society through how beer is served in different countries, with great concern shown over having the appropriate proportion of head, or how in some places it is expected that not a drop be spilt, whereas in others, glasses are deliberately overfilled so that the drink spills over the side. Etiquette is based on the demonstration of consideration for the effect of one’s actions on others (Elias 2000), with adherence to etiquette a means of showing respect in particular to superiors and equals. In China, an aspect of this is to not drink non-stop and to hold one’s breath when serving so that you do not breathe on the person’s

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food and drink (Smart 2005: 112). Among the Lele it is unmannerly to stand while drinking, or stand near someone who is drinking, to spit while drinking or to hold the container in one’s left hand (Heath 1987: 117–18). Good manners involve appropriate greeting and leave-taking also (Thornton 1987: 104), including proper attention to arriving at the proper moment, and care not to depart too soon. Proper etiquette can involve a requirement to share something, for example for some of each person’s drink to spill into the other’s when clinking glasses (Heath 2000: 114), and there may even be an exchange of cups between drinkers (Moeran 2005: 28), or one drinking vessel may be used by everybody (Thornton 1987: 106; Oshodin 1995: 215; Heath 2000: 52). The inclusiveness of Mediterranean societies is shown in this regard through the practice of pouring a little wine into children’s glass of water to symbolise their participation in the collective ritual, so that even the young are partaking in something from the shared bottle (Heath 2000: 77). Toasting is a universal phenomenon, which dramatises inclusion in the group (Heath 1995b: 343; 1995c: 352). Through this process, ‘all participants become enmeshed in a matrix of personal linkages’ (Mars & Altman 1987: 273). An appropriate etiquette surrounds this, though it varies cross-culturally, in that it may require eye contact, clinking each person’s glass, or clinking all the glasses together in a group, with highly elaborate variations, and a simultaneous first drink (Thornton 1987: 104; Hall 2005: 75). Communitas is achieved through giving oneself over to the group, through being joined together in a joint ritual action that all immerse themselves in (Bott 1987: 196–7). In this regard, relationships of equality are established through the undergoing of a collective experience of inebriation (Vittetoe Bustillo 1995: 111; Gefou-Madianou 1992: 11; Moeran 2005: 38; Hugh-Jones 1995: 57), following the same sequence of actions, drinking the same thing at the same tempo as others (Thornton 1987: 104; Heath 2000: 111) (in some cultures, such as in Spain and Latin American countries people will often only drink in unison (Heath 2000: 111–12)) and even experiencing the common suffering of a hangover (Hall 2005: 74). There is also the fact that, as Heath (2000) discusses, ‘it provides a kind of communion in which each drinker is sharing with others, incorporating into his or her body material from a common source’. This is dramatised in various ways. Amongst the Lele the servers drink or taste the wine before distributing it to show that there is no sorcery in it (Ngokwey 1987: 118). Relationships of equality and shared high spirits are also achieved through the participation in collective practices that go alongside drinking, such as singing, chanting and dancing, perhaps as part of a group, rather than in discrete pairs (Hugh-Jones 1995: 57; Mars & Altman 1987: 274–5). There should be a general benevolent spirit, with people adopting a friendly manner, moving from formality to informality, making frequent expressions of goodwill and friendship (Fox & Marsh 2010: 19; Moeran 2005: 32). In Soviet Georgia, at feasts such gregariousness was demonstrated through a practice of changing seats at the end of each dance so that multiple linkages were established over the course of the

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night (Mars & Altman 1987: 275). There is also an engagement in verbal exchanges, storytelling and a full sharing in the conversation (Hugh-Jones 1995: 50), and people tend to be willing to be teased and seek to create fun for others (Thornton 1987: 104; Kasmir 2005: 211). Simmel (1997d: 123) notes of sociability, that in this constellation there is a more social orientation, which goes that all should guarantee to the other the maximum of sociable values that he himself receives. Individualism, and concern with personal reward or interests is suppressed, shown for example how in conversation the gift of one’s words is for all, and the speaker ‘allows his own person to remain completely in the background’, with generality being an important feature of it (Simmel 1997d: 127–34). Politics, issues of socio-economic differences, personal problems, personal one-upmanship as a topic of conversation is often discouraged as a result, with general topics such as gossip, joking and sports talk prioritised (Mitchell & Armstrong 2005: 192; Moeran 2005: 34; Hazan 1987: 208; Kasmir 2005: 208), with alcohol itself often serving as a safe and general focus for the conversation. The connection to sociability can be seen across psychoactive substances, with Von Gernet (1995: 73) for instance noting that in Iroquois political rhetoric the term ‘smoking’ meant friendly, peaceful discourse. In most non-modern societies, and still in modern societies to an extent, men and women occupy separate systems of honour. This dualism is united at certain events where the highly symbolic substances associated with each are combined, demonstrating the complementarity between the two systems (Hugh-Jones 1995: 59, 61–3; Iossifides 1992: 95). Iossifides (1992: 90) notes that in the Christian communion the female principle of bread and the male principle of wine are combined, reproducing Greek thought, with wine being the symbol of Dionysos and bread the symbol of Demeter. This can be seen in a very different context in Eastern Zambia, where the rite of marriage is completed by a symbolic uniting of the symbols of the household (hearth) and field (grain) in the form of beer (Haworth 1995: 321). Such practices have continued up to recently, as gender segregated drinking continued to be the norm in many societies, but with certain kin-orientated events such as funerals, weddings and baptisms punctuating this division, expressing the unity of the sexes. Outside of these extraordinary drinking occasions solidarity was aided by the fact of gender exclusion, as gatherings are frequently all male (Gefou-Madianou 1992: 8, 10, 16; Iossifides 1992: 94). Related to segregation is the common practice of sharing secrecy. It has been noted that liminal events are frequently surrounded by such secrecy, which greatly increases its charm, helping to create a magic circle (Huizinga 1970: 12; Turner 1967: 103), with the rituals consisting of a type of mystery cult. Finally, a broader sense of communitas is generated through gift giving to ancestors and more abstract entities such as spirits and gods, which Heath (Heath 2000: 176) notes is a pervasive feature of human culture7. As Durkheim (1964) explained, in ritual the community’s origin in a shared ancestor is played out, connecting with the suggestion by Jellinek (1977) that alcohol is ‘the

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quintessential symbol of “the stream of life”’. A sense of connection with the dead and spirits can be brought about by spilling a portion on to the ground or by flicking some to the gods, or it can be expressed by taking substances into the body that are conceived of as being the same as those consumed by the ancestors (Hugh-Jones 1995: 56; Heath 2000: 114; Haworth 1995: 321). Of course, this is a two-way relationship as the expectation of gift giving is reciprocity, as in Christianity where the gift of Christ’s charisma is received through the wine of the Eucharist and it is the symbol of the gift of his suffering and life to mankind. In many cultures alcohol is believed to be a gift that was originally given to humans by the gods (Heath 1995b: 344), that people must return to them from time to time, or as ‘Mother Earth’s milk’ (Heath 2000: 160, 188). Native North Americans possessed such an idea believing in a world ordered by reciprocal obligations between humans and also the spirits who occupied all the aspects of the world, and so gifts of tobacco were offered to them as a part of this relationship (Von Gernet 1995: 70). The telling of stories about past events at such moments also serves to cultivate a deeper sense of communitas. In these circumstances, more than being a celebration of gods and spirits, people may communicate with the gods and experience transcendence in achieving a union in something greater than themselves (Heath 1999: 64).

Pseudo communitas – inclusion and exclusion Different degrees of communitas are experienced on different occasions, as there is a ‘rhythmic oscillation between the mundane consumption of family and the extraordinary consumption of the communities’ festive occasions, producing a wider communitas’, as can be seen in many non-capitalist societies (Counihan 1997: 291), with this mirrored in differences in the degree of equality in drinking occasions. Victor Turner’s analysis of ritual is quite functionalist, and was contested by Pierre Bourdieu who interpreted ritual as rites for establishing social distinctions (Bourdieu 1977; 1984). Indeed, there is not always a full move toward levelling rank as very frequently drinking rituals concentrate people in fact for the recognition of rank and establishing social distinctions, typically on the basis of age, gender, kinship or status, or in more complex societies on the basis of class, status group or party. This is achieved, to begin, with the differential allocation of tasks in staging the ritual (Hugh-Jones 1995: 53), and once it commences, through etiquette, for example in how rank and status is can be indicated by the order of serving (Ngokwey 1987: 118; Oshodin 1995: 215; Bott 1987: 188; Hugh-Jones 1995: 54) and seating position, with those with the highest status tending to sit at the centre of symbolic space (Hugh-Jones 1995: 54; Bott 1987: 184; Moeran 2005: 30). The order of drinking also communicates rank, as in China, where people drink only when an older person does, or in other places through drinking on the basis of the sequence of age (Smart 2005: 112; Heath 2000: 81). The words that flow during drinking occasions are an important means of establishing standing too, for instance through who speaks and the attention that is demanded when speaking, as well

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as jibes and slagging which shapes people’s social position, along with storytelling, where the in-group is presented in the best possible light through nostalgic remembrances and compared to others (Moeran 2005: 34). Status is expressed through a monopolisation of access to psychoactive substances and the experiences they are tied up in (Hugh-Jones 1995: 51–2; Von Gernet 1995: 71; Ngokwey 1987: 117; Mars & Altman 1987: 275). Related to this is the monopolisation of the cultivation of crops with potentially psychoactive properties and of the skills required to prepare the psychoactive substance, as with wine in Mediterranean societies and tobacco and coca in the Americas, with outsider groups (such as women) restricted to responsibility for other spheres (such as food crops) (Hugh-Jones 1995: 52; Von Gernet 1995: 70; Mars & Altman 1987: 275). Psychoactive substances are important for establishing status, because they allow people to express a distance from necessity (Bourdieu 1984), as they are luxuries rather than foods and a vehicle towards other-worldly rather than this-worldly states (see Hugh-Jones 1995: 52). Distinction is generated through the style of drinking and delicacy, with complex systems of taste being as much a feature of simple societies as they are of complex societies (Heath 1995b: 341; Heath 2000: 187; Mars 1987: 91), with the manner of drinking of the in-group typically compared to a derogatory representation of the drinking style of out-groups, who are seen as too sober or marked by excess, involving various levels of disdain from gentle mockery to disgust (Heath 2000: 173; Ngokwey 1987: 113). Of course, the features that are focused on in such systems are generally fairly arbitrary, with the generation of a collective definition of them as deviant or inferior that is of primary importance. Women and the young There are two particularly prominent outsider groups. The first is children, with alcohol commonly being used to mark inclusion in circles of adult identity. Cross-culturally there are restrictions on the consumption of those who are ‘underage’, though who falls into this category varies widely (Fox & Marsh 2010: 5). The second is women whose complete or partial exclusion from drinking rituals is cross-cultural. Globally, men are the main consumers of alcohol, with women drinking less and less often, with stricter restrictions placed on their drinking, with this situation persisting even in contemporary modern society (Gefou-Madianou 1992: 7; Heath 2000: 73; Fox & Marsh 2010: 5; Vogt 1995: 94; Heath 1995b: 337; Mitchell & Armstrong 2005: 181). Women are frequently denied drink (Gefou-Madianou 1992: 17). Even in cultures such as Islamic societies where consumption is forbidden and where the prohibition applies to both sexes, it is more strictly enforced for women (Van Nieuwkerk 1992: 35), which is also often true for other psychoactive substances such as tobacco, where for example, amongst Native North Americans its consumption was an exclusively male activity (Von Gernet 1995: 71). Crossculturally there are strong norms against women becoming disinhibited, with

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them generally being allowed some drink, but with drunkenness not being encouraged and frequently seen as deplorable (Heath 2000: 76; 1995b: 337; Gefou-Madianou 1992: 10, 14–15). Drinking rituals and ritual spaces are also often the sole preserve of men (Ngokwey 1987: 115; Mitchell & Armstrong 2005: 181; Iossifides 1992: 92; Bjerén 1992: 160, 167), though this is not always the case, for example in contemporary Hong Kong where there is no exclusion of women from drinking (Smart 2005: 112), and in other places, where on less formal, symbolically charged moments women may participate as more full members of rituals (Bott 1987: 184). As an aspect of this, women’s drinking tends to traditionally be more orientated towards the domestic sphere, kin and neighbourhood, whereas men have a more public orientation, with their drinking taking place in establishments such as taverns and coffeehouses (as Gefou-Madianou 1992: 10, and Iossifides 1992: 92 show for Mediterranean societies). In drinking rituals women may be spatially marginalised, placed on the margins rather than the centre of symbolic space,8 and there may be a prescription that they can only attend drinking rituals under the accompaniment of men, with single women or groups of women in these ritual spaces seen as deviant (Hall 2005: 74). Women also may inhabit subordinate roles, for instance being required to sit after the men, or assuming subsidiary roles such as in food preparation, acting as servers and hostesses (Moeran 2005: 27, 30–1). Women’s difference has been expressed through their drinking different drinks, which are generally defined as light, weak, sweet, feminine or inferior, whereas male drinks may symbolise physical strength and the strength of sexual desire and performance (Ngokwey 1987: 117,119; Driessen 1992: 72; Bjerén 1992: 161). This can still be seen in several modern drinking cultures, with the tendency for women to drink wine or spirits with a sweet mixer, and men beer (Hall & Hunter 1995:11), and the respective symbolism that surrounds these. There may also be a demand that the symbols of maleness and femaleness be kept apart, with alcohol and other psychoactive substances frequently being associated with men and food frequently being associated with women (HughJones 1995: 57). In these relatively monopolised ritual spaces then masculine identity is dramatised (Gefou-Madianou 1992: 11). Alcohol is mobilised as a symbol of maleness and its public consumption is a dramatic performance involving a ‘proving’ of one’s manhood in displays of masculine competence and the acting out of stereotypes of masculinity which may involve ‘boisterous behaviour, frequent expressions of aggression, boasting about their capacities for drink and sex, and otherwise underscoring exaggerated caricatures’ (Heath 1995b: 337). In this enclosed sphere, male identity may be constructed through a contrast with women, for example through expressions of the social irrelevance of women (Demossier 2005: 136), implying by contrast the expansive social roles of men, or through expressions of how women are incapable of understanding certain aspects of the drinking ritual, implying the great discernment of men (Bianquis-Gasser 1992: 106).

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This all raises the issue of whether women traditionally are made to bear the burden of drinking rituals, while men monopolise the positive aspects of it. From the above it is evident that this is potentially true, with women’s relative exclusion an expression of uneven power balances (Heath 2000: 74). The marginalisation of women in drinking rituals in particular reinforces men’s dominance over women in public matters, as it provides them with much more mobility in the networks that constitute the public sphere (Gefou-Madianou 1992: 11; Moeran 2005: 39). In contrast to men, women are ‘[u]sually burdened with repetitive and requisite tasks of tending to children, cooking, hauling water and firewood, women generally have less free time than do men in which they need not worry about drinking as possibly being an interference’ (Heath 2000: 73). While one factor in restrictions may be the simple biological fact that in general the same amount of alcohol has a greater impact on women than men (Heath 2000: 73), a more prominent factor could be the control of female sexuality. A common association is often drawn between women’s drinking and sexual promiscuity (Heath 1995b: 337), with women drinking with unrelated men symbolising an opening of relationships between them (Iossifides 1992: 93). Thus, alongside the marginal positions in and exclusion from drinking rituals, the traditionally very strong negative emotions around drunkenness among women is rooted in a fear of uncontrolled sexuality (Gefou-Madianou 1992: 16). This may be the reason why attitudes to women’s drinking often changes with menopause, with women in many cultures being considered at this point in their life ‘like a man’, gaining new privileges, including being allowed to drink as an equal with men (Heath 2000: 28). The relative exclusion of women from drinking occasions, in addition to being a construction of male identity through the creation of otherness, is also a safety valve allowing the release of tensions and the experience of pride on the part of men in the face of the considerable power that women nonetheless often have. In Mediterranean societies for example, while men largely monopolised the sphere of coffeehouses and bars, women tended to monopolise the home. ‘While women then seem to find their social role within the household capacious, men, though often owners and representatives of the household to the outside world, would appear paradoxically to be confined and restrained’ (GefouMadianou 1992: 10). For this reason, in all male drinking rituals much effort is ‘directed toward obscuring male dependency on the female members of their family, as by excluding women … men reinforce a doubtful female subordination’ (8), and secure their ‘vulnerable dominance’ (10), also providing themselves with moments in which they can escape from the weight of female home centred structure. However, none of this is to say that there cannot be insecure women within the household also. Brake on mimetic competition As noted above, it is problematic to see women’s relative exclusion from drinking rituals as only an extension of patriarchy. Another reason for this is

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that different, non-competitive systems of honour can be an important resource for society, acting as a brake on mimetic competition which would otherwise lead to a spiralling undifferentiation, with everyone chasing the same ends, increasing envy (which de Tocqueville (1969: 9–11, 255–6, 1955: 51–4, 77) noted has become the characteristic emotion of modernity). This is particularly so, as Tarde (1969: 186–7) explains, imitation moves in the direction of from within to without. This means that the imitation of ends (desires) precedes the imitation of the means, which can lead to many rushing towards a limited resource, leading to much conflict and bitterness. For example, the rivalry that underpins agonistic gift giving can spiral out of control and descend into dangerous levels of destruction and antagonism (Mauss 1992: 8). Such dangerous forms of competition can be stifled by the existence of separate systems of honour, whether between men and women, or some other division in society, though this runs quite at odds to the democratic and universal values of modern, Enlightenment societies. Bateson’s (2000a) concept of schismogenesis is useful however for explaining the benefits of some segmentation in society. He explained that there are different forms of relationships. Symmetrical relationships are those involving similar behaviour on the part of two parties, which stimulate more of the same, with a good example being an arms race. In contrast, complementary relationships are those involving dissimilar behaviour on the part of two parties but which fit together, with examples being relationships of nurturance-dependence and spectatorship and exhibitionism. A mixture of the two types of relationships is necessary, as excess in either direction leads to problems, as symmetrical relations tend to escalate dangerously, while complementary relations tend to rigidify (323–4). For instance, women’s role as a hostess, involved in the preparation and serving of drink, could be interpreted as a subservient role, confirming men’s dominance. However, it could equally be interpreted that the presence of a person from outside of the status group of the participants, who plays a central role in coordinating the action, civilises the drinking ritual, through acting as a check on mimetic competition. It has been commonly found in research in Europe historically that the competitive sociability of women tends to be centred on ‘home’, within households and with kin, neighbourhood and community orientation with a tendency to avoid drinking in public and with non-related men (Gefou-Madianou 1992: 15; Iossifides 1992: 93). An example of this mechanism is where within families there are clearly defined gender spheres, which are non-competitive and complementary, whereby outside of the family relationships are competitive, with a continual need for men to prove themselves, through display and consumption, and for women through modesty, propriety and ‘feminine accomplishments’, such as food preparation for social gatherings. However, these gendered competitive realms do not overlap (see Mars & Altman 1987: 271, 276). Complementary relationships that act as a brake on mimetic competition exist beyond gendered spheres. An important source of these is intergenerational relationships, for instance in situations where, while feasts are competitive, the

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‘head of table’ who acts as a master of ceremony, is ‘above the general level of competition’ as he is an esteemed elderly member of the community (see Mars & Altman 1987: 275). Something similar occurs amongst the Mambila. Boys at around 14–16 years of age select a partner from a neighbouring settlement with whom, over the course of his life, he will engage in competitive beer exchange with. There is a process of slow escalation over time as each time an invitation is made to come drink, more beer than the last time is supposed to be provided. As the partners grow older and their importance in the village increases, they receive assistance from others for assembling their gift. In these the persons and the group’s reputation is at stake, hence making it a potential source of conflict and bitterness. These symmetrical relationships are balanced consequently by complementary relationships. The partners themselves offer assistance to each other over the course of their lives, for instance supporting each other in courtship. There are also complementary intergenerational relationships with older kinsmen who ensure that exchanges are not made too frequently, as this would lead to an excessive escalation, straining the resources of the person. There is a complementary relationship furthermore between the older people who act as hosts and the rest of the hamlet who work to facilitate his impression management. Also, partners cannot be chosen from amongst kinsmen and fellow hamlet members, so that complementary relations remain dominant within and symmetrical relations dominant without (Rehfisch 1987: 135–7, 143). Differentiation is also important for meaning and identity, which is generated through the manifesting of difference. Undifferentiation in contrast can be problematic as it results in identity crises, an absence of meaning and unclear parameters for correct conduct. For example, in many cultures while men tend to be signified by psychoactive substances, women tend to be signified by food. Amongst the Barasana Indians coca is tied up in a system of meanings including maleness and the night, certain spatial areas, and symbolically significant ritual occasions, while food is tied up with the meanings of femaleness and the daytime, different spatial areas and the everyday (Hugh-Jones 1995: 57–8). Men drinking more than women clarifies what maleness is as do other sources of differentiation such as differences in drinking habits between the sexes, and the distinct but complementary roles that men and women have in the production of psychoactive substances such as wine (Gefou-Madianou 1992: 11–5; BianquisGasser 1992: 102).

Conclusion While the aim of this, and the next chapter, is to present an ‘ideal type’ of drinking rituals in relatively self-contained, small-scale societies. There are considerable difficulties in this, as it involves a conceptual lumping in together of a wide array of cases, from tribal society, peasant and pastoral people, and action in modern societies weakly related to the wider society. Nonetheless, leading anthropologists in the field of alcohol studies have been happy to make this comparison themselves (Heath 1958; Douglas 1987), though not without

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criticism, as we shall see (Room 1984). Thus, the attempt has been to try to illustrate a key feature of alcohol consumption in small-scale societies, also through drawing on how these features are expressed residually in local contexts within more complex societies.

Notes 1 Such as in early modern England (Martin 2006: 94, 98), contemporary Italy (Cottino 1995: 157), and how ‘[f]rom very early on in Chinese history, jiu and drinking were considered an essential component of every major ceremony that merits celebration or memorial – the major rites of passage (birth, marriage, death); all the major events in the Chinese calendar such as Chinese New Year, Chin ming grave visits, the Ghost Festival, and others; and social occasions such as a dinner banquet, a farewell party and the reunion with a guest from afar’ (Smart 2005: 111). It can be seen in how when the native peoples of the Americas and Oceania encountered alcohol through contact with Europeans many quickly integrated alcohol into their rites of passage (Blocker 2006: 226). 2 ‘Experience is something that happens to people, something suffered and so, it has a strong dimension of passivity and being overcome by a greater force. While it has this passive connotation, people strive and struggle in this situation they are caught within, which has the form of a test, a passage and a dangerous passing through. The shock tactic of this test, consisting of traumatic and dramatic measures is to break the old identity and habitus. The effect is that it leaves a mark, stamping those who undergo it, potentially changing them at the very core of their being’ (Szakolczai 2004: 10–12). For this reason, Simmel (1997c: 222) explains that while liminality (he uses his own term for this of ‘the adventure’) amounts to a dropping out of the continuity of life, and so is foreign to the everyday, it is something that is also connected to the very centre of life. It is also why he argues that ‘the adventure’ belongs to youth and not old age, as in old age there is a predominance of substance over life as key experiences have solidified the identity of the person, whereas in youth there is a questing nature, hunting for experience (Simmel 1997c: 229). 3 As in ski trips in Austria, as described by Thornton (1987: 106). 4 This occurs in Malta (Mitchell & Armstrong 2005: 192), with kola in the central Sudan (Lovejoy 1995: 104), in contemporary American society (Gusfield 1987: 81), across the English-speaking world (Heath 2000: 111), with coca amongst the Barasana (Hugh-Jones 1995: 56–7), with tobacco amongst Native North Americans (Von Gernet 1995: 78), with areca nuts amongst the Fuyuge of Papua New Guinea (Hirsch 1995) and with beer amongst the Kofyar (Heath 2000: 137). 5 This can be seen also in specific cases amongst the Lele (Ngokwey 1987: 115), in Western societies (Sherratt 1995b: 4) and Eastern Austria (Thornton 1987: 104). 6 As in Malaysian (Arokiasamy 1995: 172), rural Japanese (Moeran 2005: 31) and Chinese (Jiacheng 1995: 43) drinking etiquette. 7 This can be seen in Eastern Zambia (Haworth 1995: 321), in rural Japan (Moeran 2005: 29, 39), in modern Hong Kong (Smart 2005: 111), amongst the Barasana Amerindians in North West Amazonia (Hugh-Jones 1995: 47–64), in modern Malta where established drinking groups often share a religious devotion (Mitchel & Armstrong 2005: 183), historically amongst North Amerindians with tobacco (Von Gernet 1995: 70), with kola in central Sudan (Lovejoy 1995: 114). 8 As in the Tongan Kava ceremonial (Bott 1987: 184), rural Japan (Moeran 2005: 30), Egyptian weddings (Van Nieuwkerk 1992: 41), as with the prejudice against women’s public drinking in pre-WWII Paris, with the snug and the lounge in Irish society and coca eating among the Barasana (Hugh-Jones 1995: 54).

4

Alcohol and the ritual process Decontrolling

The totality of moral rules truly forms about each person an imaginary wall, at the foot of which the flood of human passions simply dies without being able to go further. For the same reason – that they are contained – it becomes possible to satisfy them. But if at any point this barrier weakens, these previously restrained human forces pour tumultuously through the open breach; once loosed they find no limits where they can stop. They can only devote themselves, without hope of satisfaction, to the pursuit of an end that always eludes them. (Durkheim 1925: 47)

Decontrolling: anti-structure Within the liminal phase of a rite de passage there is a constellation of ‘antistructure’, involving greater freedom from limits, where the subjunctive tense is dominant, with the emphasis on desire and possibility rather than the ‘actual’ (Turner 1992: 134). It is defined by playfulness, which defies the bounds of the physical, the material and the determinate, replacing it with the unlimited possibility of mind (Huizinga 1970: 3), and so is a sphere of ‘pure potency, where anything can happen’ (Turner 1992: 153). It may even go so far as to become ‘carnivalesque’, where there is an inversion of hierarchy, a dissolution of the normal structures of social life, and instead, ‘free and familiar contact among people’ (Bakhtin 1984: 123). It is a spirit such as this that reigns during drinking rituals, as has been diagnosed by McAndrew & Edgerton (1969), who theorised alcohol as a ‘time out’ involving the symbolisation and introduction of ‘cultural remission’, where less responsibility can be shown and where the rules of the game are simplified (Heath 1988: 364; Gusfield 1987: 78; Heath 2000: 197). In drinking occasions, there is consequently greater informality, a transcendence of everyday roles, and a move into a less ordered and regulated sphere where the limits that roles imposed on people are lifted and the person becomes more able to freely express themselves (Gefou-Madianou 1992: 12; Gusfield 1987: 79, 83; Iossifides 1992: 92), along with an emphasis on choice, an absence of schedules and spontaneity. In tandem with this, alcohol offers

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Alcohol and the ritual process: decontrolling cover … to the exposure of the self to public judgements. By shifting the burden of explaining embarrassing moments from a reflection of the self to the effects of alcohol, drinking provides an excuse for lapses in responsibility, for unmannerly behaviour; for gaucheries, for immoral and improper actions. (Gusfield 1987: 79)

All of this is not simply because of alcohol’s capacity to promote relaxation through its physiological effects, as alcohol as a material symbol also frames situations in this way, through the symbolism of the act, and of the surroundings (Heath 1999: 62). This liminal constellation possesses various features. As noted above, there is a shift from verbal and physical formality to informality as people can speak to people outside of their immediate group, and restrictions over what can be said or done are lowered. Such a transition may be marked by a move from formal speech to dialect (Moeran 2005: 32). There is likely to be ribaldry and vulgarity and it can be a sphere of the erotic, evident in how in the first Western reference to beer, the Greek poet Archilochus uses it as a metaphor for fellatio,1 which Nelson (2005: 17) suggests is part of a much older Mesopotamian tradition. In these rituals sexuality may become uncoupled from reproduction and family (Iossifides 1992: 94), and for these reasons, despite the fact that alcohol is a depressant substance, it is widely considered to be an aphrodisiac (Heath 1987: 34). In drinking rituals there tends to be foolishness, horseplay and practical jokes, with tall stories told, freed from the necessity to accord with the facts or even actual events. Aggressiveness, assertiveness, bravado, boasting, insult and machismo can manifest themselves, with displays of daring, staged expressions of interpersonal tensions, public outbursts of hostilities, expressions of true feelings and grievances, slanging matches and the defamation of character (Moeran 2005: 34; Hunt et al. 2005: 245). In some cultures, there is even an expectation that alcohol will lead to such conduct, with drinking used as a rationalisation, excuse for and means of framing and delimiting it, through phrases like ‘he had a lot to drink’. There is also generally expressiveness, with greater emotional and affective freedom, with higher levels of sentimentality and more freedom in physical movement, with a more direct link between emotion and bodily movement. The utopian quality of such events is increased by the nature of the interdependencies that characterise them. Douglas (1997: 40–1) identifies a difference between ‘drinks’ and ‘meals’, explaining that meals are events of greater intimacy than drinks, which can involve looser, wider and more distant social bonds. This contrast can be seen in the often-mundane nature of meals, which are brought down to earth by the tight interdependencies of the participants, and the utopian quality of drinks, which are characterised by looser interdependencies, as people from far apart, who do not know each other well, gather together. Where interdependencies are weak, with few ties binding people, a collapse of order and a descent into chaos is possible, so people must

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be highly civilised and they must politely accept the idealised selves that are presented. In contrast, where interdependencies are strong, being grounded in multiple links, a collapse of order is unlikely, so open criticism may occur. Hence, it may be difficult to achieve an elevation above mundane affairs, and for idealisation to be accepted (Rehfisch 1987: 141–2).

Enclosure in ritual – controlled de-controlling Rites de passage involving alcohol, by virtue of their very nature however have limits. As has already been noted the term ‘liminality’ is derived from the Latin ‘limen’, denoting ‘threshold’ or ‘margin’, which is stepped over, to enter the out-of-the-ordinary, from the flow of normal time (Turner 1985: 214; 1969: 94). Similarly, ‘leisure’ derives from licere, ‘to be allowed’, sharing the same root as ‘licence’, demonstrating that ‘control’ and ‘freedom’ are in fact opposite sides of the same concept. Liminality is thus destructured but also prestructured, as rites de passage organise this experience in an ordered and planned manner, with participants freed from the everyday routines, but according to a script (Turner 1969; 1967). Alcohol acts as an inhibitor of inhibition, a decontroller of controls, but it is always a controlled decontrolling of controls, as it possesses a ‘within-limits clause’ (McAndrew & Edgerton 1969), which ‘implies culturally shared expectations and permissiveness, not a generalized pharmokinetic disinhibition’ (Heath 2000: 197). The need for limits is particularly important in the sphere of liminality, which drinking occasions tend to occur within. Liminality is dangerous, disordering and polluting, as it involves a breakdown of the normal social order in which the liminoids are loosened from their social structural positions and are simply ‘in-becoming’, with the conceptual and behavioural ordering schemes disordered, opening up the energies of the subconscious, meaning that anything is possible in terms of thought and behaviour. Such boundlessness is dangerous as while it is full of excitement and potential, it goes beyond normal boundaries, threatening the categories of the social world. As Van Gennep (1960) noted, taboos are linked with boundaries and things at the margins of categories and thus are things that are ambiguous and anomalous. This has also been recognised by Douglas (1960: 35), who sees that taboos are to do with order and disorder. For instance, dirt is ‘matter out of place … [and] … [w]here there is dirt there is a system.… Our pollution behaviour is the reaction which condemns any object or idea likely to confuse or contradict cherished classifications’.2 Liminal personae, however, also require protection themselves as they become potentially vulnerable through the casting off of their social attributes and from public judgements. Limits consequently are placed on drinking occasions through binding them within ritual action, access to which involves the stepping across a threshold, from the ordinary to the out of the ordinary. Hence, drinking typically takes place in a ‘recognised social context’ (Douglas 1987: 4) that is enclosed in space and time (Heath 2000: 137).

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Drinking spaces and drinking time Drinking is bound by temporal divisions, which denote when consumption of what type of substances in conjunction with what other behaviours and with which others is appropriate. Liminal rites are also spatially delimited, taking place in an area set apart from everyday life, that is often destroyed at the end of the ritual and one that is definitively marked in time (Turner 1969: 108–9; 1992: 153–4). Liminal play takes place in a ‘magic circle’ or a ‘playground’, a space literally cut off from the wider world with a boundary that must be crossed, as can be seen in words such as ‘ring’, ‘battleground’, ‘arena’ (from the Latin are-na, ‘sand’) and ‘bar’. For this reason, most societies designate specific spaces for communal drinking, which are highly significant symbolic spaces, often involving ‘an allocation of space with a surrounding boundary that acts as both a physical barrier and symbolic border’ (Wilson 2005: 14) and that have their own standards of appropriate conduct (Fox & Marsh 2010: 6). Examples of these are cafés, bars, pubs, taverns, and outside of modern societies, designated arenas such as the ‘mapula’ of the Lele, which are ‘small cleared areas in the forest or savannah’, away from the village (Ngokwey 1987: 115), or the spaces away from central community spaces with the Truk (Heath 2000: 46), or the special plazas built by the Fuyuge of Papua New Guinea for the ritual consumption of betelnut (Hirsch 1995: 95). However, in certain exceptional circumstances the ritual may escape its bounds and the entire world becomes a playground as in carnival, where symbolic claims are made over public space (Mitchell & Armstrong 2005: 181). Rules and control Rules are imposed that must be accepted if the enchantment of anti-structure is to be maintained. Huizinga (1970: 11) explains that ‘as soon as the rules are transgressed the whole play-world collapses’, though of course, there is always a testing of limits, as it is through this that it is discovered and negotiated where the boundaries really lie. Nonetheless, these rules are well policed by participants themselves, as disruptive behaviour is generally not tolerated in drinking rituals, with informal social control being exercised by the clientele and owner, so that even if there is an eruption of intra-group violence, for example, this tends to be limited by the restraining hands of drinking companions (Heath 2000: 51; Moeran 2005: 34). Decontrolling is also tied directly to self-control, with it predicated upon the assumption that the neophytes return to the social order as more competent actors (Turner 1967: 106). Play teaches virtue as it implies a mastery of self, as it demands an attunement to others in a moving constellation of players. It is for this reason that the capacity to demonstrate self-control while decontrolling is a primary value of drinking occasions (Driessen 1992: 74). All of these controls are crucial, as if they are not present alcohol may not serve its function as a relaxant for the individual, and instead may become a source of anxiety and endangerment (Heath 1999: 62).

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Masters of ceremony While there is an abandonment of the responsibilities of the social order in liminal rites, rather than descending into a chaotic social void, the function of maintaining order is taken up in a highly simplified manner by the authority of the masters of ceremony (Turner 1967: 101). A staged liminal situation is dangerous as it opens up the forces of darkness and unleashes the energies of the subconscious. Thus, such rites are only performed in the presence of ‘guardians’ of order or ‘masters of ceremonies’ who possess the very special, indeed ‘charismatic’ expertise of being able to keep such rituals under control. (Szakolczai 2000: 218) These figures are representatives of community and tradition, and orchestrate the proceedings, ensuring that the disordering remains orderly (Turner 1969: 103). Many contemporary drinking rituals consequently continue to have masters of ceremonies of sorts, in figures such as hosts, toastmasters and publicans, who play a number of roles in coordinating the action. However, these are residual figures compared to the central role of elders and representatives of institutions in more traditional societies. Amongst the Fuyuge of Papua New Guinea, for instance, the chief has a ‘holding together’ function, as through his leadership quantities of the primary psychoactive substance betelnut, people and minds are concentrated on the ritual action. Through this people are able to participate in the ritual appearing powerful as opposed to the shamefulness that stems from peripherality and purposelessness (Hirsch 1995: 96). In Soviet Georgia, in feasts there is a head of table, whose role is to orchestrate the action, directing the order of the proceedings and the offering of toasts. To this end he must be ‘verbally fluent, spontaneous and witty’ (Mars & Altman 1987: 272), must have the capacity to raise the emotions of the group, and be able to hold his drink as he established the upper limit of the group’s drinking. Hence the master of ceremonies role is one of elevation. But it is also one of limitation as he is the embodiment of legitimate authority, generally being older and well respected, being capable of overseeing the proceedings with ‘grace, elegance and persuasion’ (275). And of course, symposia had a symposiarch. An interesting feature of masters of ceremony in drinking rituals is that women often occupy this position in the figure of the hostess. Women in the Middle Ages and the early modern period were often the proprietors of drinking establishments; in Japanese drinking culture geishas, housewives and women in general act as hostesses, regulating the rhythm of drinking (Heath 2000: 105; Moeran 2005: 27); and in shebeens in South Africa there is a figure of the ‘shebeen queen’, who acts as ‘a confidant to customers, an impresario of local talent for entertainment, a lively conversationalist, and always able to manage the crowd’ (Heath 2000: 116). The reason for this may be that in many cultures women are able to play a moderating role in the context of drinking rituals, as

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they may also be representatives of households, being also a unifying force, linking the household with the community and the broader sacred or imagined community, and also tend not to step outside of their mundane, everyday roles to the same extent as men (Gefou-Madianou 1992: 14–15, 18). This is a theme that will be returned to in Chapter 6, where it will be suggested that this female role may be very deep rooted and important historically. Agons Limits are crucial in drinking rituals as they can become schismogenic, rigidifying into nihilistic bouts of intoxication. They also have the danger of escalating dangerously, as drinking occasions often have an agonistic aspect. Liminality involves tests and trials that must be passed before re-entering society in the phase of reaggregation. These are dramatic or competitive, involving either the contest for something, or the representation of a contest. It is quite likely that this will amount to a social and productive form of fighting in which hostility and friendship are combined, with winning occurring through honouring and contributing somehow to others through gift giving, with primacy stemming from being the most loyal, the most generous, the wittiest or the most skilled. However, the risk of escalation is evident in the ritual practice of potlatches, widely studied by anthropologists, which have an association with play, as an agonistic form of gift giving, though they are typically on the basis of a destruction of wealth as a means of establishing hierarchy in order to form bonds of patronage by giving to the extent that others cannot reciprocate, thereby transforming them into clients, which does not have a ring of playfulness to it, but more of a non-violent battle in the shape of symbolic violence (Mauss 1992: 7–8). Huizinga (1970) nonetheless posits that the agon was, and perhaps continues to be the basis that communities are organised on (Huizinga 1970: 48, 53, 58–9, 61). Play involves a desire to be honoured for one’s excellence (63). To this end, drinking occasions are frequently in the form of a game, possessing an agonistic quality, with drinkers concerned with reputation and winning recognition as an equal amongst equals (Gefou-Madianou 1992: 12). A central aspect of drinking etiquette is self-control, which involves the test of being able to ‘hold one’s drink’, having the capacity to marry enthusiasm with self-mastery (GefouMadianou 1992: 13; Driessen 1992: 74; Smart 2005: 112), and intoxication in contrast is often frowned upon as a lack of self-control that results in a loss of face. Besides the test of self-control, there are games that test capacity to drink. A well-known example of this from England is the yard of ale, which holds around three pints, with the aim being the draining of it in one attempt (Heath 2000: 119) with another from the Basque country where drinkers compete to drink from a stream of alcohol squirted from a leather canteen at a distance (Heath 1999: 65). Such contests were a feature of Ancient Greek culture, at symposia and festivals, for instance as part of the Choen festival – or feast of pitchers (Huizinga 1970: 73), and this form of drinking can lead to very high

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levels of consumption, as competitors aim to match and best tremendous feats of drinking. Where drinking games centre solely on the quantity and rapidity of drinking, then there is a risk of negative outcomes and even death (Heath 2000: 130), with a famous example being Alexander the Great, who ‘celebrated the death of Kalanos by a gymnastic and musical agon with prizes for the doughtiest drinkers, with the result that thirty-five of the competitors died on the spot, six afterwards, among them the prize winner’ (Huizinga 1970: 73). It is for this reason that messages about the value of community in moderating consumption should be tempered slightly, as some communities are aggressively competitive, with drinking as a part of this (Douglas 1987: 6). Such a pattern of drinking however seems not to be the norm (Heath 2000: 130), and we will turn our attention to the basis of highly competitive forms of drinking ritual in Chapter 6. In various cultures drinking is associated with games of skill such as card playing, board games, dice, dominos, gambling and sports and in order to enhance the atmosphere of excitement this generates, there are sometimes penalties imposed in the form of taking a drink (Heath 2000: 130; 1995c: 352). There are games of taste, for instance through the development of a sophisticated palate and the mastery of an elaborate vocabulary in wine tasting (Heath 2000: 115; Douglas 1987: 9). Knowledge matches are also a common feature of play, involving debating, catching people out through trick questions, the display of esoteric knowledge involving a skirting of the unknowable and riddle matches. These are a major feature of drinking culture.3 Similarly, there may be competition on the basis of the wit and creativity of toasts, or though singing and the recitation of poetry (Heath 2000: 130). The antiquity of this can be seen in how ‘[a]s early as the Zhou Dynasty (1066–256 BC), books tell of the delights of combining drinking with listening to songs and watching dances’ (Jiacheng 1995: 46). Play is linked with bragging, scoffing matches and derision, which are institutionalised in public skits, scurrilous songs, satire and public criticism.4 In Ancient Greece these forms were closely associated with the festival of Dionysos (Huizinga 1970: 65). We can see the fertility of this social form, as it was this constellation that poetry developed out of. For instance, ‘iambus’, a basic structure in poetry (iambic pentameter), derives from the Greek ‘iambos’, from ‘iaptein’ (to assail, to deride), which in turn, drama and comedy and also rhetoric developed out of (Kerényi 1976). Games of hospitality are played out between hosts and guests, as in ritual gatherings hosts may display their wealth, fertility and organisational capacity through offering copious amounts of alcohol and other psychoactive substances and the guests in turn are expected to demonstrate their valour through consuming all that they can (Hugh-Jones 1995: 61). This may take the form of the host continually pushing the guest to drink more with the guest simultaneously accepting the challenge and trying not to drink too much too soon (Heath 2000: 112). This also takes the form of generous offers, with the guest refusing, until finally yielding, letting the host win (Thornton 1987: 104). Rivalries may be expressed through manners and etiquette, or though the breaching of them (Bott 1987: 196–7). Competition can also take place through waste, in

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practices of conspicuous consumption or literally pouring alcohol away. A more benign example of competition is games of exchange of alcohol and hospitality and the honour that is contingent on this (Gefou-Madianou 1992: 12–13; Driessen 1992: 74). All of these can get out of hand however, demonstrating why controlled decontrolling is the essence of drinking occasions.

Ritual and reflexivity Conceptual playfulness Rituals involving alcohol consumption do not just allow for a lowering of restraints in interactions and control of the body and emotions, but also cognitively. Liminality is a sphere in which participants are encouraged to think about the nature of their society, are exposed to the ‘basic assumptions of their culture’ (Turner 1967: 105) and are encouraged to reflect on what lies behind the obvious and taken for granted (Turner 1992: 132, 144). This is facilitated as liminality takes people out of their everyday roles, which offers the opportunity to reflect anew on the social order, thus promoting a high level of reflexivity, experimentation and critical reflection (Turner 1992: 133). Drinking rituals correspond to this as a sphere of reflection and debate, with discussion of people’s day to day lives, work, politics, sport and sex and social divisions based on age, gender, household, community, locality and country. Indeed, alcohol is the ‘elixir of verbiage’, involving the ‘sanctioned approval to talk, a lot, and loudly’ (Wilson 2005: 20). Such events tend to be marked by transgression and a greater playfulness with morality involving a ritual inversion of the social order in a somewhat carnivalesque spirit (Turner 1992: 155). Its potency lies in the multifarious and free manner in which the different elements of the mundane social order may be recombined, as it is ransacked for its symbols, metaphors and meanings, which it subsequently gives free play to, loosening them from their context and reassembling them in strange and fantastic ways (Huizinga 1970), in what Turner (1992: 148) describes as ‘creative destructuration’. Such a carnivalesque spirit can be seen especially clearly in folk Catholicism on drunken occasions such as festivals of a patron saint. In these there tends to be a ‘reversal and parody of some of the official rites and prescriptions’ of the Church and ‘outright anti-clericalism’ (Driessen 1992: 74–5). Such inversion is facilitated partly through, instead of having masters of ceremonies as exemplars of the community, having people who are from groups normally considered to be somehow deviant in the eyes of the ‘established’ group, as the leaders of the occasion, orchestrating the action. Examples are female entertainers in Egypt, who are deviant in drinking despite the strong condemnation of this in Islam and the association with the male dominated public sphere (Van Nieuwkerk 1992: 35, 44), gypsies in Eastern Europe and African Americans, historically, in the USA. It is not just people that lie outside the limits of the mundane that are useful for this

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purpose, as inversion is also more associated with drinks that are not of the social order, such as whiskey in Mediterranean societies (Driessen 1992: 72). In a ritual, during the liminal phase, an object takes on a socially important role as a vehicle for reflection. Turner referred to this as the sacra, an object that stimulates reflection and abstract thought that is also regarded as sacrosanct and an ultimate mystery (Turner 1967: 103–4, 106–7). Many cultures use psychoactive substance such as alcoholic beverages as sacra, acting as the symbol of the community itself, and are consequently treated with a degree of fear and respect (Hugh-Jones 1995: 51; Von Gernet 1995: 72). They stimulate reflection as they and their ritual setting are often thought of as a metaphor for social relationships (Sherratt 1995a: 6). For example, amongst the Kofyar beer is a ‘locus of value’ providing metaphors for thinking about the world (Heath 2000: 136) and acting as ‘both the symbol and the essence of the good life’ (Netting 1964: 378 cited in Heath 2000: 137). Of course, this is also the case in Christianity in the form of wine. Even in cultures where alcohol is proscribed such as Islam, various Protestant sects, Mormons and Alcoholics Anonymous, alcohol is important for symbolising the community, albeit in a negative way. Crises Ritual is important for dealing with crises, as they stage events that in the past upset the social order, acting as a form of remembrance that helps to prevent their recurrence (Szakolczai 2004). As such, they operate like dreams, as both ‘release and communicate dangerous thoughts and emotions; but at the same time, they disguise and transform them so that the element of danger is contained and to some extent dealt with’ (Bott 1987: 182). Not all movements into liminality are planned and well-ordered as in times of crisis and conflict. With the breach of the social order a crisis ensues, and if the breach is not sealed off quickly the group’s cultural and structural survival becomes threatened. Ritual is a mechanism for dealing with this and can develop solutions, which is not to say that it will always be effective. Drinking occasions have an important role in dealing with such events as a sphere where public issues are reflected on through the recurrent discussion of the highly charged domains of work, football, politics and sex (Driessen 1992: 73). Alcohol facilitates this as it provides cover for, and a demarcated arena for the airing of grievances and expression of interpersonal tensions and may act as an expression of, or a preparation ground for public arguments and conflicts between different groups (Gefou-Madianou 1992: 20). The juridical dimension of groups is taken up to some extent by drinking rituals, where problems and tensions within the group and in the relation of the group to others are reflected upon. In Latin America, India and sub-Saharan Africa, cases heard by many communities are concluded by the plaintiff and defendant taking a drink (the symbol of communitas) to symbolise the acceptance of the judgement (Heath 2000: 59–60, 186). Hence, the breach that occurs through the airing of antagonisms that occurs under the cover of alcohol or

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other psychoactive substances may be sealed through the sharing of alcohol, reemphasising unity (Hunt et al. 2005: 245). Political and economic work also gets done in these rituals, which even achieve the ends of more formal decisionmaking institutions, as they are ‘forums to continue consideration of questions unsettled in general discussions, they help clarify the issues and bring about a consensus in one way or another’ (Ngokwey 1987: 115–16). Again, what is true for alcohol is true for other psychoactive substances, as with tobacco amongst Native American groups, which was a feature of councils and assemblies (Von Gernet 1995: 73). Alcohol rituals can have a role in less peaceful settling of disputes, for example in the case of research on gangs in the USA, where tensions over rivalries and injuries to honour and respect are released and settled through a release of tensions through fighting, contained under the cover of ritualised bouts of drinking. Because conflict is limited within this context of a ‘time out’, the gang can maintain its unity, with antagonists even drinking together after (Hunt 2003). When meaning cannot easily be assigned in conflicts, as where ‘they are initiated by and conducted by men and women who are sure that they are acting not only intelligently but also morally and virtuously; and yet the group is torn by strife!’ (Turner 1985: 219), ritual mechanisms are employed in which the seemingly invisible powers are exorcised and placated. In these actions, there is a tendency to relate the disturbances to generative events (220). A prominent example of this is the drinking of Christ’s blood in the form of wine in the Holy Communion, which demands a reflection on the origin of the Christian community in sacrifice. Artists and prophets Alcohol and psychoactive substances are linked to profound spiritual experiences. In Euripides Bacchae, the wise Teiresias explains the importance of intoxication (Dionysos) for reflexivity, noting that, ‘This God is also a prophet. Possession by his ecstasy, his sacred frenzy, opens the soul’s prophetic eyes. Those whom his spirit takes over completely often with frantic tongues foretell the future’ (Euripides 1987: 18). Psychoactive substances in general are significant in this connection, as across different cultures ‘[p]owerful hallucinogens may be employed to give particular individuals privileged access to the sacred on specific ritual occasions’ (Sherratt 1995a: 6), and these ‘[s]ubstances causing marked behavioural alteration, including some loss of physical control, may be powerful symbols of access to esoteric knowledge and communication with other worlds’ (Sherratt 1995b: 16). For instance, amongst Native North Americans tobacco seems to have been an aspect of shamanistic practices stretching back to hunter-gatherer societies and later developing into a form of democratic shamanism. This involved the achievement of altered states of consciousness through the techniques of consuming psychoactive substances along with isolation, rhythmic dancing and fasting to allow the communication with and transformation into spirit beings (Von Gernet 1995: 67–9). Following its

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introduction, alcohol was introduced to these practices, such as in the use of spirits in the vision quests of the Iroquois. Rum is used by practitioners of the Batuque Afro-American religious cult in Brazil to achieve a state of possession by spirits (Heath 2000: 33, 91). In an older connection, in Northern Europe other substances were included in mead to produce ecstatic experiences for shamanistic rites ‘including morning glory seeds, fly agaric, datura, henbane, hemp, poppy, rosemary, myrtle, hemlock, mandrake, and belladonna’ (170). Siberian shamans also added fly agaric to beer or kumis for this purpose (170). Artists are a figure that is related to the prophet and they too are closely associated with alcohol due to the role of drinking occasions in facilitating reflexivity (Heath 1995b: 343). The connection is an old one, as tragedy developed out of the public rituals based on the cult of Dionysos (Szakolczai 2003), and continues with contemporary artists and writers, whose drinking habits have led scholars to seriously consider the connection between drinking and creativity (Heath 2000: 84). Studies have shown that alcohol has a role in reducing writers block and self-stimulation, causing an improved evaluation of one’s work (Brodsky & Peele 1999: 194). In addition to the pharmacological effect of the substance, there is also a subjective effect, through the immersion in a liminal sphere not of this world, providing detachment and an opportunity for critical reflection. However, the ‘within-limits clause’ applies to reflexivity as much as anti-structure, as ‘excessive drinking often interferes with the discipline or fine control that is needed to move from ideas to products that can be shared with others’ (Heath 1999: 66).

Conclusion Anthropological research on alcohol, particularly that carried out in non-Western contexts, offers a crucial reference point that allows us to hold up a mirror to the contemporary world, and in helping to avoid modernocentrism. Perhaps the most striking result that comes from this literature is the emphasis that alcohol, in such societies tends to be considered as normal, a non-problematic aspect of culture and socially useful and important. There is a tendency for it to be understood as inherently good, a gift from the gods and representative of the community, deep values and the good life. Rites de passage are the most important social form for achieving this, and so it is perhaps unsurprising that alcohol is incorporated in them cross-culturally. They form the basic structure of drinking occasions beneath the seemingly infinite variety of celebrations, festivities, parties, recreations, anniversaries, observances and remembrances, marking major life transitions such as birth, marriage and death, changes in roles, events and temporal changes. Such events tend to be ‘dense’ in the sense that more than drinking is going on, and in fact, drinking serves as a decoration to other actions. Nonetheless it is important as its ability to facilitate stepping outside of the normal flow of life aids the process of role transition or stamping of identity, marking time and the collective marking of the reality of this through celebration.

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Alcohol and the ritual process: decontrolling

Finding a proper balance between structure and anti-structure, controlling and decontrolling is an important task for all societies. Excessive control produces a stale and meaningless existence, while liminality is dangerous as it is disordering, involving as it does a withdrawal of the normal social order. Limits to both structure and anti-structure, through a cycle of rituals, marking and enclosing liminality in space and time, are consequently necessary. The decontrolling that takes place in these rituals is controlled with prescriptions on what is appropriate conduct and with guardians, who are the representatives of community and tradition, ensuring that the measure is adhered to, both in terms of ensuring enthusiastic participation and preventing excess. Complete avoidance and banishment of potential risk does not make a society safer. Rather a mastery of self through training that teaches virtue and the proper measure is what is necessary.

Notes 1 ‘[J]ust like a Thracian or Phrygian man sucked bru-tos through a reed, and she was bent over working hard’ (Nelson 2005: 16). 2 The passing of a threshold and the association with dirtiness helps explain the popular phraseology of the liminal event of drinking occasions. Slang terms for drunkenness typically refer to bodily orifices or their products, or what passes through orifices. Douglas (1966: 15) explains that the reason bodily orifices are particularly ritually significant is that a passing of a threshold occurs here. So, what occurs on a social level is reproduced symbolically on the bodily level, expressing that the social body must remain clean. 3 This social form is of huge cultural significance, as the constellation from which theological and philosophical dialogues and disputations emerge from. From Mannheim (1952: 192–8) it is evident that the agon is still crucial to intellectual life, as parties compete for the prestige of the ‘correct social diagnosis’ as their interpretation of the world is made the universal one (Mannheim 1952: 197). Thus, publicly affirmed diagnoses are the stake still in struggles for recognition. It is very significant though that such knowledge matches were problematised by Socrates. When these are within bounded liminality, the imaginative flights, tentative connection, assaults on character and a simple joy in and passion for argument are safe and cathartic. However, in a period of real world liminality, these aspects escape their cage. Consequently, when in a period of real crisis, accurate diagnoses of the situation are required. Thus, when there are simply these old techniques, taken out from their original context, and applied to real world problems it is very problematic, with debate marked by flippancy, smartness and sophistication. 4 Another word for this type of behaviour is ‘execration’. It is instructive that his stems from ‘sacer’ (sacred). Thus, we could say that it is to make profane. From Durkheim (1915) the ‘sacred' is the representation of the community, and so derision is a destruction of a person’s social status. Hence, it is a sphere of the trickster, as can be seen in the association of Loki and Dionysus with it. So, it is a typical liminal rite of temporary reversal, which can be cathartic. This explains however why such behaviour becomes problematised, as while in well-bound liminality this is healthy and cathartic, when it spills out into everyday life in periods of real world liminality, it puts people’s social identities in jeopardy and risks the outbreak of violence as a result.

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Introduction In this chapter, we will interrogate the claims of the previous two chapters concerning the generally benign nature of ritualised drinking in small-scale societies. Three major charges have been raised against anthropological accounts. The first is ‘problem deflation’, where it is suggested that anthropologists for a variety of theoretical, methodological and ideological reasons may have failed to represent the extent of problems associated with alcohol that exist in the small-scale societies that they have studied. There is a possibility that the strong limits that ritual has put in place, and that have acted as a resource for self and social control regarding alcohol use, in fact may be a romantic idealisation. Secondly, contemporary researchers of drinking rituals, employing ethnographic methods, have generally emphasised that these rituals are not benign, but rather pathological in some way. Their accounts are persuasive, but it will be shown that the types of ritual that they research in complex societies, are entirely different from those in small-scale societies. Finally, there is the charge that anthropologists have ignored the critical issue of power.

Problem deflation Anthropologists have emphasised that ritually-bound, non-problematic consumption is the predominant form that consumption takes in non-Western, simpler societies that have not been ravaged by contact with modern societies. In these contexts, they argue that the use of alcohol is normative, not linked with clear harms, and in fact linked with a range of beneficial outcomes (Heath 1998: 356; Douglas 1987: 3). For this reason, it has been noted that from the broad, comparative perspective of anthropology ‘problem drinking’ is very rare, even in societies where drunkenness is frequent (Douglas 1987: 3; Heath 1987: 18–19). Robin Room, one of the most eminent alcohol researchers in the social sciences, has cast some scepticism over the role of rituals in preventing social pathologies related to alcohol. He has argued that anthropologists, for a variety of reasons, have been guilty of providing rose-tinted accounts of the function of alcohol in these communities. Their typical assessment being that there is a

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striking contrast in the use and understanding of alcohol, consumed in a social context with considerable social control over the manner of consumption. They generally see it as being a sacred item in these communities, that is drunk in periodic ritual occasions, rather than being a permanent and mundane item of consumption. Most importantly they assert that social pathologies related to alcohol are rare in these communities. The claim in the ethnographic literature outlining the ways that alcohol is integrated in the ritual process, is thus that consumption is more regulated, problems are minimised, the typical outcome is social cohesion, and the very idea of compulsive use or ‘alcoholism’, is hard to conjure for those used to using alcohol in settings that are subject to the structure of the ritual process. The anthropological literature has a seductive logic to it, showing the benefits of community, collective ritual, gift exchange, and rich and enchanting symbolic worlds. Room proposes, however, that the modern ethnographic literature on alcohol may have a bias towards problem deflation, underestimating the problems linked with alcohol in village level, and tribal cultures. Room (1984a) proposes that the dominant structural-functionalist theoretical frame of anthropologists is one reason for this, arguing that the assumptions of this model lead researchers to focus more on the uses and gains from drinking, than the losses, contradictions and dysfunctions. However, Emile Durkheim’s work – Suicide and the concept of anomie – are perhaps the foundational notions of structural functionalism. Though he is famous for noting that the pathological is a functional aspect of society (for example, with every society, even a society of saints, identifying deviant acts that their members commit as a way of affirming norms), he made a distinction between this and the pathological nature of modernity because of its anomic character (Durkheim 1964: 91–3). It could be argued that ethnographic traditions have been obsessed by deviance rather than conformity also. Thus, the functionalist model does not look away from social problems but instead has these as their central focus. However, perhaps it is true that researchers have tended to provide more romanticised accounts of distant cultures, rather than their own societies. Nonetheless, as Room himself notes in the ethnographer’s defence, their research has tended to be very descriptive, meaning that the ideological distortion inherent in imposing a strong theoretical frame on the subject matter is less than it might have been. While this issue is part of the case for suspecting the truth of the positive evaluation of drinking rituals in village-level societies that ethnographers have put forward, it is not particularly damning. It could be argued, against Room (1984a) then, that perhaps ethnographers are correct, that the problems faced in modern societies, simply do not exist in the small-scale societies they have researched. Nonetheless, Room (1984a) proposes that an idealisation of tribal culture may be a feature of the research, over-emphasising the degree of consensus and cohesion in the alcohol-related ritual life. Where there are problems, he notes that these are typically seen as due to exogenous causes, through the collapse of a way of life through the imposition of political and economic dominance by an outside culture on the

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group, that disrupts social relations, causes ambivalence, and undermines the overall framework of the society. However, against Room’s argument it is fair to note that cultural trauma and deculturation through colonialism, and smallscale communities being drawn forcibly and rapidly into a capitalist system, are not sops, but hugely disruptive processes, and have consistently been shown to be associated with an explosion of social problems in indigenous people’s worlds (see Brody 1986). A more significant charge to lay against ethnographers is that their methods do not provide them with the capacity to capture alcohol-related harms. Epidemiologists tend to provide radically different readings of the social impact of alcohol, tending to see it as a very significant cause of morbidity, mortality as well as social problems. Ethnographic methods are primarily directed at investigating norms, while epidemiologists are mainly concerned with concrete outcomes, such as incidences of liver disease, occasions of violence, or hospitalisation. Ethnographers are also concerned with the everyday, while epidemiologists are much more concerned with the rare but significant health event, which in a small-scale society an ethnographer is likely to miss or see as unrepresentative (Room 1984a). Instead, the everyday, public pleasures of sociable drinking occasions and ritual are at the heart of observation, shaped by key informants at the centre of the community, rather than the pains, kept secret from public view and gossip. Epidemiologists, however, have a blind spot regarding ‘enchantment', being able to record healthy bodies, but not being attuned to meaning, culture, ethics and aesthetics, which anthropologists specialise in examining. Thus, while ethnographers may miss much that is relevant to population-level health issues, epidemiologists miss much that is pertinent to meaningful and satisfying ways of life. Durkheim (1915: 382) for example, noted that rituals ‘are as necessary for the well working of our moral life as our food is for the maintenance of our physical life, for it is through them that the group affirms and maintains itself’. Turner also noted the importance of the transition that is inherent in ritual life for health, explaining how ‘man grows through antistructure and conserves through structure’ (Turner 1992: 144). An alternating movement between the two is crucial, and finding the right balance is one of the most important practical tasks of any society. Liminality when well-ordered can be a profound and positive experience. It is a uniquely meaningful experience as they ‘have the mysterious power to make us feel for a moment the whole sum of life as their fulfilment and vehicle, existing only for their realisation’ (see Simmel 1997c: 232). In addition, the sense of communitas achieved in these moments reverberates through the rest of life. Turner (1967: 101) explains that the ‘one for all, all for one’ attitude of communitas is carried out of liminality, with a special tie, characterised by familiarity, ease, comradeship, outspokenness existing for the rest of life. Another source of the ‘animating’ power of liminal play is its ethic of distance from the necessary, as it has a sense of the ‘light, frivolous, effortless’, and thus a momentary experience of idyllic reality (Huizinga 1970: 7, 44).

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The most troubling suspicion that Room raises is that the literature on alcohol, both ethnographic and epidemiological, may be less based on science and rigorous methods producing reliable data, than on the symbolic politics that researchers are engaged in within the academic and broader cultural field. There is a long history of ‘problem amplification’ in health research on alcohol, sometimes portraying it as a uniquely dangerous and threatening substance. On the one hand, this is based on a general cultural background where there is a negative framing of alcohol. For example, in the case of the USA, this was based on a Puritan cultural foundation, cultural conflict between dry Protestant communities, and wet immigrant communities, along with the adoption of the issue as a social problem to own by certain social movements concerned with their advancement, than the correcting of alcohol related problems, leading ultimately to powerful temperance movements and experimentation with prohibition (see Gusfield 1986). On the other hand, concerns over funding and concerns of status in the disciplinary hierarchy shape academic priorities and interpretations. Researchers, Room explains, following Prohibition were eager to distinguish themselves from the moralism and pseudo-scientific reasoning of the temperance movement. Policy facing disciplines also tend to amplify problems, seeking to articulate the severity of the issue to capture the imagination of policy makers and funders. As Room (1984a) notes of epidemiology, it is ‘avowedly activist and oriented to the heroic: every epidemiologist carries in his or her knapsack the handle to the Broadstreet pump’. In ethnographic research, the findings of researchers may have mapped the cultural attitudes and professional prejudices that they held. The year 1930 appears to be a break point for ethnographers, marking a shift towards positive evaluations of alcohol in the cultures they were studying. Temperance was a progressive reform for the previous generation. For the cohort of academics entering the field after the end of Prohibition in the USA though, it was ‘an outdated cultural style associated with rural conservative know-nothings’, and drinking alcohol, perhaps like smoking marijuana for the baby boom generation became a pose for expressing personal freedom and mild rebelliousness (Room 1984a). In light of this charge, it is important to remind ourselves that abstinence and a profound cultural problematisation of alcohol, in historical terms, is very unusual, and the way that post-Prohibition anthropologists freed themselves from the mental straightjacket that the previous generation was in, represented an intellectual leap forward. Their positive evaluation of alcohol and emphasis of the benefits of moderation can be seen as not just a pose, finding support for their prejudices in distant cultures, but a re-discovery and confirmation of the constructive role that alcohol has played and can play in culture. Ethnographers may nonetheless have been eager to distinguish themselves from other Westerners in ‘native societies’. Missionaries had sought to distinguish themselves from local political elites by opposing items and practices that were symbolically important to them such as alcohol and other psychoactive

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substances, along with dancing, polygamy and so on. When the new generation of ethnographers arrived in turn, they distinguished themselves symbolically from the previous generation of missionaries and colonial administrators by opposing civilising missions, trying to understand rather than judge and mould local ways of life, which involved seeing the constructive role of local practices, including drinking rituals. By this, however, they may have been complicit in creating a ‘reverse firewater myth’. In summary, Room’s work throws up some useful scepticism of an idealising tendency regarding small scale societies.

Deritualisation, disenchantment and the quest for re-enchantment There might be some scepticism over the protective effects of ritual for alcohol use, considering the findings of contemporary research on drinking rituals, that tend to find that these are pathological in some way. Part of the suspicion this raises about the findings of anthropologists in non-Western contexts might simply be due to unfamiliarity with ritual though, as while it is an integral aspect of social life, it has been dethroned in modernity. It is difficult for people from contemporary, Western societies to understand ritual as it is probably not an exaggeration to say that they no longer exist for the majority, in their true sense. Historical sociologists from Durkheim and Weber, to Elias and Foucault have emphasised that deritualisation follows modernisation, with new mechanisms, such as schedules, law, institutions, the state, markets, codes of civility and so on taking the place of ritual. For example, Shilling & Mellor (2011: 17, 27–8, 33) have explained how the effervescent assemblies described by Durkheim, that are a feature of ‘traditional’ societies, involve ‘embodied intoxication’, often facilitated by the use of psychoactive substances, as a means for reproducing collectivities. Collective intoxication, where there is a lowering of the boundaries between people and an experience of sameness, is problematised in modernity however, due to its emphasis on autonomous individualism within an impersonal division of labour. Consequently, powerful psychoactive substances that undermine individuality tend to be a considerable source of anxiety and target for regulation, in contrast to potentially more moderate substances, even if they are more harmful over the long-term, such as the type of tobacco used in the West, and alcohol. Indeed, because alcohol is more suitable for collective intoxication, it was a much earlier target for prohibition in defined areas of social life, such as the workplace, and in places, society at large, than tobacco. In contrast substances which provide energy and focus, supporting a productive self, such as coffee, are favoured. In addition, social differentiation and the specialisation of different social milieus for different purposes, such as work, religion, family and leisure, concentrated collective intoxication into domains with limited connection and influence on wider social life. There are also no longer communities who are responsible for regulating collective intoxication, with legislation and

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professional groups stepping into the role, making social control highly abstract, and rituals, free floating. ‘Abnormal’ forms of embodied intoxication’ are a result of these features of modern, in contrast to traditional, small-scale societies. Embodied intoxication will fail to connect the individual to wider society, and thus will not be successful in carrying out what its traditional function was. Following this, it will expose drinkers to the risk of unregulated excessive consumption, taboo breaking as an end in itself, and the pursuit of collective experience through involvement in ultimately harmful associations (Shilling & Mellor 2011: 31–2). They explain, this could also leave individuals and collectivities exposed to egoistic forms of intoxication in which desire or escape from the devitalisation of life is pursued as an end in itself, as evident in the modern preoccupation with drug addiction. A recurring theme in sociological studies of drug use classified and experienced as highly addictive, for example, is how the search for supply dominates users’ lives. (Bourgois & Schonberg, 2009, cited in Shilling & Mellor 2011: 32) Nonetheless, ritual goes on in complex societies, but in a disrupted and diminished form. The process can be thought of as disenchantment, not primarily through the loss of myths, magic and illusion, but through the weakening role of community, tradition, ritual life, substantive values, and the age-old practices for structuring experience (Weber 1978; Adorno & Horkheimer 1997). Victor Turner (1974) was acutely aware of this process, which he captured in his contrasting concepts of the ‘liminal’ and the ‘liminoid’ (liminal-like situations, which however, are not the thing itself). In the liminoid the length of inbetweenness can be greatly extended. Communities have less hold over the proceedings than in pure liminality, as people may not be pure participants involved in the action, but detached outsiders also, a fact related to how involvement in ritual action that is not compulsory for members of a community but rather on the basis of choice for ‘individuals’. Furthermore, in-betweenness is more of an individual experience and stance than collective passage. Not only do these rituals tend to be detached from political and economic life rather than fundamental to them, they are also more associated with a critical stance against the ‘mainstream’ rather than something that aims to take the friction out of social life (Turner 1974). Indeed, typically Turner’s concept of ‘liminality’ as an aspect of rites de passage, is used in research on alcohol in modern contexts to describe drinking occasions (see Hobbs et al. 2000; Hayward & Hobbs 2007; Gerard 2004), despite the fact that the conditions for liminality in its strict sense hardly exist any longer in large, complex, contemporary societies. For example, drinking alcohol is an important aspect of rites de passage marking the transition from childhood to adulthood in many societies. Contemporary research on this shows how the liminal has been replaced by the liminoid, as the rituals that alcohol is an important aspect of that mark the

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transition to maturity, in comparison with rites de passage, as discussed by Van Gennep (1960) and Turner (1969), have been diminished in importance and banalised, paralleled by a quest by participants to experience enchantment, through trying to make something extraordinary happen, forcing the action, often through transgressive acts. Liminoid alcohol-rituals are also more individualised, as in liquid modernity (Bauman 2000) there are not solid and binding institutions or communities that the ritual can relate to, so the rites become sundered from reference to a broader community, while internally the bonds forged through drinking together are more fluid and in need of continual reaffirmation, and are also more competitive. The rituals themselves are more fluid and less structured, for example tending to lack the critical aspect of a rite of passage: the masters of ceremony. Furthermore, they are greatly extended, with the alcohol rituals repeated and ongoing over the course of adolescence and early adulthood, and perhaps for the entire life course, rather than being a single or number of significant occasions. Diminished, mundanisation The grand rituals marking transitions are decreasing in importance (Pedersen 1994), and the role of rites of passage have been diminished, as transition and the coordination of people in time now largely takes place through clock time rather than through natural rhythms of nature and maturation, marked and structured by rituals (Zerubavel 1981; Elias 2007; Gusfield 1987). For example, restriction of access to alcohol is now less through the admission of initiands into a previously closed aspect of the life by the group, than universalistic and individualising legal restrictions based on chronological age, often implicitly and explicitly linked with legal considerations of things associated in the public’s minds with intoxication: the ability to give sexual consent and holding a person responsible for criminal acts (Paglia & Room 1999). Nonetheless, alcohol does retain a symbolic temporal role in signalling the passage between different orders of time, from work time, to leisure time, and to home time, just as coffee on Monday morning, or a coffee after a lunch break in which a drink has been had, signals the start or the restarting of work. Gusfield (1987) draws on Goffman’s (1974) concept of ‘keying’ to explain how drinks signal the meaning of a segment of time in this manner. Goffman, in asides, and in brief, noted how his research was specifically relevant only to a certain historical society, and by no means applies to human society at large (Goffman 1959: 236–7), and a historical and macro-sociological perspective, lacking in general in Goffman’s work (Kuzmics 1991), could focus on the process from ‘rites of passage’ to ‘keying’ as one of the features of modernisation. As Gusfield (1987: 82) notes, ‘The ability to shift moods and frames is daily demanded of us in modern life’ due to the separation of time into specialised sections with their own function in modern, rationalised, organisational societies, such as home, work and play. ‘What the rationalistic, modern impulse has demanded is that the hedonistic, the playful, the irresponsible, the non-serious not be permitted

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to enter the domain of the “serious” areas of making a living and earning a livelihood’ (Gusfield 1987: 75). Thus, alcohol is a symbol, as well as a psychoactive substance or source of nutrition, and in this capacity, it marks the end of work and the commencement of play, signalling a moment of cultural remission, of relaxation of social controls and expectations, less concern with time and schedules, and acceptance of play and expressiveness, and lower hierarchies, and greater sharing, sympathy and interest in others. Consequently, the role of alcohol in marking transition has been profanised and made mundane. It is not only the mundane use of drinks to ‘key’ transitions in types of time, but it has been noted that in youth culture, even ‘spectacular’ parties have become a part of routine, as ‘going to parties on a regular basis is part of a hedonistic lifestyle based on a legitimate striving for pleasure by consumption of (luxury) goods’ (Demant & Stergaard 2007: 519–20). Individualised Traditional rites de passage involving alcohol have increasingly given way to more individualistic and democratic rites, where old ritual structures are reformulated as ‘modern reflexive individualization rituals’ (Beccaria & Sande 2003: 99). To capture this Beccaria & Sande (2003: 115) coined the term ‘rite of life project’ to describe the drinking rituals of young people making the transition from school, to university and careers. In liquid modernity (Bauman 2000) the solid, enduring associations of kin, Church, political community and so on have been melted and dissolved. It was in these associations, whether in the form of the cycle of religious holidays, saint’s days, or the cycle of community festivals perhaps linked with the harvest, or the initiation into an institution such as university or the army, that drinking occasions were embedded (Beccaria & Sande 2003; 101). Max Weber (2005b) noted the historical process where status groups diminished in importance against the more fluid constellation of class in modernity, with Beck (2000) arguing that an even more fluid constellation: ‘risk’, has increasingly replaced the former two types of association. People today are engaged in individual ‘life projects’, whereby they manage the risks they face in forging a personal identity, and in divining paths in education, careers and relationships, independent of family or a status group (Beccaria & Sande 2003: 109–10). Consequently ‘a distinct rite de passage towards adulthood is no longer dominant’, characterised in part by established rituals that drinking is a part of, as authoritative, encompassing communities largely do not exist to structure and enforce this (Demant & Stergaard 2007: 519), and the rituals involving alcohol that take place, increasingly do not refer to a broader community, or even family, with the occasions more focused on education-based peer groups and global youth culture (519), as young people in their peer groups, celebrate and organise gatherings themselves, devising their own transition rituals, away from teachers, parents and other authorities (Beccaria & Sande 2003: 112), and alcohol is used in a more experimental manner, with rules for drinking

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invented by the peer group itself. As a result, rituals are largely self-constructed by actors who have a reflexive detachment from them (Demant & Stergaard 2007: 519; Butler 1993; Northcote 2006), but who nonetheless tend to draw on old ritual forms, often not understanding their actual origins (see Sande 2002 on the Norwegian practice of Russefeiring). What is at stake in these rituals is moreover not so much the successful collective passing of a trial than acquiring cultural capital through performance (Beccaria & Sande 2003: 113–14). More fluid, less structured Emile Durkheim long ago identified liberal modernity as a source of pathology, because of its emphasis on freedom and choice, or in other words, the promise of escaping all limits (Durkheim 2008: 177). For him the pathology of modern social structures was the loss of limits, resulting in ‘[a] malady of infiniteness which torments our age’ (173). Researchers of ‘rites of life projects’ involving alcohol, have noted how involvement is based on choice rather than obligation, with participants reflexive about what rituals they engage in, and how they do this (Demant & Stergaard 2007: 520). Giddens (2006: 259, 262) has identified the spread of a new type of social bond: the ‘pure relationship’, where ‘[i]n contrast to close personal ties in traditional contexts, the pure relationship is not anchored in external conditions of social or economic life – it is, as it were, free floating’, and continuation is based on the utility received from it and the relative amount of effort that has to be put into it. Because they exist only for their own sake, they are more unstable, and threatened by anything going wrong. ‘Commitment’ comes to replace external anchors (Giddens 2006: 261), and so these fluid bonds need to be continually reaffirmed. Consuming alcohol collectively, getting intoxicated together, drinking in the same way, participating in collective drinking games plays a part in these relationships, as these acts symbolise commitment to the drinking occasion and to the group (Demant & Stergaard 2007: 533). ‘These fragile friendships can be seen as a fluid sociality which constantly demands attention and reassurance. Partying, then, is also a way to reaffirm friendship and is therefore an integrated part of adolescents’ everyday life’ (517). Demant & Stergaard (2007) understand this dynamic through the concept: ‘neo-tribes’, which are different from and even more fluid than the quasi-communities of subcultures, and are instead ‘more loosely organised and are therefore well suited for socialities that are local, fragile and not necessarily as conspicuous in their form and taste as subcultures’ (521). These are not encompassing identities, but offer temporary escapes into an alternative form of sociality, and can exist easily alongside other identities, lack significant moral obligations to or expectations from a community, are fluid, and can be plugged into once the basic codes and etiquette are learned (Bennett 1999; Maffesoli 1996). The rites create fluid communities, holding them together under the constant pressure of dissolving. A number of researchers have outlined various techniques that can be used within these to sustain solidarities. Alcohol is useful for its

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ability to promote an ordered disordering, which can help to the ‘make things happen’ (Measham 2004; Banister & Piacentini 2008). One of the principle techniques, thus is extreme drinking, where participants attempt to get as drunk as possible, which determinedly manufactures a shared experience that a collective identity can be grounded in (Banister & Piacentini 2008: 314). These are practices that are not necessarily enjoyable in their own right, but are helpful for demonstrating commitment to the group, as well as forcing the action to create a good story to tell about a ‘legendary night’ that was had, based on incidents that are somehow embarrassing and shocking (Banister & Piacentini 2008: 314–16; Haydock 2015). In addition to producing a significant experience, alcohol is useful for levelling rank through intoxication combined with transformations of normal status through dressing up, dancing, physical feats and horseplay (Goulding 2011: 1447). Groups of friends may have their own specific elements to their drinking rituals, such as peculiar drinking games which have to be learned by new members, and who will have to suffer an initiation into them. There are also pre-and post-drinking rituals such as collectively getting ready for the night out, and afterwards there is the eating of hangover foods, discussing the nights events as it is collectively reconstructed. A critical feature of rites de passage are the masters of ceremonies, who tend to be elders, members of the community who have already passed through these rites, who guide the initiands through their experience. Rites of life projects lack this feature, instead characterised by communities within peer groups of the young, based on their own codes and rules, with their drinking-rituals needing to be enacted by the participants themselves (Beccaria & Sande 2003: 110, 115). Demant & Stergaard (2007: 526, 528, 533) show how this is done in house parties for example through ‘zoning’, a concept that is similar to Goffman’s ‘keying’, which signals a change in the meaning of a space as well as ownership of it, achieved through alcohol consumption and collective intoxication. Achieving ‘flow’, through a narrowing and limiting of attention, by centring it on a specific focus, is an important aspect of the liminoid, and one important technique for producing this is drugs and alcohol, which limit awareness to the most immediate and relevant cues (Csikszentmihalyi 1996; Turner 1974: 49). As Turner (1974: 87) explains: Consciousness must be narrowed, intensified, beamed in on a limited focus of attention. ‘Past and future must be given up’ – only now matters. How is this to be done? Here the conditions that normally prevail must be ‘simplified’ by some definition of situational relevance. What is irrelevant must be excluded. Physiological means to simplify experience are drugs (including alcohol) which do not so much ‘expand’ consciousness as limit and intensify awareness. intensification is the name of the game. It is for this reason that alcohol is difficult to separate from contemporary rites of life projects, as it plays a role that is not easily substituted (Banister & Piacentini 2008).

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The masters of ceremony that could be said to exist are highly abstract. For example, public expectations as a type of ‘generalised other’ (Mead 1967), has been shown to strongly shape the beliefs of young people over how they should behave, for example in college feeling the need to fully immerse in the ‘uni experience’ (Banister & Piacentini 2008). The alcohol industry also plays this role, through promoting the ritualistic role of alcohol in hedonistic lifestyles, and through providing spaces, such as in ‘vertical drinking’ establishments that implicitly promote high levels of consumption (Banister & Piacentini 2008: 317). The result of all of this appears to be less controlled and higher levels of alcohol consumption, as in the absence of parents, elders and other authority figures guiding a public rite of passage that is socially significant in marking inclusion in a community, and that the young engage in, the young form their own ‘shadow’ rituals involving alcohol (Henriksen et al. 2011). In this context, beyond the risk of gross intoxication, there is persistent concern over abusive initiation ceremonies by the young, where they manage inclusion and exclusion of social circles, which rather than producing communitas result in a diabolical counterpart to this (Johnson 2011). In anthropological theory, the masters of ceremony have an antithesis in the figure of the trickster (Szakolczai 2003). Both figures have the characteristic of testing others, but the difference is that the master of ceremony is ‘careful’ that the test can be successfully navigated, while the trickster does not and cannot care, and because of this, perhaps even hopes for failure. The trickster is also the exact inverse of the spirit of communitas as they are narcissistic-egoists and the embodiment of anti-sociality, being unable to be gracious and be grateful. It could be the case that hazing rituals and their cruelties, directed by elders lacking true care for their initiands, can be well understood through this figure of the trickster. In the case of educational institutions, Butler (1993) has argued for the importance of having officially guided initiation rituals in place that can reduce the reliance by the young on self-organised rituals involving high levels of alcohol consumption and associated dangerous behaviours, to satisfy the need for initiation into communities in the in-between phase of youth. There is also a danger that drinking occasions become replete with the characteristics of tricksters. The trickster is a cross cultural archetype, appearing in stories and literature, and is often associated with alcohol (as shown by Weiss 2012). In such stories tricksters are capable of committing monstrous acts, because they are an a-moral figure, capable of violence, preying on others and causing destruction, because they simply do not care. They are also an entertainer and a source of comedy and laughter, and capable of provoking hilarity, because tricksters naturally trick, as they seek to promote discord and disorder through hijinks and pranks that turn people into fools. Drunkenness promotes these features as it unleashes the unconscious, reducing the inhibitions, restraints and thought of consequences that hold desire and impulse in check. Tricksters are also prone to being fooled and cheated, as drunkenness reduces the trickster’s own guile. They are self-destructive fools that get themselves into trouble, becoming victims, hopelessly finding themselves in terrible and ridiculous

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situations, because they are stupid and inept, unable to be responsible, and are slaves to infantile desire. It is possible that these tropes in literature apply well to examples of drinking without masters of ceremony. The basis for controlling drinking occasions has shifted from ritual and its masters of ceremony (or trickster leaders) to government policy, moving from informal to official controls. As we will see in more detail in later chapters, this form of control is ambivalent, as it involves (in our own neoliberal era, though it has long been a feature of alcohol policy) a contradictory process of liberalisation and responsibilisation, as there is a dual policy of liberalisation of regulations on the alcohol industry, combined with promotion by the state in tandem with the drinks industry of standards of how the individual should drink and the idea that it the responsibility of the individual to guide their own behaviour, ‘drinking responsibly’ (Hackley et al. 2008; Haydock 2014; Hobbs et al. 2005). Thus, alongside deritualisation, there is process towards instrumentalising and promoting liminality, producing a formlessness in drinking occasions, with the ‘night time economy’ the most prominent example of this. Rites take place in a loosely regulated context too, characterised by real-world liminality. The fluidity and anonymity of the city, and its sense as a space where the exciting and the unexpected can occur, facilitates the liminal play. In contrast, traditional pubs, as their name ‘locals’ suggests, represent a homelike personal space (Northcote 2006: 6). Extended Rites of passage lead to a change in identity, but there is not an explicit and structured adult role for young people to enter into, following the transitions that are marked by contemporary rituals involving alcohol (Demant & Stergaard 2007: 519). Since the ‘invention of childhood’ in the early modern period (Aries 1965), the process of becoming an adult has been detached from a specific rite of passage, and greatly extended, and made more problematic. This is through greater anxiety over actions that could threaten future adult status, as well as over the tentative moves to adopt adult behaviours and the appropriateness of their timing (Paglia and Room 1999). Rites of life projects are now repeated and ongoing over the course of adolescence and early adulthood, through passing through a range of events marking incremental accruals of status, such as getting a driver’s licence, graduating high school and university, reaching the age of sexual consent, being able to legally drink for the first time, voting, and so on, but with none decisively marking one as an adult (Northcote 2006). Unlike the rites de passage discussed by Van Gennep (1960) that take place over a defined time period, the entirety of adolescence, young adulthood, and beyond can be seen as the betwixt and between phase of the rite of passage, between the moment of emancipation from the authority of parents and the education system, and ‘settling down’ into a stable role (Paglia & Room 1999). Northcote (2006) draws on the work of James Clyde Mitchell (1966) to demonstrate how the psychoactive substance-related rites of contemporary

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youth, such as clubbing, are shaped by the new reality of the extension of youth. Urban relationships can be classified into three types: categorical, structural and personal. Categorical relationships are typical of urban settings where strangers use standardised, visible signs, as ways of signifying their status and expectations for how they should be interacted with. They are way of structuring interactions between strangers in the unstructured setting of the urban milieu. Typical examples of these cues are dress, idioms, accent and style. Urban nightlife scenes are of course largely structured through outward characteristics that indicate various statuses, such as insiders of a scene, sexual availability and so on. Assuming categorical identities assists young adults to assume quasi-adult identities in their transition process, by adopting a ready-made style that allows them to plug into a non-child world, and by engaging in certain adult activities, such as gaining access venues with an age restriction, drinking alcohol, and pursuing sexual relationships and conquests. It is also essential in the fluid contexts of nightlife, as ‘the nightclub is essentially a room full of strangers who evaluate one another based on first impressions’ (Northcote 2006: 7). Asserting identity in metropolitan, quasi-anonymous settings is anxiety provoking however, as it is a Goffmanian context where performances can fail and presentation of self can be misread or rejected. Alcohol, drugs and cigarettes thus play an important role in reducing stress by structuring interactions, as well as reducing selfconsciousness in themselves (5–9). Friends and peers in addition offer a relief from categorical relationships, which are alienating because they are abstract, and hence awkward, anxiety-provoking, lonely and insecure (9). ‘Structural relationships’ are those of work, family and education, linked with institutional positions, and that are governed by strong expectations, with defined norms. Young people are engaged in a transition from the structural role of a child within a family and the educational system, to the assuming of a career, and likely an enduring family relationship, though this is a drawn-out process in contemporary societies (Northcote 2006: 5). Over the long term, these liminal flirtations with an adult identity will, for most participants, give way to a more durable identity rooted in the structural ‘adult’ roles of partners, careers and parents, at which point the appeal of clubbing will lose its importance. (Northcote 2006: 5) Personal relationships of friends and peers in a partying group, that are the foremost source of identity in youth thus faces competition from structural relationships of enduring romances, career responsibilities and educational ambitions. Youth as a period of transition may not, but for the great majority of people does however come to an end. While drinking rituals provide a means for young people to deal with as well as enjoy their betwixt and between state as stalled adults, the enthusiasm which they may have shown in their revels is

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linked with the acceptance that it a temporary state, albeit one of greatly lengthened time than in the past, where the much greater responsibilities and expectations that will be a feature of their futures do not apply (Banister & Piacentini 2008: 314). Many young people drink in the hedonistic manner they do because they believe they are in a special period in their life, such as college, where they have freedom that they will never possess again (Crawford & Novack 2006: 2; Northcote 2006: 1). The explicit position of drinking in the extended life transition of youth explains why people generally do not continue to participate in the night-time economy, or club scene beyond their mid-twenties, despite the social capital that they have previously usefully accrued there (Thornton 1995), or the hedonistic pleasure, playful experience, and quasi-sacred experiences of unity they have had there (Malbon 1999). The cause of disengagement is the accretion of structural identities, which over the course of people’s twenties usually supplants the categorical identities and personal relationships that were a feature of their transitional period of youth. Those who remain engaged in the scene do so not on the basis of a personal liminal status, but for momentary cathartic relief from structural roles or as a part of an established identity in the night-life scene (Northcote 2006: 10–11). Quest for the extraordinary Perhaps associated with the fact that rites of life project are in many respects less profound than rites de passage, participants in the former appear to have a strong desire to experience types of enchantment, through making something extraordinary happen, so that, as they might say, they have had a ‘legendary night’ (Haydock 2015). Such extraordinary experiences are associated with transgression, where people carry out activities forbidden in everyday life (Lalander 1997: 35). Liminality allows things that are not possible in the highly controlled context of everyday life to happen. Rituals producing liminality allow behaviour that would be otherwise prohibited because of its polluting and taboo nature, due to their ambiguity, and difficulty in categorising (Douglas 1966). Rites of life projects are often carnivalesque as a result, where desires that are normally suppressed are expressed, where there is transgression of normal codes and restrictions of civility, in a ‘world inside out’, with inverted hierarchies, intimacy and open interaction, profanity, a celebration of the grotesque body: its orifices and fluids and natural functions (Bakhtin 1984: 8). The night-time economy, alcohol-based night-time entertainment zones where many of the drinking rituals of the young play out, match the carnivalesque and liminal well. They are open, fluid spaces, where the normal divisions between people are lowered, where the emphasis shifts to the body, and which are attractive, as they are where the action is, but are also disturbing and a source of disgust, with nightclubs a place of pleasure, but also ‘horrible and meaningless’ (Haydock 2015; Bancroft 2009: 58), with the outcome of drinking also often repulsive to participants (Haydock 2015: 6).

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Through this, nights to remember (and also to forget) are certainly produced, meeting the desire for unforeseen, surprising, novel experiences (Demant & Stergaard 2007: 533). As Haydock (2015: 5) relays for his respondents: ‘the best thing about drinking is that “unusual” things happen to make the night “legendary”’. Many researchers have noted a deliberate and striking loss of control, perhaps to the extent of the drinking occasion being characterised by ‘complete and utter disorder’ (see Lalander 1997: 34; Haydock 2015). This appears to represent a transformation in drinking occasions, as while signs of drunkenness were taboo in drinking occasions in Southern, traditionally winedrinking countries, with even young people in these societies today, who are strongly influenced by global youth culture and contemporary Northern European and Anglo-Saxon drinking norms, appear to carry a legacy of the past of their society, and still tend not engage in extreme intoxication (Beccaria & Sande 2003). But, even in societies such as Ireland and the UK, which have high levels of ‘binge drinking’ and drinking to intoxication today, ‘traditional’ drinkers avoided visible sign of intoxication (Haydock 2015: 4). A part of the hunting for extreme experiences is a drive to experience ‘superiority and sovereignty’, of ‘invincibility’ (Lalander 1997: 38–9), through a sense of ‘breaking loose’, by being a part of a group, who engage in shared practices such drinking, toasting, singing, and in particular transgressive acts, in a celebration of the ‘perverted, deviant and obscene’ (Lalander 1997: 39). A process of collective meaning making then follows the next day, to recount the night, and establish what had happened, to develop a collective myth of the trials that were braved (Lalander 1997: 39). This is not just something that has been manufactured by the alcohol industry (see Brain and Parker 1997; Measham 2004) as a way of wrapping their products in exciting and compelling meanings. It could be speculated that the source relates back to the process of rationalisation, as our culture has an unprecedented level of taboos, through the ever increasing expectations for self-control and consideration of others in the civilising process, and the rising thresholds of shame and embarrassment, with Lalander’s (1997: 38) interpretation of the basis of extreme behaviours while intoxicated being that it offers an escape from otherwise heavy expectations of conduct and self-surveillance. It is a Romantic reaction to rationality, where in contrast to conformity, discipline and politeness, there is an emphasis on self-expression, and self-exploration through intoxication (see Gusfield 1987: 86). It could furthermore be speculated that the search for limit-experiences is linked with the process of disenchantment, which the deritualisation of social life is an aspect of. Rituals have been emptied of their content, to a considerable extent, no longer linked to the transcendence of self through a reference to encompassing groups that participants are initiated into. This creates a problem of finding meaning for the finiteness of human life, experienced in awareness over the ebbing of youth, and that even good things and times cannot last forever. A reference to death tends not to be an explicit element of these rituals (Hage 2016), and nor is it a part of the highly rationalised, predictable and controlled societies that is their

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context, in which death is removed behind the scenes of everyday life. Thus, the risk involved in becoming intoxicated, and the dangerous behaviours that are engaged in, allows participants to explore death and mortality, and manage anxiety over this fundamental part of existence, explaining part of the link between the attraction of danger that heavy drinking involves (Beccaria 2003: 109–10; Paglia & Room 1999).

Power The final source of doubt over the conclusion of anthropological research on alcohol in small-scale societies, that ritual offers a type of immunity to social pathologies related to alcohol, is the charge that these accounts tend to ignore power. In terms of the previous two claims, while scepticism is healthy, it seems that the claims of anthropologists of alcohol carry weight. By virtue of their ethnographic method however, there is an additional difficulty that anthropologists face: the lack of a macro-level perspective, examining how broad political and economic forces, and particularly dynamics of power shape the local contexts that they are concerned with. Towards a political economy of the anthropology of alcohol Anthropology tends to focus on the local, in individual case-studies, local cultural patterns, and how the norms surrounding alcohol in these separate cases regulates its consumption. In contrast, it has not focused sufficiently on global politicaleconomic process that shape drinking culture (Singer 1986: 113, 115). The assumption of the ‘boundedness’ of local cultures and their independence from broader global processes however is problematic. The assumption of independence that such research is based on is quite unsatisfactory though. Singer (1986) notes that European expansion has impacted almost every part of the globe for the past half millennium, and argues that rather than separate cases, the local cultures that anthropologists have studied have long been drawn into imperialist, capitalist (as well as communist) orders, and the patterns of drinking in these cultures would have been dramatically moulded by this encounter. We may note ourselves that globalisation is of much longer provenance than this, with centralising and expansionist states a feature of global history since the Axial Age civilisations. Furthermore, ideal-type generalisation, such as the ones that anthropologists have made about small-scale, isolated cultures, are difficult to avoid in analytical work. State formation is a process and its extent is a matter of degree, with the level of political centralisation and incorporation of local cultures into a political centre, a relative thing, and it would be difficult indeed to find a pure case of a ‘traditional society’. On balance then it is important to note that there is a lacuna in much anthropological research on alcohol, while also not throwing the analytical baby out with the critical bathwater. Despite the limitation in anthropologist’s focus, their finding that small-scale, relatively isolated societies have less pathologies related to alcohol, is important.

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Their key finding is that in non-Western cultures the use of alcohol predates contact with Western colonial powers apart from in North America and Oceania. Despite sharing alcohol use as a characteristic, ethnographic research, as we have already seen, has shown that pathological consequences of alcohol use are rare or absent in these societies, and in fact plays an important role in social integration, in contrast to what is often the case in the metropoles. They argue that this is because it is ritually bound, structured, with great informal social control, embedded in a network of relationships, and overall conforming to the basic model of use laid out in the previous two chapters of this book (Douglas 1987; Heath 2000; Heath 1958; Sangree 1962; Netting 1964). Political and economic anthropology meets political medicine While this is a political finding in itself, for the way that it reflects the character of complex societies through comparison with a somewhat strange and different ‘other’, there is a need to go further, and link anthropological findings with a political economy of alcohol. Otherwise there is a risk that ethnographic research could be an ally to the ‘prisoners of the proximate’, i.e. apolitical, a-contextual perspectives that have been characteristic of clinical research. Anthropology, through its micro level and particularistic focus risks having the same conservative political perspective as psychological and medical research which ignores political-economic factors that shape the context of drinking, and that instead find the roots of problems within the individual or immediate social networks. Much research is then, because of its narrow focus, though perhaps not deliberately, ideologically conservative and supportive of the status quo, where social pathologies relating to alcohol are medicalised, seen as rooted in individual or family level characteristics, thereby depoliticising it, creating a treatment industry, and increasing the hegemony of therapeutic, a-political modes of understanding (Singer 1986: 116, 125). The advantage of the growing importance of social epidemiology has been the expansion of questions of the basis of health away from individual and proximate factors, to institutional contexts, the quality of historical moments and social pathways.

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Proto states and potlatches

The monopoly mechanism and permanent liminality The aim of the second part of this book will be to attempt to build a bridge between the local contexts that anthropologists research, and the civilisational process of state formation, which has had a dramatic impact on these local contexts. Many groups, as we have seen possess a cultural immunity to social pathologies related to alcohol through the way that rituals order drinking occasions, by enclosing their liminal character, not only minimising harmful effects, but promoting constructive outcomes. Modernity has seen a fantastic reversal in the understanding of alcohol, gaining a reputation as being integral to a range of social pathologies. The source of this reversal, is due to modernity being an age where the out of the ordinary becomes permanent, which has radically altered the understanding and use of alcohol. Permanent liminality is characterised by liminality escaping its ritual bounds, and instead, social life in general becomes marked by formlessness and flux (Szakolczai 2000; 2003). One of the sources of permanent liminality is the state, in spite of the fact that it could be seen as the sine qua non of civilisation. State formation, produces an experience of permanent liminality, as states exist in a world of permanent external threats because they concentrate surpluses in fixed locations, acting as a stimulus to warfare and a temptation to human predators, producing persistent crisis experiences (Roberts 1997: 35). Socio-political units over the course of civilising processes engage in elimination contests against each other, where they are compelled to permanently fight to increase their power vis-a-vis other units, or risk becoming subservient, dependent, absorbed or annihilated by them. The central authority of states thus engages in a project to internally pacify their territory to facilitate greater effectiveness in the face of external threats, and to underpin its own external belligerence against rivals. To achieve this, the central authority of states asserts and imposes a dual monopoly of violence and taxation (Elias 2000). The monopoly mechanism is central to understanding how alcohol use has been shaped historically by political and economic factors. It created a dual imperative for states to police the social life and the ritual practices of

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communities within its borders, and to seek to maximise revenue through the promotion of economic development (including promoting the alcohol industry) and taxation of alcohol. The result was to establish a dynamic that promoted permanent liminality with respect to drinking culture, due to the role that alcohol has played in the centralisation of states and the growth of increasingly large, internally pacified and externally belligerent and competitive units. The monopoly mechanism drives a simultaneous civilising and decivilising process. It has a subversive effect on the social order, as while state formation drives the civilising process, by creating internally pacified territories, in which deeper and longer interdependencies can develop due to the greater stability to social life (Elias 2000), there are significant parallel decivilising processes, with the critical one being the growth of permanent liminality (Szakolczai 2000). In the liminality that is an aspect of rite de passage, the order of things: roles, hierarchies, norms, normal frameworks of understanding, networks of reciprocity are dissolved, in a ritual setting, to prepare initiands for taking on a new identity, and re-entering the social order. In permanent liminality however, the order of things comes to be permanently in a state of dissolution, as it is continuously undermined through the state’s pursuit of security and resources.

Civilising processes: centralisation The central dynamic of a civilising process is the transition from the predominance of centrifugal to centripetal forces socio-politically, as rather than the erosion of central authority, large dominions and institutions, centralisation, expansion and consolidation set in. Increasingly large, internally pacified and externally belligerent societies with internal civilising processes emerged in a process that is essentially the movement from small, fragmented and weakly integrated political unities, to the large, centralised states of modernity (Elias 2000: 235). From the late Middle Ages, there was an increasing monopolisation of violence and taxation by the central authorities of Western socio-political units, starting in train the eventual movement towards absolutism. In this process, instead of fighting with difficulty against nobles, the central ruler became a monopoly controller of the economic and military resources of the whole kingdom (Elias 2000: 188, 259, 346). Once the process towards monopolisation occurred, it became an engine that drove itself. However, the question is what was the initial source of it? As we will see in the following section, a highly competitive society essentially based on feasting and fighting between warbands appears to have become a feature of different societies, due to a quickening of the pace of economic life. In such eras, there is on the one hand, significant resources available (with alcohol being an important example of such a good) for an array of actors to make claims for status by distributing them among followers, and there is limited control over the use of violence in social competition. The integrity of the social group will thus be based on the central ruler’s fighting ability and ability to reward, and inspire affection and loyalty among his followers.

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Alcohol potlatches In the point of transition in civilising process from relatively stable and enclosed small-scale societies, to somewhat larger proto states in which potlatches play a key role, a powerful decivilising process appears, involving a move from a socially benign type of ritual life, to a type of ritual based on mimetic desire, that has the risk of a descent into violence. Where the monopoly mechanism is poorly established the central ruler is weak, possessing limited power and low levels of authority over vassals. Supposed subordinates, due to the low level of monopolisation, possess an independent capacity to use violence to promote their own interests, and have an independent ability to raise finances to fund their political ambitions, producing a disintegrative tendency, as there is a constant threat of separation from the centre (Elias 2000: 202, 233, 291). This is evident in feudal societies for example in the capacity of local rulers to tax alcohol, and in how different centres claimed the authority to tax. What power and authority the central ruler did possess lay in their capacity as an army leader in defence and conquest, as they had to fight continuously to, on the one hand defend against external threats, and on the other conquer new land. Links of service were maintained in this way, as in victory they could grant land to vassals. In contrast, in times of peace they tended to have to offer concessions to maintain these links, weakening their personal power in the process. Thus, in times of peace the tendency was for the power of the central ruler to diminish (Elias 2000: 203–7). However, Elias’s account requires an addition, as in weakly centralised states rulers had a type of ritual they could draw on to maintain the unity of their territory and band also. These are potlatches. In previous chapters, we have discussed rites de passage to understand how alcohol is used in small-scale societies. Potlatches are a type of ritual, that are related to, but that serve a quite distinct role to rites de passage, where social competition is considerably more important than integration. These rituals are important to this study, as they represent a stage of transition from small-scale societies towards centralised states with an established administrative apparatus, focused on diplomatic and military tasks, generating and raising revenue, and internally pacifying its own territory. Potlatches are characteristic of ‘proto states’, not yet possessing established institutional structures, and still relying on direct personal relationships between rulers and ruled, expressed through gift relations and ritual. Potlatches where alcohol play a central role seem to have been closely related to the maintenance of a ruler’s authority, and also early rites of royal inauguration (Enright 1996: 17). These rituals, hence, have great relevance as ‘it is, ultimately, a question about the nature of authority and the origins of the state in central and Western Europe’ (Enright 1996: 70), and beyond.

The potlatch in Bronze and Iron Age Europe Alcohol has a significant function in the context of early state formation as a means of maintaining links of service between leaders and their people. As Heath (2000: 185) notes,

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During the early days of civilisation, the production and distribution of beverage alcohol appears to have been an important part of the process by which emerging elites expanded their control over craft production, established symbols, and created and manipulated surpluses. Because of their irregular availability and scarcity value, such drinks took on diacritical symbolic functions as a new way to define status, and they were strategically used by elites to differentiate themselves. This pattern recurs cross-culturally. For example, it can be seen in early NearEastern civilisation, Egypt, the Levant, ancient China and Japan, in African kingdoms and in American civilisations such as the Incan Empire (Heath 2000: 118, 185). In the last example of the Incas, there were ‘special breweries where selected “Virgins of the Sun” (young women dedicated to serve the Inca himself) lived together and produced chicha with which he rewarded successful warriors and other leaders’ (44). In other societies where alcohol is not the predominant psychoactive substance, other substances than alcohol were significant, for instance kola in parts of Africa, which was distributed to clients and dependents as a means of establishing status (Lovejoy 1995: 111–12). The following section will focus largely on Iron Age Europe, and the role of alcohol in the establishment and maintenance of political authority. As a symbolically and ritually significant item, it makes sense that it would be adopted as material for the ritual integration of larger social units of warbands and kingdoms. Rituals where the reciprocity between a leader and his following, and the status of each within the gathering were dramatised, largely through the symbolic use of alcohol seem to have been characteristic of Iron Age culture at large, and widespread among Indo-European peoples (Enright 1996: 17, 36). The practice seems to have had great persistence, with a long line of continuity between Archaic Mediterranean cultures, the Hallstatt period and Gaelic Ireland and Scandinavia on the periphery of Europe, where it survived after it had been displaced by more developed state structures on continental Europe following the Dark Ages (154). Perhaps the model was even older than this however, as archaeological evidence of the drinking equipment associated with alcohol potlatches shows that it may have stretched back to the Urnfield period, and perhaps into the Late Neolithic (Arnold 1999: 71–2, 84). In these rituals alcohol was a central symbol of aristocratic status, and particularly kingship Homeric literature provides a good picture of this phenomenon, as set in the Dark Ages of the ancient world, we can see through it how ‘access to wine and the ability to provide ostentatious feasts were important levers of political power, such as in the Homeric heroes ‘feasts at equal feasts’, forming alliances and securing the following of his own warrior band’ (Sherratt 1995b: 19). MacLachlan (1993) shows how the concept of charis (grace) dominated the life of Archaic Age of Greece, and how prior to the polis, it was the central principle that bound people together. It can be defined as pleasure of a social nature, based on the reciprocal giving of pleasure (MacLachlan 1993: 1–5, 7). As can be seen from Homer’s Odyssey, feasting was central to peace and good order,

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as ‘[p]articipating in an “equal feast” was a sign of taking one’s place in the orderly, “just” arrangement of heroic society’ (20). This model of social organisation waned through the emergence of greater social complexity and strengthening of state institutions with the rise of the polis (Dodds 1951) and ecumenic empires however (Voegelin 1974). The importance of alcohol-potlatches can be seen outside of the boundaries of these advanced Mediterranean societies, in Celto-Germanic Europe (Heath 2000: 118, 185), with pictures of it in literature in Irish and Welsh legends (which preserved significant material from earlier continental Celtic society), and in the Norse sagas and in Beowulf after Germanic tribes had imitated the model from their Celtic forbearers (Sherratt 1995b: 19). Examples of aristocratic alcohol potlatches can be seen for instance in Old Irish manuscripts such as Mesce Uladh (Intoxication of the Ulstermen) (Molloy 2002: 10), and also in a rich archaeological record. Alcohol was important politically in Celtic society in maintaining the sovereignty of the chief, and the fabric of the political order at large. The chief’s sovereignty depended on the support of his retainers, and his very survival depended on his warband, and personal bodyguard who were committed to protect him over all else (Arnold 1999: 75, 78–9, 81). Royal authority was maintained through dispensing gifts that the follower could not match, with clientship established through patronage (Enright 1996: 20–1, 144). Key to this was the chief’s ability to provide feasts where he would distribute food, but most importantly drink. The distribution of alcohol and heavy drinking at feasts expressed and reinforced bonds of dependency and allegiance between the warrior elite and the chief’s clients, as well as acting as a gift that was returned to them in reciprocity for their service (Arnold 1999: 81; Malcolm 1986: 10; Molloy 2002: 14; Enright 1996: 148). The entire dynamic of alcohol potlatches was based on expressing in-group solidarity and differences in rank simultaneously. This was done through gathering in a special ritual space, and the organisation of that space. The royal hall was where social honour was bestowed, and where the material manifestations of this such as the giving of gifts, honours and land occurred (Enright 1996: 5). The centrality of alcohol to this can be seen in how royal halls were called a ‘mead hall’ (Enright 1996: 16). For example, the ‘main banqueting hall in Tara, home of the High Kings of Ireland, was known as Tech Midchúarda, “the house of the mead circuit”’ (Molloy 2002: 13), and in Beowulf the royal hall Heorot is called a ‘medohea’ (mead hall), and the path to it a ‘medostig’. A victory was referred to as the winning of mead seats in a hall (‘medosetla ofteah’), and battle wounds as payments for mead (Enright 1996: 95), and the reward, of feasting in the great hall was described as their ‘mead’. In-group solidarity was expressed in this space through the retinue of the chief feasting in a circle, or in several circles, facing a central drinking vessel, which was a common cup, and cauldron that was a common source. However, rank was simultaneously expressed by the chief and the highest-ranking men sitting in the centre (Arnold 1999: 73, 75).

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The equipment used in alcohol potlatches was also important for the simultaneous expression of inclusion and status. Alcohol and luxury drinking vessels were a sign of high status, according to Arnold (1999), representing ‘the acme of aristocratic prestige and self-representation’ (135); for example, huge bronze cauldrons with a volume of 500 litres imported from Mediterranean civilisations and elaborate drinking horns (Enright 1996: 134–5). In Irish legends, ‘Chonchobar, King of Ulster, had at Emain Macha a beer vat known as the “iron chasm” into which a hundred fillings went every evening, but which could satisfy all the warriors of Ulster at one sitting’ (Malcolm 1986: 1). In terms of material culture, the importance of this lever of power can be seen in the archaeological record in the graves of Bronze and Iron Age Northern Europe. Elaborately painted ceramic, wooden, and sculpted metal mixing and drinking vessels are a consistent feature of these, which would have in all probability been full of alcohol when the burial took place (Nelson 2005: 45; Heath 2000: 118; Arnold 1999: 71). One grave of a chieftain from the sixth century BC in Germany contained a 500-litre bronze cauldron manufactured in Greece, which would have contained mead or honey beer and nine gold-adorned drinking horns. This practice stems from at least the Hallstatt period (600–450BC) (Nelson 2005: 28, 45). Because they have turned up so consistently in the graves of wealthy and distinguished leaders in Iron and Bronze Age northern Europe, archaeologists assume that control over wine was one of the bases of their status. These wealthy individuals are thought to have portioned wine out among their subordinates and followers in much the way that leaders in many non-Western societies are still expected to share their wealth and prove their aptitude by demonstrating generosity (Heath 2000: 118). The provision of drink communicated and produced the unity of the group, but hierarchy too. The production of mead involved an enormous expenditure of time and resources, representing a gift that would be difficult to match and so established clientship (Enright 1996: 135). High levels of alcohol consumption marked the distinction and high status of the king, who not only gifted lavishly, but consumed copiously, and the type of drink given to each person expressed their status also, with wine for those of highest status, while wheat beer or corma, was for lower classes (Arnold 1999: 86). At the same time though, the convivial communion of the feast and communal intoxication created a kinship that unified the group. Drinking vessels were objects that signified the creation of communitas too, shaped as a hollow ceramic ring, with the ring a symbol of completion, combined with the drink within it, which acted as a symbol of unity. Others were triple cup assemblies, where the cups were joined together. The number three is also a symbol of unity, with the vessel also showing how three may function as one, mirroring how the number three, or nine as three threes, was used in forming many of the groupings of Celtic society. Vessels sometimes had interweaving handles also (Enright 1996: 16, 107, 109). Perhaps most strikingly, the most widespread and important vernacular name for the Germanic warband or ‘comitatus’ was ‘druht’, with one of the very old meanings

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being ‘festive gathering’, ‘festival’, ‘festival meal’, and it is possible that it evolved from a single (primitive) Germanic druht, ‘drink’ (71–2).

The origin of the potlatch Potlatches are status establishing rituals. They were first identified, as a specific type of gift-giving ritual by anthropologists, among the Native American Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Demonstrating generosity in hosting a potlatch, and competitive gift-giving within them, between the host and guests, was used to establish status (Mauss 1992; Drucker & Heizer 1967; Rosman & Rubel 1971). The material objects exchanged communicated messages of power, rank, and the quality of relationships between the participants (Arnold 1999: 87). Giving is a signal of status, communicating how the person has successfully accumulated a surplus, and the acceptance of the gift by the receiver, despite being unable to reciprocate, is an admission of lower rank, and subservience. Refusing a gift, in turn, is a refusal of the status claim of the giver, and can result in war (Mauss 1992). Potlatches are thus highly consequential ritual gatherings where status hangs in the balance, as participants seek to validate their inherited claims to a rank, and defend their claims against those of rivals (Robbins 1973: 101, 115). It was claimed in an earlier chapter that rites de passage, in their true form, are difficult for modern people to understand, as they hardly exist in their original form in contemporary societies. Potlatches, in contrast, would seem very familiar to people living in modern societies, as they consist of actors in a competitive field, seeking to maintain and further their position, through the resources they can acquire, convert into other resources, and the strategically deployed impressions they make. Thus, they are very similar to the type of competitive seeking of distinction through the acquisition and deployment of different types of capital that Bourdieu (1984) describes, or expression of rank through carefully curated outward appearances that Elias (1969) describes in courts. Potlatches are ritual occasions where actors seek to demonstrate that they possess the attributes that they have claimed they possess, and where others can engage in an information game, to test if claims made, carry weight (Robbins 1973: 100; Goffman 1990). They correspond to the conspicuous consumption engaged in to indicate status, as identified by Thorstein Veblen (2009), and the impression management through dramaturgy that Goffman (1959) describes. The question is, what caused the emergence of this type of ritual? It seems that they are closely related to increases in trade, economic development and economic change. The potlatches that were observed by anthropologists in North America were not a timeless cultural form, but rather a ritual that was associated with a period of social transition associated with contact with Westerners. This saw an increase in trade, and the introduction of a money economy, leading to an increase in status conflict, as these destabilised previously stable hierarchies. Growth in commerce resulted in much greater status differences than could have been the case in a hunting and gathering economy. However, this did not solidify the position of the old leading groups. Trade introduced a

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whole range of goods from outside of the tribal society, and created an increase in supply of status-defining goods, and introduced new avenues for people to access goods that could be used in gift-exchanges. In a trading economy, there was naturally greater access to status symbols for everyone, raising the stakes, thereby increasing the frequency of conflicts over status, and the ritual occasions where these conflicts could be expressed and resolved (Robbin 1973: 99, 107, 115–16). Those who had been able to attain and maintain their identity through their prowess in warfare or hunting, could find their status diminished by their lesser ability in exploiting trading and economic opportunities, or at least threatened by a new avenue to power existing for others. The new goods were furthermore ‘free-floating power goods’, meaning that they were relevant for the establishment of status, but there were not fixed rules over their exchange. Due to this the distribution of power became subject to question. Those of historically low rank could now make claims through potlatches for an improved position in the status hierarchy. Consequently, the result was a great increase in struggles over status due to the increase in social mobility (Robbin 1973: 99, 103, 107, 116). A similar pattern can be seen in Celtic society. With the expansion of trade, and increased access to alcohol, lower status groups were able to emulate the potlatches of the higher groups, thereby devaluing them, and pressuring elites to begin to gift new, more difficult to acquire items (Arnold 1999: 73). Wine and more sophisticated drinking equipment became accessible through contact with advanced Mediterranean cultures, following the establishment of the Greek colony of Masallia that established an important trading network (Enright 1996: 133). This transformed the drinking culture of Northern Europe, stimulating potlatch activity, as wine did not quickly degrade and so could be stockpiled, unlike beer, which was very perishable, and mead, which was difficult to produce in large quantities, as bees had not yet been domesticated. It thus allowed a move to more strategic use by rulers (or ‘aggrandisers’, or ‘bigmen’) to extend their influence (Arnold 1999: 74). A similar pattern can perhaps also be seen in the symposia of Ancient Greece. Plato’s (1998) dialogue Symposium, illustrates the corruption of these traditionally moderate drinking occasions, through the drunken and excessive figure of Alcibiades, who represents what Athens has become as it has risen from a city state amongst others, to a commercial empire. In contrast, Socrates represents the old Athenian ethic. Alcohol seems to be not just one good amongst many in potlatches, but of special significance. It appears to play a particular functional role because of its binding and loosening effect. Just as was the case in Celtic societies of millennia before, among Native Americans, alcohol played a particularly significant role in the potlatch. Alcohol appears to have a special functional quality, because unlike other goods, it has a dual character, where it can be employed in contests over status, while also being a symbol of, and stimulus to companionship. At the village or tribal level of social organisation, the ethic that guides social life is of generosity and ‘reticence’, meaning that people should be open

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handed, while also speaking well and with restraint to prevent the outbreak of tensions and resentments (Robbins 1973: 101). Robbins (1973) suggests that drinking provides a cover for status claims, as these occur in a ‘time out’, therefor not violating the prescription of ‘reticence’, while status claims also come through the sociable, while also competitive gift of alcohol, communicating generosity. It is thus particularly suitable as a two-faced gift. The effect and cover that drinking provides furthermore allows for the expression of aggression due to frustration over declines in status, and the resolving of conflict while not violating community prescriptions on a careful tongue and graciousness and gratefulness. As an aside, this is significant in light of the ‘firewater myth’ regarding Native American Indians, and the dim view that Greeks had of Celts (see Plato 2015). The heavy use of alcohol in these contexts was not due to the childish, or fiery disposition of the people. The aggression or immoderate behaviour that was shown was also not due to alcohol’s impact on individual self-restraint, but to the function of the ritual alcohol was a part of (Robbins 1973: 108, 114–5). Due to impact of these new materials for social exchange, and the manner in which they stimulated potlatches, they are viewed in very ambivalent terms. Arnold (1999: 80, 87, 97) suggests that there may have been considerable fear over the alchemical, technological process of producing alcohol as a result. She suggests that the beer maker may have been the female equivalent of the male figure of transformational magic, the smith, with both engaged in the magical change of one element into others. Indeed, the two substances were brought together in potlatch rituals, with the metal drinking equipment, and the fermented beverages they contained. Szakolczai (2016) and Horvath (2015) have theorised that metallurgy was a decisive moment in global history, not because it represented a technological advance over previous materials, in the way its significance is generally understood. Instead, metallurgy provoked an intensifying spiral of mimetic desire and violence, because it offered a new avenue status, allowing the mass-production of status-giving objects, stimulated a loss of differences, mimetic desire, and the spread of competition and conflict.

Stabilising an unstable order The social orders that alcohol-potlatches were at the heart of were very unstable. The potlatches operated as ‘identity resolving forums’, which allowed behaviour that is usually not countenanced, to allow a cathartic release of tensions, as well as acting as social dramas that permit the expression of statements of conflict (Turner 1957; Robbins 1973: 100). At their heart were dynamics of pride, shame and humiliation. ‘Winning’ at a potlatch established worth and right to respect, while the losers were degraded into the position of clients. As Scheff and Retzinger (2001) have shown, shame stems from an experience of marginality, weak bonds and insecurity, and as a means of defending oneself from this vulnerable position, it is linked with anger and fury, leading to aggression. Those who have been marginalised thus, unless they acknowledge

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their shameful state, and so shrink, accepting their position, respond with aggression and a seeking of revenge, which can result in the shaming of the rival, or bystanders, which in turn can establish a cycle of shame, aggression and violence. The increase in pace in economic life in Celtic society that led to the growth of the potlatch produced a society that was competitive in general. Social differentiation was encouraged by the Mediterranean trade as it provided the revenue to maintain retinues of armed men who could then be rewarded through conquest and plunder and prestige objects that indicated status (Enright 1996: 133–4). Arnold (1999: 78, 80, 85) suggests that the political hierarchies of continental Celtic societies was a rapidly evolving affair, subject to breakdown, regular challenges and reconstitution, an inheritance of which could be seen in Irish Celtic society, which ‘was a fluid and shifting affair, with clans within tuaths rising to prominence and themselves being replaced by other clans over the decades. Some of these power shifts occurred within a single generation’. Linked with this was the alcohol potlatch, as the rise and fall of different centres seems to have been closely associated with the ability to win in potlatch rituals, generously circulating alcoholic beverages amongst supporters and clans. These involved feasting, where chiefs would compete with each other, and within them each would receive from the chief what was their desserts. This of course was fodder for resentment, as the justness of reward was in the eye of the beholder. Thus, the assigning of rank in a warrior society was likely to cause violent quarrels, ill-will, one-upmanship and chronic dissension (Enright 1996: 11). Just as how this can be seen in the potlatch activity of the Pacific Northwest, it can be seen in Archaic Greece. MacLachlan (1993: 5, 7) explains that prior to the more stable and complex political structure of the polis, political order was based on the concept of charis: the pleasurable reciprocal exchange with others, with the feast a particularly important part of this. It was a highly unstable society however, as charis, is an inherently volatile principle. It is transient, conjured for a moment in a particular context. To not return a gift is to end a relationship, and to not reciprocate in the right way could result in war, as in the Trojan War, which the Greeks nearly lost because Achilles felt that he had not received his fair return for his own gifts. In addition, ‘Charis was by nature partisan and active and would naturally generate competing loyalties’ (MacLachlan 1993: 31). It was associated with the key concepts on Greek society: koinonia, the joy of community; aidôs, being worthy of respect; timê, one’s worth or due; dike, justice, meaning that one’s due portion has not been encroached upon by another; and critically, lôbê, meaning outrage, shame and anger – the obverse to kind, reciprocal exchanges. Peace was thus maintained, for example at the feast or symposium through moderation through exerting self-control to allow the reciprocal pleasure of others. As Hesiod notes, ‘The greatest treasure among men is found in a tongue that is sparing, and the most charis lies in one that conducts itself with moderation’, a treasure as we may presume that it was rare (MacLachlan 1993: 24).

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There was a counter-measure to the competitiveness of potlatches in CeltoGermanic societies consequently. The king’s sovereignty was legitimised and sacralised in inauguration ceremonies, reducing the possibility of rival claims. Sovereignty was conferred through a ceremony involving feasting, where divine sanction was conferred through alcohol. The connection between the ruler and alcohol is evident in the Gaelic laith (liquor) and flaith (lord), which are closely linked (Enright 1996: 81). The king would receive the sacred alcohol from a goddess, who in Ireland (where the practices of continental Celtic society was preserved), was Medb, an earth goddess, whose name literally means ‘she who intoxicates’ (Malcolm 1986: 1), who had a mundane equivalent in the king’s wife, who at the king’s inauguration offered him intoxicating drink. Sovereignty was thus thought of as a goddess who was a divine and earthly bride, who served a drink, and was simultaneously the drink that was consumed. Kingship was bestowed by a supernatural woman through the offering of a drink in the ‘marriage feast of kingship’, where the earthly ruler in a ritual married the fertility or sovereignty goddess (Enright 1996: 83). The royal consort had an important role in the establishment of order and hierarchy in this competitive and volatile warrior society also. She calmed competitive tensions, acting as a binder, weaving the group together, and acting as a soothing, civilising presence. Enright (1996: 2, 4, 85) explains that rank was established and renewed through the order in which the consort serves the mead and the speeches she gives in honour of those she serves. She would serve the king first, establishing his primacy, and for his followers, accepting a drink from her symbolised assent to the ruler’s precedence. She would remember heroic deeds and speak of them, and the men would be served in the order of rank and honour. For the unsuccessful and those with resentments, her cheering words and gifts would sooth their shame. She had a parallel in a trickster figure, however, who in Beowulf is the figure of Unferth, who seeks to undo the presentation of self of the men, hurling forth stinging rebukes and mocking others. His role is to undertake the hard questioning and close examination while the king can remain the gracious host above such things (Enright 1996: 10–1, 14–5, 18, 22).

The potlatch and sacrifice A political order based on the potlatch seems to also be one that is based on the sacrificial mechanism (Girard 1988). It is clearly a culture full of mimetic desire and resentment, in which periodic sacrifices were necessary to release social tensions, lest society fell into a state of complete anarchy. Sociability involving alcohol was at the heart of these tensions, and there appears to have been continual anxiety over feasts held by others than the chief, as this naturally implied a rebellion against their authority. However, the possible outcome was not simply the emergence of a rival centre, but also due to an accumulation of resentments against the chief due to his failing to be sufficiently generous, or generous in the way that people perceived as their right, the chief could be

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sacrificed. Indeed, feasts seem to have often been the contexts of attempts on the life of the chief and powerful individuals (Arnold 1999: 78–9). It has been argued that small-scale societies are highly likely to be very violent societies, with rates of homicide far above those of state societies, particularly those with a secure monopoly of violence (Pinker 2011). However, this is contested, as it appears that hunter gather societies had a tendency towards peaceful relationships with neighbours (Fry & Söderberg 2014). Ritual life and gift relations also served as a functional equivalent to the monopoly mechanism for the maintenance of internal peaceful interdependencies. Introducing the concept of the potlatch, as a distinctive type of small-scale, proto state society, could be useful for resolving the debate. Indeed, much of the evidence of violence in small-scale societies is based on contexts following the introduction of alcohol, and other goods such as metals and guns, useful not only for potlatch activity, but warfare. The pattern that the sacrificial mechanism took can be seen in Celto-Germanic mythology. Various tales recount how drinking rituals were implicated in the collapse of the social order, as well as its subsequent resuscitation. Leaders possessed charisma due to their ability to mobilise a warband and defend their community against external threats. However, charisma cannot respond to the internal collapse of the social order, when the group become enemies to each other. Such a situation is especially threatening in weakly centralised societies lacking a judicial system, where the eruption of violence threatens the entire community. In this situation, instead of responding through charisma, reunification is achieved through the production of an enemy in the figure of the scapegoat. Thus, society is often based on the murder of a scapegoat, generally a marginal person (whether from the apex of society, or its periphery) who then becomes sacred for successfully re-establishing the social order (Girard 1988; Szakolczai 2003: 19). Through Norse mythology, the cosmology related to the socio-political system discussed above, we can tease out a seemingly strange connection between poetry and alcohol, murder and charisma. Odin (Wodan, deriving from the Celtic figure Lug), the leader of all the gods, is the god of poetry and patron of the skalds (Enright 1996: 218). There is a tight association between this figure and drinking rituals as in Viking texts poetry is consistently compared to the drinking of alcohol, and the declamation of the poet with the spewing of alcohol into the ears of those who listen, as it signified delight and companionship. In other Odin myths, sacred alcohol provides access to divine inspiration and perfect wisdom in the art of governance (Enright 1996: 95, 279–80). However, Odin is an extremely ambivalent deity, as can be seen in the myth where Odin gains poetic, mantic knowledge through the story of the mead of Gunnlöð, made from Kvasir’s blood. There are grim aspects to this tale besides sacrifice and cannibalism, such as when Odin, stopping to speak to thralls who had been scything a field, threw the hone he possessed that glistened like gold, which they all desired, in the air, leaving them to slit their throats due to their jostling, caused by the mimetic desire Odin had inspired in them. On the one

100 Proto states and potlatches hand, Odin is stigmatised, possessing only one eye and is a tragic hero as he is the lord of the spear, being a spear bearing prophet, and this weapon, ‘Gungnir is closely associated with kings and human sacrifice, above all with the killing of kings and with Odin also from the beginning, inevitably moving towards death and ultimately dying mystically by a spear in Ragnarok’ (Enright 1996: 126, 225, 280). On the other hand, just like Lug, he has ties to a cult of the dead and human sacrifice, with those to be sacrificed being ‘marked for Odin’ with this weapon (Enright 1996: 224). He possesses a raven as a cult animal, due to the common practice of human sacrifice associated with him whereby men were hung from trees and stabbed for the purpose of prophesying from the blood that fell from them into a cauldron (exactly what is used in the mead rituals). A crucial part of the character of Odin was his cruelty and deceptiveness, with his friends suffering as much from his association as his enemies. Hence, it seems that Odin is something of a trickster figure, confirmed by the fact that Odin/ Wodan through Lug was considerably influenced by the cult of Mercury through Gallo-Roman influences (Enright 1996: 238, 240, 251, 261). Mercury, or Hermes of course is one of a triumvirate of Greek trickster figures including Prometheus and Dionysos, and is the messenger of the gods, between two worlds, a wanderer, an inventor, god of poetry and companion of the dead. So, there is a strange coincidence of charisma, the force that multiplies and achieves order through giving in this figure, as well as the antithetical figure of the trickster, who stirs resentment and conflict, and ultimately calls for the sacrifice of the designated enemy within. This seeming contradiction in fact represents a perfect detailing of the cycle of the maintenance of the social order though, and its collapse through the retreat of gift giving. It is the cycle of the establishment and decline of social order exemplified by the cycle of charisma/ gift-giving and the trickster/sacrifice in a single figure. Thus, when the constellation of gift giving breaks down, the alternative aspect of the sacrificial trickster manifests itself in the mode of the sacrificial mechanism as a means of re-establishing order, with Odin either playing the scapegoated marginal figure, or the cheerleader of the murderous crowd. Alcohol in this is either the social and multiplicative gift par excellence, or the object of mimetic desire and bloodlust. It is no coincidence that the other major figure from mythology associated with poetry Apollo has a contrasting nature that is soaked in blood: Dionysos.1

The end and persistence of potlatches From the eighth century Frankish empires on, the alcohol potlatch lost much of its social function as the more advanced centralised Merovingian and Carolingian states emerged. In these the Christian clergy, representing the beginning of a rational bureaucracy, took over and replaced the king-making rituals of the Germans. With increased social complexity and bureaucratisation this model of statecraft became antiquated and clumsy (Enright 1996: 34, 103).

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Nonetheless, throughout the Dark Ages that followed the collapse of Rome, this practice continued to exist quite broadly in Europe through to the Late Middle Ages, when centralised states were again, just at the point of solidifying once more. For example, in the early Russian state gifts of drinking privileges were used to cultivate loyalty. ‘Vasili (Basil) III, who reigned from 1505 to 1533, built a house for his servants on the far bank of the Moskva river where they could drink beer and mead, which was forbidden to other Muscovites’ (Herlihy 2006: 185). This privilege was a tool for maintaining the loyalty of the Tsar’s supporters, the ‘oprichniki’ in the central authority’s struggle against the heredity nobility (Snow 2002: 195). In addition, in such unstable and violent societies, joining together was crucial for survival. The only way of protecting oneself was to attach oneself to someone more powerful, and they in turn had to protect themselves by providing rewards, such as privileges and land for military service (Elias 2000: 232). A similar pattern can be seen in the margins of contemporary societies, where the state monopoly of violence and taxations continues to be weak. Hunt (2003) for example showed how members of criminal gang member’s lives are based largely around violence and alcohol. Drinking is a technique for binding the members together, and demarcating their identity against that of other gangs. Their everyday life is based on ‘chilling’, which amounts to drinking throughout mundane gang activities, and partying, which are social high points where the gang can celebrate its identity, masculinity, macho identity, ‘locura’ (the capacity of acting wildly, deterring anyone from seeking to take advantage of the person) and unity (Hunt 2003).

Alcohol and civilisation Alcohol is a symbol of and is constitutive of state formation as a major component of its economic base. It emerges as a significant aspect of culture with the establishment of an agricultural economic base, which socio-political units rest upon. Sugars (glucose, fructose, lactose and maltose) which are necessary for its production were not available in significant quantities before the domestication of wild fruits, grasses, animals for milk, and bees, so large-scale production of alcohol only began in the Eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia between the eighth and the fourth millennia BCE (McGovern et al. 1996; Fox & Marsh 2010: 8). The earliest known definitive chemical evidence comes from the sixth millennium BC (McGovern et al. 1996; Govern et al. 2004: 84) Interestingly, the search for more reliable sources of alcohol may have been a significant causal factor in the origins of agriculture and hence, states and civilisation, as it is possible that cereal growing was stimulated by the production of beer rather than bread. This can be seen from how ‘the types of grain found in many archaeological sites were quite unsuited for bread-making without extremely tiresome dehusking and preparation. Such grains, including barley were, however, eminently suitable for brewing and remain so today’ (Fox & Marsh 2010: 10). Fermentation would also have required less technology and

102 Proto states and potlatches effort than what is necessary for baking bread. In any event, it may be said with certainty that beer production is one of the earliest activities of civilisation (11). The production of alcohol marks a turning point in the history of human’s use of psychoactive substances, as its production requires a much higher level of social organisation and complexity than required for other substances. Magic mushrooms require little preparation other than picking and drying. Cannabis requires somewhat more, through technologies such as cooking or fire. Alcohol in contrast requires a surplus, planning, and either the domestication of crops, or the gathering of very large quantities of wild plants. Wine production requires a higher level of social complexity again, as it is more complicated to make than beer, with grapes only ripening once a year, and if it is to be preserved, requiring transformation into raisins, unlike barley which can be easily stored and can be grown year-round. Tree crops also require permanent fields, and so imply land tenure, and thus a legal system of sorts, as well as organised labour (Homan 2004: 92).

Alcohol potlatches and the origins of agriculture? Göbekli Tepe, an archaeological site in South Eastern Turkey, provides insights into what the spark to the Neolithic and the agricultural revolution might have been, particularly as it is in its immediate vicinity that emmer and einkorn was first domesticated. It is a major pre-agricultural site characterised by monumental stone structures, which indicates that the hunter gatherers who assembled there were capable of a level of social organisation hitherto not thought possible. The congregations that happened here, just before the Neolithic revolution, were large-scale feasts probably involving the consumption of beer made from wild plants, in what must have been a stunning surrounding of engraved stone structures, and buildings and courtyards for ritual purposes. From the carvings, it appears that dancing was an aspect of these gatherings, while alongside festivity there was residential and work areas. Though the origins of alcohol have traditionally been associated with rise of Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilisation, it appears that their origins are much earlier, with wild grapes for example, gathered to make fermented beverages, which may have been the beverages consumed here (Dietrich et al. 2012: 674–5, 682, 687, 690, 692). Dietrich et al. (2012: 689) note that ‘one basis for the shift to agriculture and long-term storage must have been the loosening of reciprocity usually visible in hunter gatherer societies’. Citing Hayden (1990), Dietrich et al. (2012) note that the suggestion is that the source of this loosening of the established networks of reciprocity, may have been how resources became plentiful following the end of the Ice Age. This allowed ‘competitive individuals to accumulate surplus in order to obtain powerful social positions through lavish feasts. The need to furnish food for these feasts is seen as a possible reason for the start of domestication’, with beer making an aspect of this. Related to this may be the importance of the area for the trade in the prestige item of obsidian, from which trade extended widely through Eurasia. Thus, just as in the case of the

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growing contacts with advanced Mediterranean societies in the case of Celtic society, and trading contacts with Western settlers by the Native American Indians of the Pacific Northwest, the opening of new avenues of status, through a new level of material abundance, and the entry of new avenues to acquiring prestige items that may be given to produce the clientship of others, may have also provided the spark to settlement and ultimately agriculture. It could be the case that the purpose of transforming people into clients through the giving of feasts, was to conscript them into large work projects to construct monumental buildings, which could have served the same purpose as the meadhalls of the Celts and Germanic peoples, and the potlatch halls of the Pacific Northwest. In any case, constructing the monumental structures would have necessitated bringing great numbers of people from a wide area together for the communal work projects. Hauling a large megalith of up to twenty metres squared would have required several hundred people, if not more than a thousand. The search for psychoactive experiences is not the only factor that caused the spark to civilisation, as beer was not only mildly psychoactive, it was highly nutritious. The nutritional value of food is often increased by fermentation, in a process of ‘biological ennoblement’ (Heath 2000: 82, 142; 1987: 29). Homebrews provide vitamins and minerals that are often lacking in local diets and also reduce cholesterol and triglyceride levels (Heath 2000: 142). Drinking water is also often not clean, while the heating involved in the manufacture of beer kills potentially dangerous microorganisms, and for societies of a later date, wine kills some bacilli that cause dysentery (Homan 2004: 84; Heath 2000: 182; Babor et al. 2003: 15). Thus, beer likely had a simultaneous feasting and festive role. Evidence of the suggestion that the very origins of agriculture partly lies in alcohol-potlatches is how the practices at Göbekli Tepe seem to mirror their distant successors, through the role of the distribution of alcohol by elites in early states. In Mesopotamia and Egypt there was a considerable increase in the production of alcoholic beverages in Western Asia in the fourth and third millennia BC. The practice of alcohol potlatches may have developed into the bureaucratic system of production and distribution of food and drink that was a feature of these Near Eastern early states and Egypt, and drove this great increase in supply. There was a gradual bureaucratisation of beer making and the contexts where it was consumed, in ‘ceremonial celebratory situations’. An important contrast between Archaic Greece and Near Eastern societies was that while feasting by elites was very important, political centres did not seek to control production through an administrative system, possibly because of the much smaller scale of political units there (Joffe et al. 1998: 297–8, 305–6). Thus, Joffe et al. (1998: 297) suggests that it appears ‘the production, exchange and consumption of alcoholic beverages form a significant element and regularity in the emergence of complex, hierarchically organized societies’. It had a significant role in early states, in Mesopotamia, elsewhere in Western Asia, the Mediterranean in Mycenaean and Minoan civilisation, Egypt, China, and early American states.

104 Proto states and potlatches Beer making and provision was important for creating and sustaining elite groupings (Dietrich et al. 2012: 690). Furthermore, it was important in the mediating the relationships of regional elites, as trade in alcohol was a key aspect of ‘proto diplomatic contacts’. The giving of beer promoted the position of elites and social cohesion, as ‘[a] strong association is suggested between early states and societies in phases of initial or secondary formation and paraphernalia related to unifying social and ritual behaviour such as drinking’ (Joffe et al. 1998: 305). Supporting the idea of potlatch activity being behind the fundamental importance of alcohol to these states was how elite alcohol gifting was not in the shape of a command economy, but a feature of competition between different elite factions and organs of society for clients and prerogatives, and in intercity rivalries. Once more, the provision of alcohol in these early states was associated with the mobilisation and support of large labour forces for the building of structures such as pyramids, with both the clientship it produced, and the conspicuous consumption that the mortuary architecture and rites of Egypt for example, communicating the distinction of elites, and producing ideological support for the task and political project of elites (Joffe et al. 1998: 298–9, 305, 309; Dietler 1990). Just as in the potlatch rituals of later proto state societies alcohol was not one good among many. Instead it was a particularly suitable item for these rituals because of its instrumental and symbolical importance as a good that helps to dramatise commensality, and therefore acceptance of the status of elites (Joffe et al. 1998: 310). It is also, in the context of early state formation, useful as a good for the conversion of one form of capital into multiple other forms. Dietler (1990: 369–70) notes that alcohol is a medium that allows surplus agricultural produce to be converted into labor, prestige, ‘social credit,’ political power, bride-wealth, or durable valuables, and this is a very useful mechanism of indirect conversion which, for example, can be used to circumvent the normal barriers to direct convertibility of subsistence goods to more socially valued items in multi-centric economies.

Taming and unstable order? We can speculate that just as in the contexts reviewed earlier, there was a need to stabilise a social order that was stimulated by mimetic desire and social competition in potlatches. The way that this may have been achieved is through the growth in importance of developing access to the sacred. It is clear that the assemblies at Göbekli Tepe had a cultic meaning. There is however, the possibility that a potlatch logic resulted in the destruction of the society that the centre was at the heart of, as the site was ultimately abandoned suddenly, covered over around 8000BCE, with some of its carved monuments smashed. Perhaps this was due to competitive giving resulting in an environmental crisis, for example through over-exploitation of the land in order to provide food and

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drink (Szakolczai 2009b). Perhaps this was due to the growth of alienation over how a centre of pilgrimage, gift giving, sociability and epiphanic experiences had degenerated into potlatches, as people literally walked away from civilisation. Or, perhaps it was the actions of the representatives of another centre of potlatch activity, destroying their rival through warfare rather than the symbolic violence of the potlatch. It is tempting to see in this process of decivilisation a reflection of the better documented decivilising processes of Celtic society and the Native Americans of the Pacific North West, stemming from economic growth and potlatch. In any case, its abandonment corresponds to a succeeding period of general crisis across the Near East in the Neolithic, that is correlated with a new level of prosperity, and the widespread use of pottery (which is quite likely to have been important for preparing and storing fermented beverages), along with a decline in earlier religious practices (Szakolczai 2010). Beer in the Near East and Egypt had deep religious significance also (Homan 2004: 84). The fact that the deities associated with beer were female (such as Ninkasi) in Mesopotamia raises an interesting possibility that female gods played a similar role to the alcohol-sovereignty goddess of Celto-Germanic Europe. The alchemical process of brewing was associated with women, as well as female sexuality, and though many records of this connection are quite crude, perhaps this was a degraded legacy of a more exalted, spiritual connection from earlier times (Homan 2004: 85). Indeed Joffe et al. (1998) notes a trend towards greater and greater marginalisation of women with the increase in social complexity that follows the process of state formation. As Homan (2004: 85) notes, while most Sumerian deities for crafts were male, the beer deity, Ninkasi was female. Additionally, the erudite Siduri who gives advice to Gilgamesh was a beer-maid. This gender association seems to have partially changed in Mesopotamia after the Old Babylonian period, when a mass production industry was implemented and males began to dominate the state-run business. While women seem to have shared the role of being an important source of labour for the production of alcohol beverages this may represent, in residual form, the role of women in taming potlatch activity, through a sacralised binding and weaving role, as we saw in Celto-Germanic Europe. A strong contrast with this is in Archaic Greece, where alcohol rituals were extreme expressions of male predominance, linking all-male sociability with homosexuality (Joffe et al. 1998: 311). The sacrificial mechanism may also have been a means of calming outbreaks of violence driven by the mimetic desire inherent in potlatch activity, and animal sacrifices were associated with beer in Sumeria (Homan 2004: 84).

Conclusion Though there has been a healthy move towards emphasising contingency, and the differences between different civilisational centres and contexts, just as

106 Proto states and potlatches anthropologists have noted the frequently similar role of alcohol in small scale societies, the role of alcohol in serving political and social functions is a regular feature across early civilisations, and the function it served appears to be quite similar. Furthermore, Joffe et al. (1998: 310) notes that ‘[a] wide variety of evidence shows that alcoholic beverages and practices were transferred from one society to another’. Not only that, as similarities cannot be explained simply by cultural diffusion, as alcohol was also an important commodity in the civilisations of the Americas, which emerged independently of Eurasian/African civilisations, with an example of this the role of chicha in the political economy of the Incan Empire before the arrival of the Spanish (Heath 2000: 144). Thus, through a seeming independent tendency for alcohol to acquire a similar role, as well as through cultural diffusion, it seems to be possible to make generalisations about alcohol potlatches across space and time in pre-state and early-state contexts. The significance of the emergence of potlatches is that they represent a stepping stone to the growth, centralisation, continual growth of states, and dynamics of continual escalation. While they represent a transition from smallscale to larger political units, it is difficult to describe the change simply as a civilising process. They were decivilising, as they provoked an outbreak of permanent liminality, where the timeless form of rituals that enclosed alcohol and the liminality that was associated with it, was broken. Instead, it was replaced with a spiralling dynamic of mimetic desire, uncontrolled liminality, excess, and major outbreaks of violence. It could be hypothesised, following Hobbes’s thinking about the state as a Leviathan, that the reason for the centralising project of states, and institution building was to calm the decivilising process and permanent liminality that potlatches unleashed. However, the growth of centralising states profoundly changed the place of alcohol in society in a pathological direction once more.

Note 1 For an example of this in other contexts, see Bott on the origin myth of kava in Tonga (Bott 1987).

7

Subversive states The case of Russia

Alcohol and internal peace The growth of centralised states, led to the replacement of potlatches as the key unifying technique of their society by the monopoly mechanism. The association of alcohol with disorder, as we have seen appears to be unusual in small-scale societies, as the alcohol consumption that occurs takes place within strongly integrated communities. With the transition to proto state societies based on potlatches, drinking culture became marked by excess and violence. However, following the transition to more centralised states, with a relatively secure monopoly of violence and taxation, alcohol once more became symbolic of peaceful, stable societies. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, alcohol has played a major role in the internal pacification of society through acting as a source of revenue that funds and drives state formation processes, financing a military and administrative infrastructure that can allow a more stringent enforcement of the state’s monopoly of violence, allowing in turn the internal pacification of the ruler’s territory. Alcohol, and wine in particular, is a potent symbol of internal pacification, the sine qua non of civilisation. As has been previously noted, alcohol, as a significant aspect of culture is rooted in the domestication of sugar-rich tree crops, including grapes, figs and dates which were also used to make alcoholic beverages beginning in the later fourth millennium in the Levant, which occurred alongside the emergence of urban centres (Sherratt 1995b: 25). These tree crops are a symbol of internal pacification because, as was already noted, they demand a long-term commitment to a specific place and great stability through peace and a stable allocation of land. They need several years to mature before they yield any fruit, require considerable maintenance and special equipment (Heath 2000: 145; Gerritsen 2000: 26). Indeed, following the Flood, Noah’s first act was to plant a vineyard (Heath 2000: 188), symbolising the beginning of a new civilising process. The vine spread throughout Europe as a result of the internal pacification effected by the Roman Empire and with its collapse, large-scale cultivation withdrew to within the walls of the religious communities of the monastic orders, one of the few locales of stability in the anarchic

108 Subversive states society of the Dark Ages and the germ of the post-Roman Western civilising process. It spread again through Europe with the rise of more stable states (Gerritsen 2000: 29). In contrast, the brewing of beer is a shorter and simpler process (Heath 2000: 145). Cereals are annuals, with the crop harvested only a few months after the seeds are sown. Thus, it can be a feature of nomad agriculturalist and of places with only weakly developed social and political structures (Gerritsen 2000: 26), such as the Celto-Germanic societies examined in the previous chapter. Alcohol production is also associated with civilisation, as it is linked with increasing predictability of food supplies, which is a dimension of internal pacification. This provided the surpluses from which alcohol could be produced. Nonetheless, this was a gradual process and remained fragile and punctuated by severe food shortages. These were obviously periods in which alcohol production went into decline. As we have seen in Chapters 3 and 4, alcohol related problems and public concern about the socially disruptive effects of alcohol is not particularly significant in small-scale societies. In fact, drinking culture is something that contributes to the securing of the social order. One of the key questions of this study is what causes the problematic position of alcohol in modern societies. We have already seen the effect of alcohol potlatches. In addition to this, once centralised states emerge, their dependence on alcohol as a source of revenue, as we will see becomes a further factor making alcohol problematic, as it places the state virtually in the position of a drug dealer, little different from a mafia organisation, apart from the fact that it is the organisation that has been able to assert itself as dominant over all others. Another factor is the relationship of drinking culture to the other side to the monopoly mechanism, the monopoly of violence, because of the cult importance of alcohol in maintaining dissident communities, as well as establishment groups. This demand of monopolising violence creates a contradiction, perhaps not serious enough to lead to the collapse of the entire social structure, as with the contradictions that led to the fall of the Roman Empire, Absolutist society in France, or as Marx supposed would happen with industrial capitalism, but one that is nonetheless serious enough to place serious strains on the social order and to produce deep social pathologies.

Russia The Russian state is a particularly clear example of this crisis tendency within the state formation process. The relationship between the Russian state and alcohol leaves little doubt that a civilising process can go hand in hand with a decivilising process, and the promotion of permanent liminality. The twin, but conflicting imperatives of revenue maximisation, and internal peace and legitimacy, produced continual crises, and promoted permanent liminality, as elsewhere, but the crisis tendencies were particularly pronounced in Russia.

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Colliding with Soviet state formation Tutorsky (2016) has examined the transformation in alcohol consumption that occurred through the incorporation of local, heretofore relatively isolated communities in Northern Russia into the state formation process of the USSR. Though of course separation from the grand processes shaping global history is a relative condition, state power had barely penetrated this region before the 1960s, and it had been spared the destructiveness of Soviet state formation in the 1920s–30s. Due to this, the social order was based on the ‘archaic’ characteristics of Maussian gift-relations and the ritual process, rather than a centralised state. Thus, the essence of social life was mutual cooperation through generalised reciprocity within villages, and a cycle of festivities marking the important transitions in the life of the community. However, in the 1960s the state extended its power into this region, leading to the destruction of the traditional fabric of social life. Collective farms were merged, smaller villages were replaced with larger villages, state institutions such as schools, hospitals, shops and so on were introduced, mechanisation replaced manual labour, and work became not a matter of cooperative exchange, but of wage labour. Traditional rituals were also destroyed, as religious and village festivities were regarded as antagonistic to Soviet ideology, and a relic of the former bourgeois society. Strangely, Tutorsky (2016) recounts that extreme drunkenness was approved of, as it was interpreted as a sign of exhaustion through the hard work that the ideal worker was expected to carry out, rather than ‘useless’ festivity (11–12, 15). The key result was the growth of permanent liminality. Prior to the 1960s liminality was enclosed within ritual, in the manner shown in previous chapters. These rituals were festivities in which residents in the local villages would assemble, in a cycle of gift exchanges where each village would host in turn. These marked the major moments in the life of the community. Alcohol was fundamental to the invoking of liminality, with its consumption being the most important part of rituals, and with it playing an important role in all of the activities within the rites. However, alcohol was not the main focus of rituals, standing amongst a constellation of activities. Alongside the consumption of alcohol being ritualised, there were further limits, as festivities relied on the availability of the necessary crops and money. Beer, furthermore, was labour intensive to make, required the necessary equipment, the cooperation of several people and households and took more than a week alone to brew. It was also an aspect of a circle of reciprocity, which meant that it was far from a freefloating commodity that could be accessed at any time. Thus, the period of alcohol fuelled anti-structure was quite short, lasting only one or two days, before the normal patterns of work and community re-established themselves (Tutorsky 2016: 7, 12–13). The collision with, and incorporation in Soviet state formation resulted in a dramatic degradation of drinking culture however, with the emergence of extreme drinking patterns. The boundaries that had been placed around alcoholrelated liminality were dissolved. Now, ‘drunken liminality’, through the

110 Subversive states fragmentation of community, the uprooting of villages and dissolution of the complex networks of reciprocity in communities, its ready availability as a commodity, could be entered into by ‘individuals’ at any time. It became a state that was not linked with the broader life of the community, and it became disconnected from networks of reciprocity, destroying its ritual social function. Rather, it became an individual experience. Vodka replaced the much milder substance of home-brewed beer, facilitating a much easier movement into drunken liminality, and the new practice of drinking became consuming a glass of vodka in one swallow. The walking, singing, dancing, that were once a part of festivities, along with drinking, were removed, as the rituals became degraded and simplified (Tutorsky 2016: 12, 14).

The Soviet state The small-scale societies that were absorbed into the Soviet state formation process, such as the ones discussed by Tutorsky (2016), were not simply unfortunate to find themselves at the frontier of a centralising state, resulting in the outbreak of permanent liminality in their communities. They were in addition absorbed into a state that was characterised by permanent liminality itself to an unusually extreme degree. Russia is perhaps the best example of the degradation of drinking culture within metropolitan states, with the outcome of this historical process vividly depicted in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which originally had the title of The Drunkards. The history of alcohol in Russian political history dramatically illustrates how the maximisation of revenue and the minimising of internal disorder are the imperatives of state formation, and how these have a subversive, nihilistic effect, continually disrupting cultural patterns and disrupting them once more before they have a chance to settle since the last cycle of regulation and deregulation took place, thereby degrading drinking culture. Just as de Tocqueville noted about pre- and post-Revolution France that there was far more continuity than discontinuity between the two eras; Tsarist, Soviet as well as Post-Soviet Russia share very similar features. Arnason (2000: 61, 75) sums this up by arguing that communism was a distinctive, but selfdestructive version of modernity, with ‘[c]risis dynamics’ inherent in it. However, the crisis dynamics were to a large extent a result of the continuity in the model of modernity inherited from Imperial Russia, with the same dysfunctions repeating themselves between the two eras. To summarise the discussion that is to follow, the basic tension that could not be resolved was between pressures for centralisation that resulted in a crisis of legitimacy, and attempts to win legitimacy that resulting in a fatal weakening of the centralising project. Addiction to taxes on alcohol The process of centralisation of the Russian state was funded to a very considerable extent by revenue generated from alcohol, and the most distinctive

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feature of the background to Russian drinking culture is the various monopolies of alcohol sale and production that were established by the state. The heavy dependence of the Russian state on revenue drawn from the sale and taxation of alcohol however had the effect of gutting public life. In the sixteenth century during the reign of Ivan IV (The Terrible) traditional taverns were closed and replaced by state run establishments staffed by agents of the state (Herlihy 2006: 186; Snow 2002: 195). The ‘korchmy’ (singular korchma) were common types of drinking establishment amongst Slavic people, which were centres of festivity and sociability where fraternal groups, guilds, workers co-operatives and families frequented. The typical drinks were of low or medium alcohol content, such as mead, beer, ale, kvass and wine (Snow 2002: 191–2). These were however closed and replaced by state run drinking establishments called ‘kabaks’ which served vodka instead of the milder alcoholic beverages. They were run by state officials who reported to the military governors of the region and were driven by the principle of maximising drinking to maximise returns at the expense of their customers. The situation was so bad that reform of these in 1652 included the ordinance that officials would not allow patrons to drink themselves to death, and they became ‘sinks … of vice and squalor’ (Snow 2002: 198). The exploitative practices of these were one of the reasons behind the peasant unrest of the late 1640s, which provoked some attempts at reform by the political establishment, though the need for revenue quickly overrode these (Snow 2002: 194–6, 200–1). The primacy of revenue in framing policy can be seen in how, in the middle of the eighteenth century a policy was introduced to provide officials with an incentive to maximise their sales by placing their property as a security against a sum of money to be delivered to the state (Herlihy 2006: 191). Catherine the Great introduced a tax farming system for alcohol licenses, and Alexander II replaced this with a centralised state tax on distillers and retailers. A state monopoly of vodka was finally introduced by Nicholas II in 1894, with this product sold in the state-controlled stores for consumption off of the premises, which replaced taverns (5–6). It was important in financing the Russo-Japanese War, with the government increasing the number of liquor stores and raising prices, doubling revenue from 1904, and again it improved the financial position of the state following the Russo-Japanese War of 1904– 1905. Though the attempt to legitimise the monopoly and mode of sale was the argument that the quality and quantity of alcohol sold could be controlled by the government, there was nonetheless a degradation of drinking culture, with a move toward drinking on the street, an increase in illicit distillation, and reduction in the informal social control that had existed in taverns, as well as an overall increase in consumption (6, 15, 53). Quitting the bottle and a new dawn Then after centuries acting as a drug dealer, Russia became the first country to introduce prohibition, when Tsar Nicholas II imposed it in 1914, which

112 Subversive states continued past the Russian Revolution until 1925. Just as in the case of the USA’s experiment with prohibition, this appears to be a self-destructive act that is difficult to fathom. However, its reasons lie in the persistent crisis-prone nature of Russian state formation that Arnason (2000) refers to. Prohibition was introduced due to a number of crises for the state. One source was growing fears over the weakness of the Russian state’s ability to compete against rivals militarily. Alcohol was blamed for enervating the people and for shortcomings in national power and military discipline and effectiveness. Attempts to impose greater discipline within the military resulted from this, with vodka rations – the charka – becoming the focus of reformers in the 1870s as a part of broader reforms. Drunkenness nonetheless continued to be blamed for the poor performance of Russian military, concern over which became acute following the national humiliation of the 1905 Japanese-Russian War. The modernisation of warfare, exemplified in the Prussian victory over France was a further factor. The lack of military effectiveness was correlated with ill-discipline through drunkenness, and indeed mobilisation in 1905 was drunken and disorderly and there was a culture of heavy drinking in the process of recruiting and mobilisation and of heavy binges during wars when this was possible, as was typical of all armies. The army also came to be seen as a model setter and a civilising institution for the broader society that would give a moral and mental education to the rank and file and make peasants into Russians (Herlihy 2002: 4, 53–7, 67). Consequently, in 1908 a ban on the sale of alcohol to military personnel was introduced, with a rolling back of this in 1912, with sale of alcohol to military personnel allowed, as long as they were not seen on the street. In August 1914, however, there was a ban on all alcohol sales during mobilisation, with the exception of first class restaurants, with officers’ clubs included in this, with prohibition introduced on a permanent basis in October (Herlihy 2002: 64–6). These reforms, however, caused further crisis. The abolition of the charka in the navy was part of the background of the discontent and consequent drunken violence, as sailors ‘from a Baltic naval base seized public buildings, drank wood alcohol, moonshine, formalin spirits, and whatever they could lay hands on, and began taking potshots and organising looting expeditions as far as Petrograd’ (Herlihy 2002: 65). Desertion and growing anarchy within the army after February 1917 has been partly attributed to the lack of provision of vodka, and the Revolution had a carnival type atmosphere, as ‘troops began to drink and participate in drunken orgies’ (67). The reform was a classic example of class-legislation also, as first-class restaurants and clubs could continue to sell vodka, and the unequal application of prohibition based on status caused resentment. It was evident that Nicholas II’s advocacy of temperance was without conviction, with him being a drinker and a connoisseur of wines (12–13). The class basis of the prohibition legislation thus perpetuated the crisis of legitimacy; an example of the tension between regime and society that has never been resolved in the history of the Russian state (Arnason 2000: 75).

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Alongside concerns for the military power of the state, there was also concern over the enervation of the population at large, sapping the state’s power. Alcoholism was seen to cause indiscipline in general: disobedient, unruly and useless bodies, lying behind the disorder and lack of productivity of the lower classes, prostitution and a threat to the ‘race’ by women, and the perceived ‘dreadful moral state’ of the peasantry. National pride was also important for the ruling elite, as there was growing sensitivity to representations of Russians as prone to drunkenness. More concretely, there was also concern over the ability of the state to internally pacify its territory, with drunkenness blamed for social unrest, including rural criminality and the ‘brawls, riots, pogroms, and hooliganism that darkened social life’ (Herlihy 2002: 4–5). Prohibition however rather than resulting in a return to order provoked considerable disorder. There were increased deaths from alcohol poisoning and, most seriously for the regime, it resulted in a large proportion of the population continuously breaking the law over the course of the war through contravening the prohibition, undermining respect for it, making insurrection less difficult against an already weakly legitimate government (68). A crisis in state power produced crises through an undermining of the state’s legitimacy among the population and particularly the military, resulting in a further loss of state power. A centuries-old destructive path resulted in destructive counter-measures, with the most dramatic outcome of prohibition being the loss of revenue from alcohol that the Russian state had been long dependent on. Unravelling the logic of this puzzling decision requires understanding how the political elite became concerned that the vodka monopoly was resulting in a crisis of legitimacy, as while it held the vodka monopoly it could not win the argument against its critics and their social and political critiques that were wrapped in the critique of state supported drunkenness. It had become a symbolic issue for the array of groupings opposed to the authoritarian and exclusionary political centre. Thus, prohibition in Russia was led by the establishment who were seeking to preserve and further the centralising project of the state (Herlihy 2002: 137). Though it had shorn up the crisis of legitimacy somewhat, it created a crisis with respect to revenue and food supplies. Prohibition resulted in a loss of 28% of government income, and contributed fatally to the spark that led to the Russian Revolution: a lack of bread. Supplying food to St. Petersburg had always been a logistical difficulty, as it was very far from the centres of food production, compounded by the inadequate railway system of Russia. The problem was intensified by the high price of commodities through the war which meant that peasants were not inclined to bring their grain to the market, as they could not afford to purchase commodities in return, and this was exacerbated by prohibition as it resulted in a great increase in illicit distillation of samogon (moonshine), and withholding of grain, because as a commodity that is scarce, portable, durable, divisible and desirable, it acted as an alternative currency and store of wealth to devalued paper money (Herlihy 2002: 142–5).

114 Subversive states Reform leading to crises Arnason (2000: 78, 83–4) notes a consistent pattern in the Russian model of modernity, where, in order to shore up the crises inherent in it, reforms (in the form of partial concessions to society, geopolitical activism, raising of living standards) were periodically introduced. However, these had the effect of causing further instability. Reforms that were an opening up, that were promoted by the ruling oligarchy, precipitated particularly acute crises. Reforms in Czechoslovakia for example resulted in pressures for pluralisation, with the model only surviving through Soviet intervention. Gorbachev’s reforms triggered a process of disintegration that spiralled out of control, encouraging attempts to demonopolise power in Eastern Europe, that quickly resulted in a total collapse of the regimes. The reforms in alcohol policy appear to be an early example of a historical pattern that contributed to the Bolshevik Revolution, and also the collapse of the USSR. The vodka monopoly had its origins in the characteristic policy of geopolitical activism as a means to quell internal dissent, that throughout the history of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union resulted in ‘permanent overstretch’, resulting a continual crisis of finance and legitimacy (Arnason 2000: 80). Though introduced before the Russo-Japanese War, it was greatly extended as a result of it. While an aggressive foreign policy might check internal opposition, the funding of it through alcohol revenues, fuelled antipathy to the state. The response, to shore up legitimacy, was a state sponsored temperance movement, called the ‘Guardianship of Public Sobriety’ to educate the public about the dangers of alcohol and to offer alternative entertainments, with Tsar Nicholas II himself becoming a temperance advocate. Reform led to further crisis however as it placed the state in a highly ironic and contradictory position of being the sole producer and distributor of alcohol in society, while preaching moderation, providing an incoherent justification for its position of leadership. The attempt to represent the extension of state power as something other than it was; that the true purpose of this was the reduction of drunkenness (Herlihy 2002: 7, 137); undermined legitimacy further, making legitimacy into mere sophism, playing with representations. Most importantly, it had the unintended effect of creating a vehicle for criticism and protest, where visions over how to better organise society could be offered. Much could be said under cover of battling drunkenness. The government could never endorse drunkenness so that it was forced to tolerate a great deal of criticism of its role in fostering the sale of vodka through the monopoly. Knowing of this chink in the armour of the state, temperance workers could use the issue of alcoholism as a veil under which they could emerge to do battle with drunkenness, all the time claiming more prestige, privileges, and power for themselves: the laity, clergy, women, physicians, socialists, and zemstvo and Duma members. (Herlihy 2002: 137)

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Thus, temperance became a form of political mobilisation and participation in the public sphere, but it was a proxy for movements to reform the political and economic system. Such participation was radicalising for some. Temperance was used as a vehicle for speaking about their discontents, whether this was radicals attacking autocracy or conservatives opposed to the effects of modernisation such as industrialisation and urbanisation, professionals seeking to extend their power, members of the Duma seeking more legislative powers and to win power against the Ministry of Finance, upper class women seeking suffrage, patriots criticising the government for not sufficiently increasing national power and military victories, middle class civilisers seeking to reform peasants and workers. Hence, the government had helped to sow the seeds of its own destruction, as the reform that sought to improve their position opened up dormant forces that could not be easily controlled. The state could not easily prohibit these movements as it had proclaimed temperance to be a worthy cause itself, and grudgingly allowed the formation of temperance societies. It nonetheless kept them and their leaders under close surveillance (Herlihy 2002: 1, 4, 8–12). Besides the threat that this movement posed to the central state, they were also enemies of the types of traditional rituals, described by Tutorsky (2016) earlier in this chapter, which were local examples of the timeless rituals of small-scale societies, described earlier in this chapter. The common denominator in the various temperance movements was their sect like quality, and ‘intense distaste for the status quo’ (Herlihy 2002: 147) as well as a desire to transform society for the purpose of some utopian outcome. They offered fraternity, and an ability to win self-respect to people who otherwise had not avenues to exercise organisational or leadership skills. They all were opposed to traditional rituals, festivities and ceremonial drinking, modes of reciprocity involving alcohol, and some promoted the closing of all drinking establishments and the introduction of total prohibition. The language of critique was similar between radicals, conservatives, secular and religious commentators, arguing that drunkenness was a problem of the will, and that reason was needed to overcome it (40, 42, 147, 149–50). Thus, they were all revolutionary, individualising, and opposed to traditional ritual life, presenting benign traditional rituals as foes, which would become enemies of the state once these critics took over the political centre following the Russian Revolution. Falling off the wagon History repeated itself under communism, with the pattern of reforms leading to crises following a very similar pattern. Fundamental to understanding Communism is that it carried on the values of Imperial Russia and its models, rebuilding imperial structures that had collapsed. This was effective in controlling its territories, and projecting power, but obstructed reform, and produced excessive ambitions, and pathological visions of power (Arnason 2000: 67). Lenin was personally abstemious and having inherited prohibition, he continued it and nationalised alcohol production and the remaining stock of

116 Subversive states alcoholic beverages, and in 1917 he prohibited the production of all alcoholic beverages including wine. Though the Tsarist policy of prohibition was continued, it resulted in lost revenue and a proliferation of moonshine. The tension between legitimacy on the one hand and revenue and food supplies on the other that was a feature of Imperial Russia thus reproduced itself. In order to combat illicit distillation, in 1918 Lenin established the Commission to Combat Drunkenness and Pogroms, which punished those caught as illicit distillation was connected with food shortages because it remained more beneficial for peasants to manufacture alcohol than to sell it on the market. With this proving an inadequate countermeasure, Lenin unwillingly ended prohibition and established a new vodka monopoly that came into existence in 1925. Thus, in 1927 excise on vodka amounted to 18.9% of all revenue. Stalin, when he assumed power, ordered that the production of vodka should be increased further, with output rising sharply (Herlihy 2002: 152, 154). While reforms not only undermined the state through depriving it of revenue, and opening it up to criticism, not reforming alcohol policy would result in the continuation of a state driven degradation of social life. Following the end of prohibition in 1925, and the reestablishment of the vodka monopoly drinking establishments were again under state ownership. These were ‘nameless and numbered substitutes’. Talk was self-conscious because of the fear of surveillance, and the situation motivated people to retreat to drinking in private. They were symptomatic of a state in which economic, political and ideological power were fused under an apparatus that sought to exert control over all of social life (Arnason 2000: 72). Very many heavy drinkers could also be found drinking alone in the streets. However, while the institutional and cultural framework of drinking culture were being further eroded, Stalin implemented a policy encouraging the increase in vodka sales to support his industrialisation (Herlihy 2006: 195). Under the Soviet monopoly levels of consumption passed those of the Tsarist eras, and though consumption levels fell back post-WWII, from 1960–1979 it increased significantly, and between 1940 and 1985 it increased 7.4 times. There was a damaging short-termism in these policies, as it has been calculated that during the seven decades of communism four times as much wealth was lost from wasted man hours associated with alcohol consumption than was raised in revenue (154, 160). Reform leading to crisis, again Despite the reversal of state policy on alcohol, temperance and prohibition remained as a tactic of legitimation for the political elite. Science and education were subordinated to an ideology that was represented as scientific, but that was in fact a secular religion that proscribed subversive research. Learning and reform was blocked by the claim to ‘universal validity and world-historical legitimacy’ and a scientific world view (Arnason 2000: 68, 72, 79). In a similar way that conservative attempts to shore up the form of legitimacy of ‘traditional domination’ that the Imperial Russian regime rested on through temperance,

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addressing alcohol problems was linked with the legitimacy of the new regime. However, the supposedly scientific and teleological character of the regime made true reform even more difficult, and just as with the absolutist order that it replaced, when reform was pushed beyond a superficial level a cascade towards disintegration was set in motion. In 1928, the state created the Society for the Struggle against Alcoholism, gaining a quarter of a million members. However, the state temperance society was abolished in 1930 as the issue of alcoholism was presented as solved under the regime, and the sole focus of social activity was supposed to be directed at the first Five Year Plan. The ideological conflation of alcohol problems with capitalist, bourgeois degeneracy resulted in an inability to properly deal with individual’s difficulties as well as public health challenges. People with alcohol problems were treated as outcasts as a result of the ideology, and alcoholism was a social disgrace because of the meaning that it gained. However, officials were generally heavy drinkers and refusal to participate in the culture of heavy drinking would result in ostracism, so there was a highly hypocritical stance of prescribed heavy drinking and proscribed treatment (Herlihy 2002: 154–7). The physicians who interpreted alcoholism as caused by social environmental factors were enthusiastic about the new regime, as they felt that they would be supported by the socialist state, as the dogma was that capitalism produced alcoholism. They became ‘social hygienists’, who sought to address disease by focusing on social not biological explanations, in contrast to the history of medicine and the dominant strands of research on alcohol outlined in the previous section. Their work was supported and accepted for two decades, but because it was accepted that there would not be an immediate solution to alcoholism, psychiatrists increasingly came to dominate alcohol studies and treatment, offering more individualistic explanations and proposing forcible treatment. Finally, under Stalin, the light that social hygienists were shining on social conditions and the evidence they were producing that socialism was not leading to elimination of the social problems that were supposedly caused by capitalism, led to them no longer being tolerated, and so the people involved in this were moved to other areas of public health (Herlihy 2002: 152–3). Thus, professional power, while always on the side of physicians and psychiatrists and their more individualistic therapies, shifted further towards them. Gorbachev Under Gorbachev state-sponsored temperance again became a technique of legitimation. It was partly an attempt to open up a safe space of civil society, and also there was an implication that the deep problems of Soviet economy and society were caused by drunkards, not the policies of the Communist Party. Thus, he introduced a two-pronged strategy. In 1985, two months after he became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR he introduced the law ‘On Measures to Overcome Drunkenness and Alcoholism’, with alcohol production decreased by 50%, the legal drinking age raised from 18 to

118 Subversive states 21, and availability restricted with alcohol banned from resort areas, and licenses granted to restaurants drastically reduced. He also established the All-Union Voluntary Temperance Promotion Society that was aimed to be a ‘grassroots’, ‘civic association’, as part of perestroika, and his attempts to appeal to society, with the movement soon gaining 14 million members. It was similar to the Guardianship in its actions, establishing recreational facilities and alternative entertainments, with therapy for alcohol problems in the words of the organisation being ‘learning to utilize leisure time effectively, such as by spending holiday times together in the country, visiting theatres and movies and discussing the event afterward, and helping each other to develop new interests’ (Herlihy 2002: 154–6). These policies contributed to his unpopularity however. ‘At a time when people were beginning to criticise and to organise, for Gorbachev to impose unpopular measures from above, and at the same time to enlist criticism from below only contributed to his ultimate resignation’ (Herlihy 2002: 158). The pattern of reform opening the space for critique repeated itself. Gorbachev’s temperance policies were in addition resisted by the State Planning Commission (GOSPLAN), the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Trade, as it was considered a suicidal forgoing of revenue. The result was an enormous increase in illicit distillation, with the consequence of shortage and rationing of sugar and buckets (which were used for production of moonshine) (Herlihy 2002: 154, 156). Gorbachev’s reforms again had the effect of increasing dangerous modes of consumption amongst sections of the population with huge increases in sales for products with alcohol content such as eau de cologne, window cleaning fluids, and other solvents. However, while Gorbachev’s policies cost him the legitimacy he sought through them, they had remarkable effects on a population level. Alcohol consumption (licit and illicit) fell from 15 litres in 1984 to 10 litres in 1988. Male life expectancy had been steadily declining, but this was reversed, increasing by two years, largely due to reduction in levels of alcohol consumption (Herlihy 2002: 156, 158). Falling off the wagon, again Post-Communist Russia has continued the legitimacy-revenue pattern of crisis. Post-Soviet Russia was legitimised initially through free market ideology, and enacted a range of free-market reforms. In 1992 Boris Yeltsin ended the state monopoly of vodka. However, this resulted in an increase in the availability of cheap vodka and a proliferation of drinking establishments and an increase in alcohol consumption. In 1993, for fiscal reasons, Yeltsin re-imposed the vodka monopoly on production and sales. To ameliorate the crisis in revenue that the new regime was experiencing excise rose to 90% of its value, resulting in an 80% decrease in output and the closure of more than 140 of the 240 alcohol distilleries as a result of the fall in demand and the importation of large quantities of cheap vodka, which accounted for 50% of all lost excise through black

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market activity. Imported vodka was preferred for its supposed superior quality also. Yeltsin’s policy to address this, cutting the quota of imported vodka from 250 million litres to 50 million litres in 1995, resulted in the increase of illicit distillation (Herlihy 2002: 158–9). Following the Yeltsin era, once more the monopoly of the state was reinstated to a degree as Vladimir Putin sought to regain control over vodka production and has called for a return to the vodka monopoly (196).

Conclusion A striking feature of Russian society is the enormous impact of alcohol on reduced life expectancies and rates of morbidity. There is a long provenance to this, as we have seen above through the disruption that the Tsarist and Soviet state caused. McMichael (1999: 893) argues that the lack of agency through state control of everyday life, diminished community, weakened individual initiative had the effect of greatly reducing social capital, increasing ‘inwardlooking traditional family values’ and learned helplessness. Free market reforms then caused rapid social change, disrupted social life, and resulted in the emergence of destructive patterns of behaviour. Life expectancy in Russia fell by almost seven years over the course of the 1990s (Cutler et al. 2006: 98), with the health of men particularly badly affected by this. This decline is particularly associated with excessive alcohol consumption in the period 1990–1995 (McMichael 1999: 893; Watson 1995). The country experienced huge levels of alcoholism, drug use, fetal alcohol syndrome and a reduction in life expectancy, with male life expectancy being 57.6 and females 71 in 2000 (Herlihy 2002: 159). Alcohol related deaths in the mid-2000s were 500 per 100,000 in Russia, compared with 77 per 100,000 in the USA.

8

States, revenue and interdependence

Alcohol and revenue Alcohol and other psychoactive substances have been surprisingly central to states’ quests to maximise revenue, particularly when considering the modern ‘war on drugs’ and public health campaigns waged on behalf of the state. Though today alcohol specific taxes only account for around 0.5–3% of the total revenue of EU countries (Anderson & Baumberg 2006: 54), it has been, a crucial source of revenue for the state historically, and even today, revenue from sources of economic activity broadly linked with alcohol are very important to national exchequers (Goodman et al. 1995: 8; Wilson & Gourvish 1998: 7; Babor et al. 2003: 17–18; Chartres 2002: 75). Consequently, revenue and not public health was the driving concern framing policy towards psychoactive substances historically (Price 1995: 168). For this reason, states have always taken a deep interest in alcohol. One of the earliest records of a state, the Code of Hammurabi, has more to say about alcohol than any other subject, legislating the price and quality of beer, presumably regulate the market to ensure a reliable flow of tax revenue (Heath 1995c: 357). A line of continuity can be drawn through to today, as the alcohol industry, beyond direct taxes, continues to play a crucial economic role for the state, for example in the regeneration and revitalisation of city centres from the 1990s through the concept of the nighttime economy, acting as a gravitational force for consumers and investment, being a major creator of new jobs, and coming to consist of around 3% of the UK GDP for example (Hayward & Hobbs 2007). The interest of the state in generating revenue from alcohol has had a continually subversive effect on the ritual life that is a timeless characteristic of human society, that enclosed the alcohol-related liminality of these occasions. Due to the interest of the state in revenue maximisation, historically it has engaged in projects to promote consumption, such as in the state created gin craze of the eighteenth century. At that time the traditional framework of consumption in alehouses, was changed in favour of gin, which promoted the outbreak of uncontrolled liminality. To ameliorate the situation, while not foregoing too much revenue, the UK government changed policy by creating a free market in beer houses, which aimed to the tame the situation through

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the encouragement of a less potent substance. When this did not successfully put a lid on liminality, the government shifted to a policy of tight restriction of alcohol consumption. The story is akin to the practice of introducing more and more invasive species to islands to minimise the damage of the previous human intervention. In the contemporary era, the best parallel example is the state-led project to revitalise urban centres through fostering a largely alcohol-based night-time economy, which has consequently created conditions for a new outbreak of permanent-liminality. Competition and the centre’s drive for revenue An inescapable imperative of those groups that controlled the central ruling apparatus of society is the continual need to amass, consolidate and most importantly increase revenue streams.1 Alcohol was a crucial source of revenue in the early modern period, with it progressively decreasing over time, as the ability of the state to levy more sophisticated forms of tax increases, and as economies become more advanced and complex, offering new lucrative sources of funding. Thus, from the seventeenth century, revenue from the taxation of alcohol was pivotal to the United Kingdom, and up to the nineteenth century around 40% of government income continued to come from alcohol (Stivers 2000: 22; Malcolm 1986: 275; Harrison 1971). Taxation of alcohol has largely been driven by the pressures of international competition between states and especially war, with increases in excise being a typical response to it (Gerritsen 2000: 105). For example, in Ireland and Britain the first direct tax on beer was implemented by Cromwell to help fund the Civil War, with the Royalists following suit, with it being the first goods to be taxed by the newly established excise service (Molloy 2002: 30). In the USA, the Federal Government in Washington was only able to successfully levy inland taxes due to the Civil War, with some of these remaining in place after, representing a burst of centralisation. WWI, marking the dawn of a century of war was a true watershed in the history of taxation of alcohol with extremely sharp increases in duties, which largely remained in place after the conflict (Wilson 1998: 104). An illustration of this is how during WWI Britain increased the excise on spirits by 500% so as to finance the war (Gerritsen 2000: 105). Tax increases continued after the end of the war, and continued between 1933 and 1944 as the duty on a barrel of beer at 1035° gravity increased by 355% (Millns 1998: 142).

Why alcohol is suitable for taxation Alcohol and other psychoactive substances have a number of attributes that make them ideal for taxation. First, the alcohol industry has been a major industry for millennia (Wilson & Gourvish 1998: 1). Brewing is an early form of manufacturing and breweries were amongst the very largest industries,2 in non-modern economies, and the wine trade also represented a major

122 States, revenue and interdependence component of the Mediterranean economy from Antiquity on (Sherratt 1995a: 8). It has also been a major component of trade, amounting to one, if not the most significant import/export.3 Second,4 alcohol was both a staple commodity, being an item of everyday consumption from Mesopotamian civilisation (Wilson & Gourvish 1998: 2) through to medieval, early modern and modern Europe; and a very important consumer good, particularly before the onset of mass consumerism. Similarly, in the sixteenth century other psychoactive substances such as tobacco also became transformed from curiosities to items of near universal consumption, making them the inevitable target of tax strategists (Price 1995: 165). Its centrality to everyday life gave it the further advantage that income from it could be predicted quite accurately (Gerritsen 2000: 93). Third, in addition to being a staple, certain forms of alcohol are luxury items in conspicuous consumption; with a significant proportion of total income spent on alcohol by those in the upper echelons of the social hierarchy (Mennell 1996: 56). Also, for the lower orders these substances were frequently the only item above basic needs that they could afford. Fourth, because they represent staples, luxuries and substances with qualities that produce dependence, as commodities they have a high inelasticity of demand, providing governments with the opportunity to experiment with levels of taxation that are exceptional in comparison to other goods.5 For this reason, wine was an early target of taxation from the Middle Ages in Europe.6

Interdependence, commercialisation The internal pacification that the monopoly mechanism provided stimulated commerce through the predictability it infused into social relations, while commerce simultaneously fostered the monopoly mechanism by providing a tax base with which to fund a central administrative apparatus which could maintain such a monopoly. For instance, in the late medieval and early modern period in Europe, the expansion of commerce through coach services, which inns were important in organising and servicing was only possible with a more comprehensive internal pacification. In the Middle Ages trade was very much restricted due to the unpredictability of the social environment.7 So, just as the monopolisation of violence and the monopolisation of taxation are two aspects of the same process, the commercialisation of society and increasing division of social functions and growing social complexity is an additional aspect, with all three mutually constituting and reinforcing each other in a spiral. Commercialisation increased the power of the central authority in multiple ways. It provided resources through a tax base and allowed for the development of a central ruling apparatus. This provided the central ruler with military superiority over the nobility. It also allowed the central ruler to escape from land investiture as an exchange for services, as well as diminishing the importance of potlatch rituals. They became able to distribute salaries instead through the money economy. This represents a significant shift in power as while the receipt of land made a person relatively independent, the receipt of an income

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makes a person permanently dependent. The power of the nobility was decreased in other ways also. Economic expansion decreased their power in relative terms, as while they had relatively fixed incomes as their wealth was based on land, commerce allowed a theoretically limitless increase in wealth for the ascending bourgeoisie through their business activities and the central ruler through the tax they harvested from them. With this social descent, they were forced into dependence on the royal house as paid officers or courtiers. The ascent of the bourgeoisie also provided a counterbalance to the nobility, whom the central ruler could play them against (Elias 2000: 191–3, 238–9, 287, 334, 359–60).

Alcohol, interdependence and commercialisation Alcohol and drinking culture played a significant role in stimulating the growth of interdependence and the commercialisation of society, that further strengthened the monopoly mechanism through stimulating the growth of a range of taxable activities. Alcoholic beverages and the constellation of pacified sociability that they are rooted within are important bedrocks to economic activity. It was a major component of the economies of early civilisations such as Egypt and Mesopotamia, with up to half of the crop dedicated to the preparation of beer in such agricultural societies (Sherratt 1995b: 17, 214). Wine was a major component of the economy of Hellenic civilisation and the Roman Empire (Gerritsen 2000: 29). Early modern economies and modern economies also continue to have the alcohol industry as major components. The connection is deeper however, as alcohol and other psychoactive substances and the institutions they are consumed within are important for the practice of trading, as well as being important items of trade themselves (Sherratt 1995a: 6). The drinking work ethic and not the spirit of puritanism Alcohol and other psychoactive substances have a certain attitudinal effect that facilitates economic activity. It has a role in producing ‘optimism’, a positive attitude that counts towards success. ‘In small doses, ethanol is a relaxant, easing both physical and mental stress’ (Heath 2000: 172), and is widely used to reduce tension; and ceremonies, rituals, celebrations and festivities also break the monotony of everyday life, generating excitement, and offering something to look forward to (Rehfisch 1987: 144). This optimism, involving a positive attitude towards the future can have a powerful adaptive value (Heath 1987: 39).8 Their role in sociability means that they commonly act as a focal point for collective work efforts in traditional societies. The importance of festivity in group life also means that more than is necessary for food and pure sustenance will be planted by communities, which creates a focus on producing a surplus, which may act as a safety net in times of dearth (Rehfisch 1987: 144). Their pain-killing effect also means that they are used as an aid to physical performance in physically demanding jobs (Sherratt 1995a: 6; Courtwright 1995: 211; Stivers 2000: 13–14).

124 States, revenue and interdependence Drinking establishments Drinking establishments were early and consistently important forms of commercial enterprises. The word tavern derives from ‘taberna’, an establishment selling food and alcoholic beverages in the Roman era, and they were significant concerns throughout ancient civilisations. Following the decline of the Roman Empire in the West, and the descent into the Dark Ages, drinking institutions emerged again through the agency of monasticism and the nobility.9 In the process of state formation, drinking establishments ‘contributed massive financial rewards to lords, cities and princes’ (Kümin & Tlusty 2002: 8). Consequently, rulers encouraged the activities of wine merchants and taverns, as they benefitted from the increase in trade that alcohol was a part of (Molloy 2002: 20). Thus, the revenue it provided furthered the monopoly mechanism, which in turn furthered internal pacification, which in turn furthered economic activity through the stability this provided. As a part of this process there was an increase in the number and scope of drinking establishments to meet the needs of customers and travellers (Chartres 2002: 206).10 Drinking establishments and the sociability they house, are important for generating the social capital that oils the wheels of economic relations, producing the trust that allows commerce. This role can be seen in the practice of sealing bargains and transactions with drinks or in the repayment for help with drink (Stivers 2000: 13). Consequently, drinking establishments and rituals have been important sites for the generation and activation of social capital (Frank 2002: 30) and its transformation into economic capital, with their location at the nexus of community flows making them crucial hubs for the process of economic activity. For instance, in medieval and early modern Europe, and into the nineteenth and even twentieth century drinking establishments were indispensable facilitators of economic exchange, acting as commercial hubs, by offering market and meeting places (Kümin & Tlusty 2002: 8; Stivers 2000: 19). The courtyards of inns provided the space for retailers of goods such as smiths and grocers as well as of services such as tutors, tailors, truss-makers and medical men (Chartres 2002: 219, 221). They were places where commercial deals could be struck and were the nexus for conducting business (Martin 2006: 101; Kümin 2002: 48). They provided a sales point where locally produced goods could be traded beyond regional markets because of drinking establishment’s tendency to be located at key points in the transport infrastructure (Heiss 2002: 171). They provided the practical needs of business in the form of storage space, auctioning facilities and transport infrastructure (Kümin & Tlusty 2002: 8). They were used as a hiring hall and military recruitment also took place there. Drinking establishments also acted as primitive banks, with publicans being important sources of credit in a community. Publicans themselves sometimes acted as paymasters and employers. Drinking establishments could also be owned by a trade, so payment was often made there, often in the form of credit for drink (Stivers 2000: 19, 26; Malcolm 1999: 52). Later, and through the medium of a different psychoactive substance,

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coffee houses in the eighteenth century too became important components of the infrastructure of capitalism as they provided the spaces for the formation of flexible business associations (Smith 1995: 154). In the contemporary age, working lunches in which alcohol is consumed continues to be a vehicle for economic dealings (Heath 2000: 13), though through social differentiation, the functions that drinking establishments once housed have developed their own specialised institutions. Drinking establishments played an important role in the development of communications. In England for instance they played a creative role in this, expanding in tandem with the road system, being distributed in clusters around it. At the same time the development of road transport was heavily reliant on the infrastructure that the inn provided. They supplied travellers with provisions and shelter and inn keepers themselves became the providers of coach transport, as they were well positioned to provide the facilities for stabling, provender, repair and bookings (Kümin & Tlusty 2002: 9; Chartres 2002: 208, 217; Heiss 2002: 160–1). In the early eighteenth century, for example, the first major stage-coach service in Ireland was developed, which was stimulated by and provided a stimulus to drinking establishments. Drinking establishments again had a symbiotic relationship with the railway system as it developed in the second half of the nineteenth century. This gave them, in their function as shopkeepers, access to a new world of goods to sell, and expanded their trade through tourism (Molloy 2002: 38–9, 53). Until the early nineteenth century, the pub was almost the only institution of the leisure sphere. Other recreations took place under its aegis, as it sometimes hosted circuses, drama, music and dances (Stivers 2000: 18–19). The pub was also the organisation around which games and sports were organised. ‘Besides encouraging games, like billiards and draughts and allowing gambling on their premises, publicans also frequently organised dances, horse-races, and athletics meetings’ (Malcolm 1999: 52). Drinking establishments also frequently incorporated brothels, or at least prostitution. Industry Brewing, distilling and wine making have been among the largest industries in early modern and modern economies. Prior to the industrialisation of the alcohol industry in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century the basis of the industry was home production and most of the beer and wine produced was consumed locally. Beer for example is traditionally a widespread and staple, everyday item of consumption. It is produced from cereal crops, from rice in India and South-East Asia, corn in Central and South America, barley in Europe, North Africa and the Near East. However, it remained for a long time a small-scale, non-commercial, domestic task performed largely by women (which is an ancient association) (Gerritsen 2000: 25, 30). The commercial brewing that did occur was very diffuse, occurring in taverns, which produced their own produce, with the brewers often also being

126 States, revenue and interdependence engaged in agriculture (Wilson & Gourvish 1998: 3–4; Holt 2006: 2; Unger 1998: 18). From this point, however there was a massive increase in scale of operations. A dual process can be seen, involving a move towards oligopoly as there is a concentration of production in an increasingly small number of players tied with a massive increase in the scale of production (Gerritsen 2000: 31; Wilson & Gourvish 1998: 1). Commercialisation of alcohol production emerged through the marriage of a range of different processes. Following the collapse of the Roman Empire European society became quite autarkic and anarchic. Monasticism was a means of dealing with this, re-establishing the structures of civilisation within its walls in a dangerous and uncertain world. One result was that monks were able to produce a grain surplus, which they could use for commercial brewing. These were among the first in Europe, representing a flicker of economic activity that would later spark the conflagration of capitalism that would sweep the globe. With the collapse of the Roman empire, the large-scale cultivation of vines was restricted to monasteries, and they were the source of its spread throughout Europe when more stable conditions returned. The aristocratic models of the ancient civilisations were also transmitted into the culture of post-Roman, medieval Europe through the monasteries (Mennell 1996: 60). Again, it was medieval monasteries that were crucial in the development and dissemination of the art of distillation. While they monopolised this knowledge until the fifteenth century (Gerritsen 2000: 27, 29–30, 33), this provided the foundation to a major form of economic activity. Economic activity was also facilitated by the reestablishment of the structures of civilisation through more stable socio-political units in the Middle Ages following the Dark Ages that came after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Thus, landowners were able to invest in commercial brewing as a means of using their grain surpluses. A more stable and predictable society that was the consequence of these more stable socio-political units resulted in more secure food supplies. This had the consequence of the growth of local markets as well as providing agricultural surpluses. Commercial brewing expanded in Northern Europe in the late Middle Ages as a result of this. In addition, the expansion of production of spirits in the seventeenth century was tied to agricultural surpluses as a result of the agricultural revolution, and was thus an aspect of the process by which this triggers industrialisation. For instance, in England in the mideighteenth century half of grain production went to gin production constituting widespread small-scale industrial activity. The expansion of commerce was also part of a mutually constituting cycle that was fed by and resulted in improvements in infrastructure that also led to expanded potential markets for the alcohol industry (Gerritsen 2000: 26, 30–1, 37). Technicisation Technological advances were also important in the process. Commercialisation of beer was held back by the products perishability until certain technical

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advances made it possible. The use of hops from the thirteenth century alleviated this somewhat. This problem for beer was finally resolved in the nineteenth century when refrigeration and crown caps improved the life of the product. Wine, the product of tree crops such as grapes, dates, bananas and the sap of palm trees was from early in civilisation a considerably more suitable item for trade than beer as their higher alcohol content meant that it could be stored longer, and this also made it a more desirable commodity. Consequently, where it was possible to cultivate it, wine predominated over beer (Gerritsen 2000: 26, 30–1). Compared to the fermented beverages of wine and beer, distilled spirits are a novel phenomenon, which could only emerge through considerable scientific and technical sophistication. Distillation is based on the difference in the melting and boiling point of different substances. In the case of alcohol, it has a lower boiling point than water, so that with heating it separates from water, with it recovered from its vapour form in an ‘alembic’ or the ‘still’. Hence the name ‘alcohol’, which was coined to describe distilled spirits, coming from the Arabic ‘finely divided’. Major distilled spirits include brandy, fruit brandy or schnapps, gin, rum, tequila, vodka and whiskey, with fortified wines produced by adding spirits to wine (Gerritsen 2000: 27). Its origins are disputed with some suggesting that it is an Arabic or a Chinese invention. It seems that its roots lie in the Near East in the second millennium BCE, though this was with substances other than alcohol, which was only pioneered in the eighth and ninth centuries by Persian chemists, though other groups in colder climates used the process of ‘freeze distillation’ to produce higher concentrations of alcohol. In Europe ‘it was apothecaries and alchemists attached to the medical school of Salerno, in Italy, who presented the world, in the eleventh or twelfth century, with the art of distillation’. While its use remained almost exclusively within monastic communities until the fifteenth century and was limited to use for medicinal purposes after this it spread more broadly through society becoming a major form of economic activity. It spread first to apothecaries in the service of courts or city councils, or who were simply engaged in commerce. It then spread to innkeepers and vintners who began selling it commercially for consumption in the sixteenth century until it became a specialised occupation (Gerritsen 2000: 33). This represented a very important form of ‘start up’ economic activity because ‘since it was possible to go into the trade with just one still and a handful of personnel, distilling was ideally suited to people going into business for the first time, who could launch a commercial product cycle with hardly any capital’ (35–6). Finally, as with the other branches of the alcohol industry, through the dual process of concentration of producers and increase in scale of production it became a major industrial enterprise. However, again the link between technicisation and alcohol was less of a one-way causal relationship than a mutually constituting spiral. The other side of the story can be seen in how drinking culture is also implicated in important technological breakthroughs, which have had world-revolutionary consequences. Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press was converted from a wine

128 States, revenue and interdependence press, while Pasteur also made his breakthroughs in germ theory and pasteurisation through research on the process of fermentation. Trade Alcohol is thus an important aspect of commerce in modernity, as well as in antiquity. At the end of the eighteenth century the related products of molasses and rum accounted for one fifth of US imports and in 1810 distilling was the USA’s third biggest industry after textiles and leather processing, and amounted to 10% of all economic activity (Gerritsen 2000: 164). Alcohol was and continues to be a major item of domestic trade. The alcohol industry is also an important generator of demand for agricultural products and a major employer, as in Italy where 1.5–2 million people are employed in activities related to alcohol production (29), and thereby a major driver of consumer demand (Babor et al. 2003: 17–18). In terms of international trade, in the formation of the capitalist world system, rum played a role in the infamous ‘triangle trade’, by which rum was taken to western Africa and traded for captives who became slaves and were then shipped to the West Indies and traded for molasses. That, in turn, was shipped to New England, the north-eastern part of the US, where it was made into rum, which was then shipped to Africa (Heath 2000: 148). In complex, differentiated capitalist societies alcohol produces important related actives such as production, advertising, investing, employment, exports that draw in foreign currency and retail sales and it is now an important part of the travel industry through airlines, hotels and restaurants (Babor et al. 2003: 17). It is not only alcohol that acts as an important dynamic force in economic development, as there are innumerable examples of the importance of other psychoactive substances in trade. A parallel example to rum, of profitable, though exploitative relationships in the world system, is how tea and coffee became mainstays of world trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Smith 1995: 148). In order to ‘correct’ the imbalance of goods flowing from East to West that this caused, the British and Dutch initiated the major trade in opium to China and their Asian colonies. In West Africa kola was a major item of longdistance trade (Lovejoy 1995: 105). This role can also be seen in societies where there is only the most rudimentary degree of economic life. An illustration of this can be seen in the role of tobacco and tobacco pouches (made from and decorated with valuable materials) in Native American societies. These were highly culturally significant objects that were much sought-after commodities within and between these cultures, for instance being used as stakes or as payments to shamans, which early French and English explorers quickly made use of in their trading activities following their arrival (Von Gernet 1995: 72–3). Suitable properties for trade Alcohol and other psychoactive substances have a range of attributes that have made them a consistently important focus of economic activity (Sherratt 1995a: 6).

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The production of alcohol is an early commercial activity as it is such an uncomplicated process. Alcohol is extremely simple to produce and fermentation (the transformation of sugars through the action of yeast into ethyl alcohol) occurs naturally, even without the need for human intervention (Heath 1987: 20). As a result, brewing is an early and important form of manufacturing, providing a stimulus to local economies (Heath 2000: 34). Psychoactive substances have a range of characteristics that make them particularly suitable items for trade. They are of high value and low bulk, with this being particularly true for spirits in the case of alcohol (Sherratt 1995b: 15; Heath 2000: 32). They are easily divisible in the way that a cow is not (Heath 1987: 33). They have an inelastic demand meaning that there will always be a market for them (Lovejoy 1995: 119). Many psychoactive substances are also relatively non-perishable (Goodman 1995: 131), though for alcohol this only really applies when homebrews become replaced by wine, hopped beer and in particular spirits. As a result, they have been major items of trade throughout history, with it being reasonable to assume that they were important before states and their official records emerged with their copious references to them. This has to be an inference, however, as psychoactive substances, unlike axe-heads or obsidian, would leave no mark in the archaeological record (Sherratt 1995a: 8). Alcohol widely operated and continues to operate as a substitute for money where monetarisation of the economy is not advanced or not in existence, or in ‘alternative economies’ outside of the official one and recurs in contexts of high inflation and high rates of interest (Douglas 1987: 13). It is useful for this end as it is easily divisible in a way that other goods are not (Heath 1987: 33).11 But alcohol is also used as a means of stifling the money economy to further the interests of established groups. In Eastern European feudalism, for example, as well as other comparable cases such as Malaysian plantations, or Mexican coffee plantations, serfs and workers were paid in part in spirits as a means of recapturing wages and trapping workers in a relationship of debt-servitude (Heath 2000: 83; Douglas 1987: 13; Crump 1987: 240–1).

Alcohol and proto-bureaucracy As we have seen drinking culture stimulated state formation as a direct provider of revenue, particularly in times of emergency, and as a general stimulus to economic activity, which may in turn be taxed. This revenue was used to fund a central administrative apparatus, particularly a centralised coercive capacity, which would further underpin centralisation through enforcing the monopoly of violence and taxation claimed by the central ruler. In addition to its role as a source of funds, drinking culture also provided physical infrastructure that was used by the central ruling authority as a cheap source and flexible machinery of administration. Drinking establishments in medieval and early modern Europe were nascent sites for the conduct of public administration due to their location as nodal points on transport infrastructure and their centrality to communities and the

130 States, revenue and interdependence fact that many towns did not have dedicated courtrooms. Many publicans were constables and jailers and smaller prisons were sometimes located in public houses. Other quasi-judicial business was frequently carried out in them, such as the displaying of ordinances (Chartres 2002: 221–2; Frank 2002: 32; Stivers 2000: 16) and it was only with advanced levels of centralisation that dedicated buildings began to be used for state functions (Gerritsen 2000: 184). Many publicans also acted as undertakers, formalised in how the Coroner Act of 1846 (UK) required publicans to allow a dead body to be kept in the establishment until an inquest by the coroner took place, with the law only removed in 1962 (Republic of Ireland) (Molloy 2002: 57).12 Some pubs also contained post offices (Malcolm 1999: 52). Drinking establishments were used by agencies involved in the improvement of local infrastructure (Chartres 2002: 222). They housed a variety of social functions also, from entertainment, access to the public sphere, infirmaries and voluntary hospitals and institutions of social and moral improvement. ‘From the inns that had so commonly provided the space for these social functions stemmed the practical processes of improvement that, in turn, created dedicated buildings that were to displace inns by the early years of the succeeding century’ (Chartres 2002: 223). The bureaucratisation of society was driven to a considerable extent by the need to maintain large standing armies in the period of absolutism. Drinking establishments played a surprisingly significant role in the transition to professional armies. This involved an attempt to remove violence behind the scenes of everyday life as militarism was increasingly pushed to the margins, so that over time an increasing cultural difference developed between the military and the civilian section of the population with soldiers developing a distinct identity (Tlusty 2002: 138). Soldiers were initially billeted in private houses where the local population was compelled to provide food, shelter and contributions and the soldiers may still have resorted to plunder. Overall, they were a source of disorder, so that by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was considered an undesirable situation. As a solution, they were billeted in public houses, which became compulsory in law (Hunter 2002: 81; Tlusty 2002: 137, 139–40). This was written into law in Ireland, for example, in the 1689 Mutiny Act, which required that public houses provide billeting for soldiers and army officers in periods of unrest (Molloy 2002: 34). Billeting caused problems for the publican however as it tended to result in financial loss (Hunter 2002: 81). In tandem with this there was an increasing removal of the billeting of soldiers from urban areas and a shifting of them to villages. In urban areas, large groups of soldiers represented a threat to the disciplinary power of the civic authorities as instances of violence were more likely with their presence, in the form of duels in defence of honour over some slight. Indeed ‘[s]ome historians have suggested that during the Thirty Years’ War, more damage occurred as a result of quartering than from any other form of military action’ (Tlusty 2002: 144). Eventually this transitional phase was completed with a removal of soldiers to specialised barracks with their own tap houses (138, 141–4, 149).

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As has been noted increasing commercialisation and monetarisation cultivates the monopoly mechanism, providing the revenue that can fund the monopolisation of the means of violence that can impose the monopoly of taxation that can impose the monopoly of violence, and on and on. The increased revenue from commercialisation and liquid income in the form of money creates centripetal forces in society, as the central ruling apparatus can become based on rational bureaucracy, as it can be paid for, and officials can be secured on the basis of a salary rather than patrimony (Weber 2005a: 341), which in turn furthers internal pacification. Revenue allows for bureaucratisation, and internal pacification demands further bureaucratisation because of ‘the increasing need felt by a society grown accustomed to stable and absolute peace for order and protection (“police”) in all areas’ (348). The increasing interdependence, and therefore complexity of society as it commercialises, bureaucratises and urbanises demands further bureaucratisation again, as a result of ‘the intensive and qualitative expansion and internal development of the range of administrative tasks’, ‘the increasing complexity of civilisation (348). The very cultivation of the means of communication that rational bureaucracy rests upon compels further bureaucratisation as it needs to be efficiently administered and it serves to accelerate the speed of ‘events’, meaning that a more efficient form of administration is needed in order to respond (349, 351). The degree of complexity of modern society requires ‘the most punctual integration of all activities and mutual relations into a stable and impersonal time schedule’ (Simmel 1997e: 177). Bureaucracy also spreads because of the very success of bureaucracy as it proves itself to be the technically superior form of administration. Bureaucracy is marked by ‘increasing precision, reliability and, above all, speed of operation’ (Weber 2005a: 350). In contrast ‘[w]ork organised on a collegiate basis…gives rise to friction, delay and compromise between conflicting interests and opinions, and so proceeds in a way which is less precise and less dependent on superiors, and hence is less unified and slower’ (350). However, paradoxically, while alcohol and the social form of sociability that it is rooted in fosters bureaucratisation through initially housing administrative functions, and through its status as an early and important source of revenue for the state, it ultimately comes into conflict with drinking culture. Bureaucratic rule by officials is to a degree incompatible with the organisation of life through social networks and clientelism, which tend to have the gift-giving of alcohol as a significant component. For instance, in the USSR, authorities disapproved of traditions of hospitality, as it was seen as at once wasteful of resources and also an alternative mechanism for distributing resources, through private networks, which ran counter to the claims of authority and legitimacy on the part of officials (Douglas 1987: 14). Similarly, the saloon became a political target in temperance campaigns in the USA, partly because of its role at the centre of clientelistic machine politics, particularly among Irish-Americans, which was seen to be corroding the principles of democratic politics, at least from the point of view of the WASP establishment (Stivers 2000; Gusfield 1986). The tension can be seen in the strategic provision of alcohol by patrons to their

132 States, revenue and interdependence clients in contemporary Argentina, where at rallies at election time, alcohol and drugs are distributed to voters (Auyero 1999; Szwarcberg 2015). Weber’s (1978) concept of ‘traditional domination’ captures this political role of alcohol well, based as it is on leaders who maintain their position, through the prestige of tradition by being a part of a dynasty, but crucially also, by continuing to deliver goods and favours to their followers. With the transition to ‘legal domination’, where authority in contrast is based on impersonal rules and general principles that underpin the overall efficiency and predictability of the system, alcohol becomes problematised for its social impact also. This has led to the rise in importance of the public health perspective on alcohol, that argues for a range of restrictions on the price, availability and promotion of alcohol. Butler et al. (2017: 10–11) explain that this perspective represents both a diagnostic model of alcohol harm and a model of citizenship in which the duty of the state to reduce health harms, increase productivity and promote well-being trumps the right of the individual to make choices that may create social cost or have detrimental consequences for their own health.

Conclusion Alcohol has played a major role in processes of political centralisation, helping to finance a movement from centrifugal to centripetal forces socio-politically over the centuries resulting in increasingly large, internally pacified units. As we have seen, when the monopoly mechanism is weak the bonds of loyalty, service and dependence that were manifested in alcohol potlatches were crucial for holding together unstable political groupings. The ossified structures of centralising state societies were also predicated upon alcohol and other psychoactive substance due to the huge financial rewards they provided as revenue sources. Not only are they ideal products for taxation but they are fundamental components of the economic base of agricultural societies, and perhaps even the original impetus towards agriculture. They were also an important trigger for the transition from agricultural to industrial societies. Agricultural surpluses, the precondition for industrialisation was aided by the alcohol industry‘s demand for agricultural products; modern communications emerged from the infrastructure of inns and taverns; coffee houses and taverns incubated modern economic rationality, as well as institutions such as the stock exchange and with the ‘triangle trade’ (with the role of rum in this); and the trade in tea, coffee and opium all constitutive of the modern ‘world system’. Again, as we have seen, this is not only in the economic sphere but in the sphere of public administration, as the state relied on the infrastructure of sociability and community life before it could establish dedicated institutions for these purposes. A tension in culture is evident in the development of state societies however. In their origins, the specialised institutions of complex state societies are rooted in community life and sociability. However, over the course of social

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development these outgrow their origins, and become ever more detached. While sociability and associational life is the social form from which the massive and ossified structures of modern society emerge from, in terms of the tax base and infrastructure offered by drinking culture, the functions that it incubated do not only escape it, but return to dominate it, with states, as they become more mature and secure, they become less reliant on alcohol and leisure institutions such as pubs, allowing a transformation of tax policy towards curbing and managing alcohol consumption, alongside the continuing drive to generate revenue through it.

Notes 1 Just one example of this is the case of Ireland, where Lord Lieutenants were faced with the imperative of feeding the insatiable demand for revenue of the central authority (Malcolm 1999: 63) and alcohol and other psychoactive substances were crucial for this task. In 1611, tax on wine provided 20% of the total revenue of the country and in 1685 it provided 33%. Its importance was furthered by being the ‘most certain revenue’ and only tobacco was more significant as a source of income. In the 1660s duties on beer and ale followed and similarly became vital sources of revenue to the state (Malcolm 1986: 7–8, 14–17). The reach of the state extended again in the 1660s when a customs and excise service was introduced to Ireland by Charles II and the licensing provisions that had been introduced for alehouses were extended to sellers of wine and spirits (Malcolm 1986: 16; Molloy 2002: 31). 2 In 1995 Carlsberg and Tuborg were the second largest Danish industry (Boje & Johansen 1998: 74). Guinness has consistently had a very important position in the Irish economy. 3 Into the seventeenth century wine was Britain’s largest import (Hunter 2002: 77). 4 In the seventeenth century in many Scottish port cities wine was the most valuable import due to the revenue it raised through tariffs. One third of Edinburgh’s income came from such duty (Ludington 2006: 166). 5 This was the case for tobacco in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Price 1995: 179). 6 In 1202 a tax of one fifteenth was imposed on wine in Ireland (Molloy 2002: 19). 7 Until the 1820s coaches had to be accompanied by a military guard (in Ireland) (Molloy 2002: 39). 8 It has also often been said to offer comfort in cold and wet climates, as in Ireland and other North European countries (Stivers 2000: 13). 9 The role of the aristocracy can be seen in Ireland through the use of the term ‘vintner’, meaning ‘winemaker’, which is still used to designate publicans. The reason for this is that in the Norman period it was used as a term for ‘wine merchants’ and taverns developed out of these premises of importers who sold to the nobility, as on-site consumption developed as an aspect of the business. By the early modern period the pub was a thriving ‘popular cultural venue’ (Malcolm 1999: 54; Molloy 2002: 17). 10 In Ireland women dealers would congregate outside pubs well into the twentieth century. Publicans themselves often carried out retailing. In Ireland again, many pubs sold groceries and operated as small shopkeepers and sold farm produce well into the twentieth century. In fact, in 1935, in Ireland, the Licensed Vintners and Grocers could claim that the sold 95% of all food and household goods in the country (Malcolm 1999: 52; Molloy 2002: 78–9). Many publicans in Ireland also acted as undertakers.

134 States, revenue and interdependence 11 As in the sphere of Japanese power during WWII (Meyer 1995: 201) and the Chiapas highlands in Mexico (Crump 1987: 247). With the collapse of the USSR moonshine came to be used as a means of exchange due to the high levels of inflation (Heath 2000: 149). Hence in Gaelic Ireland, which was a largely nonmonetary society ale was often used as a substitute for it (Malcolm 1999: 57). In a slightly different vein, into the nineteenth century there was a lack of coin in Ireland, which meant that vintners often minted their own tokens (Molloy 2002: 21). 12 ‘The Templeogue Inn in south Dublin was situated beside a dangerous bend in the road and road accident victims were laid out on the pub’s marble tables so frequently that it became known as “The Morgue”’ (Molloy 2002: 57).

9

The politics of centralisation Consumption and taxation

Consumption: alcohol and status competition The drive to monopolise violence and taxation by different competing centres as a means of securing their position against internal competitors and mobilise their territories against external competitors has become the central mechanism of society. This dynamic produces a range of other effects, one of which we will now examine: the emergence of courts. There is a common pattern of social stratification in civilisation, which only breaks down with the transition of societies to modernity, where it could be argued that the aristocratic ethic of consumption is generalised to the population at large. Aristocrats and priests stand at the apex of society, while below these there is a narrow stratum of bourgeoisie and below these there is a mass of peasants, serfs, slaves, outcasts and pariahs. The cause of this is that in civilisation the out of the ordinary situation of war becomes permanent, through frequent military action and constant preparation and readiness for it. It is this that is the origins of the aristocracy and their institutional expression of the court. In Weberian terms, they are the warrior heroes who, through their charisma, protect the community from some external military threat. However, after addressing the threat this group do not disband, but rather become institutionalised as a ruling class (Szakolczai 2003). One of the earliest status distinctions to emerge in civilisation is thus that of warriors as a caste, set apart from the general populace. These hold their standing and legitimacy as a group who have the capacity to defend the territory and the general populace from external threats, and of course who due to this capacity for violence also have the capacity to coerce and exploit the people they stand over. Even highly unequal societies cannot be purely based on coercion and the holding of the monopoly of violence however, as there must be some performance of the legitimacy of a group’s position. It is in this context that impression management and the staging of distinction in the sense of superiority to others becomes important. Within their own class aristocrats find themselves within a system of social competition for rank and prestige, while also needing to establish their distinction from rival outsider groups. Social display is a means of achieving all of these ends, serving as a technique for

136 The politics of centralisation jostling for position within their own ranks and as a means for manifesting as true, their excellence and virtue. Elias explains (1969: 112) that ‘[i]n a society in which every outward manifestation of a person has special significance, expenditure on prestige and display is for the upper classes a necessity which they cannot avoid’. As a means to maintain rank, it is a necessity not freely chosen. It is through this that alcohol, and wine in particular, along with the paraphernalia and ritual surrounding it, became crucial in the identity formation of aristocrats. That alcohol should become an important aspect of this ethos should be unsurprising as alcohol and other psychoactive substances are used cross-culturally as a technique of group formation, partly through the performances involved in their consumption, and we have already seen its important political role in earlier phases of development, in potlatches. Consequently, there are different patterns of consumption of alcoholic beverages between different social groups, with the style of consumption and beverages consumed acting as important signifiers of class, status and party (Heath 1995b: 339, 350, 353; Demossier 2005: 133; Heath 2000: 64; Gurr 1987: 220). This cultural universal was amplified by aristocratic groups into a life based on display, of which the consumption of psychoactive substances was an important aspect. Legitimacy was also gained from it through its association with gifting and sociability, as it demonstrated their capacity to amass a totem of ‘social capital’, acting as the focal point of this, and to distribute it to their followers, in the form of a potlatch. This model of elite consumption, which persists in a form to this day, through the elevated position of wine in the hierarchy of alcoholic beverages, was established in the early civilisational centres in the Near East (Sherratt 1995b; Nelson 2005; Joffe et al. 1998; Homan 2004). Alcohol became a key symbol of elite status, and though alcohol was a widely diffused aspect of culture, special beverages such as mead and wine were used as a special marker of distinction, especially served in silver vessels (Sherratt 1995b: 20; Nelson 2005: 20). Wine was particularly useful as an elite signifier as it was not as scarce as the honey needed for making mead, but more expensive than beer, as it was a more labour-intensive product (Holt 2006: 2), and fruit crops are not necessities like bread (Calabresi 1987: 122) and beer. Besides the expense of the vessels it was served in, status was expressed through their decoration as they were usually in the form of animals which symbolise dominance, such as lions, rams and horses’ heads or fore parts.1 These gold and silver vessels expressed difference from less advanced drinking centres that could only manage vessels of horn or wood, or later horn with metal, as well as from other social groups within their society (Nelson 2005: 20, 85). This elite symbolism of wine and silver probably has a direct line of continuity from the Bronze Age, and is a part of the symbolic package of aristocratic status, that also included horse riding and hunting (Sherratt 1995b: 20). While alcohol became increasingly accessible over the course of civilisation to wider social groups, its symbolic importance was thus established early in civilisation, and refinements were always possible to create new elite varieties.

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Initially social competition through social display was on a quantitative basis, with the focus on plenty and capacity, rather than elaboration and refinement (Mennell 1996: 31, 56, 59). In the late Middle Ages through to the early modern period the aristocratic elite would manifest their social status through enormous bouts of feasting, an aspect of which were the huge bouts of alcohol consumption that was associated with aristocratic courts.2 This is similar to the expression of status through the provision of beer in ancient Egypt and the Near East, before more social complexity drove refinement in drinking styles, leading to the growth in importance of wine, and then the proliferation of different vintages, as means of expressing distinction. The move to qualitative display was thus inspired by how with the advance of the civilising process segments of the better off groups in society become able to imitate the elite. The longer chains of social interdependence produced by state formation and the division of labour tended to tilt the balance of power little by little towards lower social groups, leading to increased pressure ‘from below’ and to intensified social competition. (Mennell 1996: 32) Consequently, there was a shift to qualitative elaboration as quantitative display had been exhausted as a means of expressing social superiority as the groups below the elite began to imitate courtly models. The social connotation of items thus became more and more explicit, with those of lower social groups to be expressly avoided, but with higher groups, unwillingly offering models to be imitated (Mennell 1996: 32–3, 74). An overall process of democratisation can be seen in the history of alcohol as well as other psychoactive substances. In the Middle Ages and the early modern period, the consumption of alcohol was a feature of everyday life. This homebrewed alcohol however would have been nutritious and only mildly intoxicating. Consequently, while people drank often, excessive consumption does not seem to have been a feature of the life of the mass of people and the consumption of alcohol in a drinking establishment for most people was a luxury. As is typical of low-income groups, which in this era was the vast majority of the population, intoxication had a circumstantial pattern. Rather than being a normal feature of everyday life, excessive consumption was a feature of the occasional communal festivities, which marked major breakpoints in the life of communities (Frank 2002: 29–30; Kümin 2002: 48). However, from the sixteenth century conspicuous consumption became a feature of popular drinking establishments, expressed through elaborate toasting, overdrinking and feasting, which as a form of pressure from below was frowned upon by both the Church and the court (Heiss 2002: 170). Large quantities of alcohol however only came within the reach of the majority of the population in the nineteenth century. For instance, while the wine drinking culture of France is thought to be almost eternal, its

138 The politics of centralisation consumption only became a mass phenomenon in the mid-nineteenth century (Haine 2006: 121). The process of democratisation accelerated post WWII, with the general increase in the level of consumption of alcohol per capita from the 1950s across the globe a feature of this. The democratisation of access to alcohol is mirrored in the case of other substances. Sugar was initially a rare commodity and its consumption became symbolic of aristocratic status (Sherratt 1995a: 7; Blocker 2006: 227). It was however gradually transformed into a mass-produced product, becoming a major part of people’s diet. Tea, coffee, cocoa and tobacco followed a familiar trajectory of a move from being a restricted elite signifier, limited to the aristocracy as ‘genteel’ drinks in metropolitan countries, due to their expensive, novel and exotic nature, to mass produced consumer staples that were a feature of everyone’s diet (Sherratt 1995a: 7; Smith 1995: 148–9, 152; Conroy 2006: 56–7). An even grander process can be seen in the case of tea, which when first introduced to Europe was used as an attempt to imitate the model of tea consumption by the Chinese upper class by the less sophisticated European aristocracy. From the mid-seventeenth to the early nineteenth century however it was transformed into an item of consumption of almost all social classes in just the same way as coffee. A significant development in broadening access to these substances was the emergence of commercial coffeehouses and teahouses in the eighteenth century, which were relatively democratic unlike the court, salon or private household (Smith 1995: 148–9). Kola in West Africa was initially symbolic of aristocratic status but again, in the twentieth century it became an item of mass consumption through its inclusion in cola soft-drinks (Lovejoy 1995: 106, 111). The effect of this has been to make the out of the ordinary permanent, in one sense through making the feast a constant way of life and in another to make symbolic warfare permanent, through making life a continual battle of impression management through the props of etiquette and consumption. Various pathologies stemmed from this such as ennui as a continual state, as nothing could be more boring and melancholic than a game with no end, combined with a sense of pampered insecurity as one’s social position depended on how one played it; a stale excitement over the production and refinement of new commodities that will soon be cast aside as passé, destroying tradition and the wisdom of generations and making life a curious existence within the looking glass; an anxiety inducing demand for self-control to manage the impressions being fostered and adhere to socially appropriate behaviour, combined with being stalked by emotions of shame and embarrassment through fears of ‘slips’, in the contravention of the mores of ‘good society’. The real significance of this process of the courtisation of consumption is that it is a process towards the generalisation of it to the entire population, thereby spreading the social pathology.

Alcohol taxes and centralisation Changes in the nature of taxation over the course of state formation reflects changes in the balance of power between the state and its citizens and between

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different social groups over the course of this process. A particularly important trend is the shift in power towards central rulers over the course of the civilising process. Wine was an important source of revenue for the state in the Roman empire (Gerritsen 2000: 87). However, following its collapse and the descent into the Middle Ages, royal authorities lost control over this resource. However, the centre eventually reinstated its authority, breaking the power of local oligarchies to independently tax alcohol, and establish themselves as a monopolist in this regard. This process can be seen across Europe, as after the Middle Ages local elites, towns and regions gradually lost their autonomy against centralised state power, with this being expressed by the imposition of uniform national taxes on alcohol, in place of locally imposed taxes (87). The result was very considerable increases in revenue for the state.3 Increasing capacity to levy sophisticated taxes The increasing power of central governments is evident through changes in forms of taxation they are able to levy. In the earlier phases of state formation when the centre is relatively weak import duties tend to be relied upon. These are a fairly rudimentary form as border patrols are the only type of surveillance they require. Consumer taxation requires a more sophisticated supervisory apparatus, as economic activity throughout the territory must be monitored (Gerritsen 2000: 87–8). The monopoly mechanism had to be enforced, which entailed a general disciplining of the population through a system of surveillance, involving laws, a licensing system (Clarke 1983; Hunter 2002), standardisation of information gathering about producers, distributors and retailers and record keeping, and the support of, and co-option of local agents and elites to implement such a system on the ground (Brown 2013), which in the UK, for example, developed primarily from the sixteenth century on. The state’s ability to regulate production and sale was far from perfect, well into the nineteenth century, limited by their surveillance and policing capacity, but also public opinion, which may not have regarded breaches of licensing laws as serious, with too strict policing likely to result in riots. One effect of this is centralisation within the alcohol industry, as this was encouraged by states because it was in their interest as it facilitated surveillance.4 Thus, gradually the supervisory capacity of the state became more and more effective.5 Income tax, corporation tax, and value added tax require another level of supervision again and tend to be a feature of advanced states in the twentieth century only (Gerritsen 2000: 103). Hence when states are relatively weak dependence on alcohol will be high in the form of import duties and consumer taxation. This can be seen in the case of the UK, where over the course of the nineteenth century an average of 35% of total state revenue was gained from alcohol, rising to 40% from 1880–1900. In the USA in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century between 25% and 35% of total revenue was gained from alcohol (Gerritsen 2000: 105, 109). Only customs duties and public land sales provided more (Kerr 1998: 186). The Netherlands presents a less extreme example where revenue from alcohol as a

140 The politics of centralisation proportion of total state revenue rose from around 15% in the early nineteenth century to 25% for the latter half (Gerritsen 2000: 97). The dependence on revenue from alcohol was paralleled in Eastern Europe. At certain points in Russian history revenue from alcohol has made up to 60% of the national budget. By 1600 37.5% of state revenue was gained through the state monopoly on vodka sales, in 1679–80 53% of all revenue was drawn from the taxation of alcohol and between 1767 and 1863 around a third of state revenue came from this source. By the end of the nineteenth century revenue from the taxation of vodka made the greatest contribution to state finances and in the early twentieth century over 50% of all state revenue came from tax on alcohol (Herlihy 2006: 186, 188, 191; Snow 2002: 195, 201; Heath 2000: 138).6 Significantly, in this period the total revenue collected increased considerably, so the amount raised from alcohol increased greatly in absolute terms (Gerritsen 2000: 105). Income tax, value added tax and corporation tax became the dominant sources of revenue in developed states in the twentieth century with 1910 being the rough date for the transition across a range of states (Gerritsen 2000: 114). Due to this, alcohol became a much less significant source of revenue.7 Its significance was reduced again through industrialisation, and the move to increasingly advanced economies as with this the economic significance of the alcohol industry declined relative to the great growth in textiles, engineering, chemicals and motor and armaments manufacturing (Wilson & Gourvish 1998: 1). In the case of the UK, it declined from around 35% in 1900 to 28% in 1910, to 12% in 1940, to 7% in 1967, to 3% in 1987 (Gerritsen 2000: 106). In the USA, it declined from 27% before prohibition, 10% after the repeal of prohibition to 2% in 1965 and 1% in 1975 (114). As a result, tax policy began to change its function slowly, from one of harvesting resources to one of curbing alcohol consumption (103). Ironically, the very centralisation of state authority that rested so heavily on the taxation of alcohol now provided the state with great control over levels of consumption through effecting price through excise duties and license sales. This is especially now in the latter half of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century when taxation is the major element in the price of it (Wilson & Gourvish 1998: 2). Centralisation and blocked policies A frequent complaint of public health advocates is the stickiness of government policy, as despite the evidence they may present about the health and social costs of alcohol, the status quo tends to be resistant to change (Butler et al. 2017). This mirrors the complaints of temperance advocates in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who despite building mass movements, typically saw these waves of support crash and break against the implacable rocks of government. With increasing social complexity, combined with an equalisation of power balances between different groups and institutions in society, the possibility of any group being able to impose their ideal on the rest of society, or alter the course of the ship of government policy, becomes more and more

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difficult. The tensions between public opinion, professionals in medicine, criminal justice and social welfare and the alcohol industry finds expression in ‘departmentalism’, as a feature of government, where the different branches of government pursue separate and often contradictory policy agendas, with justice, revenue, trade and employment, and health often at cross purposes (Butler et. al. 2017: 26). Having noted this, we must turn to the example of prohibition in the USA, to explain this unusual instance of a dramatic victory by a particular faction in the political field of alcohol. The USA contrasts with Western European states such as Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands in the dramatic success of temperance movements of achieving national prohibition, despite their considerable strength of such movements in all of these jurisdictions. It illustrates a peculiar contradiction as while the centralisation of states was funded to a very considerable extent by alcohol, it ultimately produced a tax base that transcended the need for alcohol, its original foundation. However, even with alcohol losing its status as a critical economic resource for government, and the ascendency of the public health perspective, the prospects of a policy regulating alcohol to minimise its costs to national efficiency and budgets is distant. The source of this is centralisation itself. Central government was too highly developed to allow local autonomy to allow prohibition to be introduced in Western Europe. Restrictions on alcohol in highly centralised states have to succeed nationally, or not at all, denying movements the ability to build momentum through local successes and experiments. Governments in Western Europe were not willing to allow a decentralisation of decision making for the simple reason of being reluctant to cede levers of power, because the revenue from the alcohol industry was so important and because the industry could effectively lobby a centralised structure of power. This meant that rather than being able to nurture itself with rewarding successes at the local level at first, it had to succeed at the national level, or not at all and this is a considerable reason why the movements dwindled in these countries as the members became dispirited as the impossibility of prohibition became apparent (Gerritsen 2000: 150, 161, 183). As one temperance leader from the UK stated in anguish, Westminster: ‘was one of the finest places for smashing or destroying ideals to be found in the whole world’ (Malcolm 1986: 274). In contrast, centralisation of power in Washington took a long time to establish, and, in addition, Washington was not inclined to involve itself in domestic issues. Consequently, ordinary citizens had a high level of direct control at local level to implement their wishes, meaning that American society became marked by greater individualism and self-administration than elsewhere in the Western world (Gerritsen 2000: 142, 150, 176). The high level of democratisation and decentralisation in the United States meant that people had acquired the habit of setting up private organisations to achieve their goals. De Tocqueville was struck by this feature of American life during his travels there. It was therefore an entirely natural response to the increased consumption of strong liquor in the first half of the nineteenth

142 The politics of centralisation century that a plethora of local societies sprang up with the aim of reversing this trend (Gerritsen 2000: 165). The central government in Washington had a much weaker monopoly of taxation than Western European states due to the country’s federal structure, with each state having a high level of autonomy. As is typical however, an emergency in the form of the Civil War produced centralising tendencies as a range of taxes were imposed in order to finance it. Until this, Washington was unable to impose inland taxes for any considerable period. While most of these were repealed after it, excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco remained and these became the mainstay of the Federal Government from 1868–1920 (Gerritsen 2000: 106–7). While in the late 1860s alcohol accounted for 15% of total federal revenue, this rose to 25% between 1870 and 1892, to 35% between 1892 and 1916, falling to 27% in 1917, just before Prohibition (109). The importance of alcohol as a source of revenue made it a focal point of the power struggle between the Federal Government and the individual states. These states disliked interference in their affairs from Washington and from the start of the twentieth century a whole range of tasks were being transferred from individual states to Washington, with Roosevelt’s New Deal being the major example of this. In this struggle, alcohol was a natural target as Washington and the alcohol industry were so closely intertwined (Gerritsen 2000: 109, 111–12). Hence, this power struggle was an important underlying motivation within the American Temperance movement. Politicians and administrators at the level of individual states found their fate resting on their support and implementation of local anti-alcohol policies. Their hand was strengthened when just before WWI a federal income and company tax was introduced, making excise on alcohol an ever-smaller proportion of government revenue. Economic growth meant that income tax could be lowered while government revenue nonetheless continued to grow dramatically. Their position was also strong due to the Federal structure of the USA which meant that outlying states of little economic significance could impose their will on industrialised states where the majority of the population lived, which opposed the banning of alcohol (Gerritsen 2000: 110, 113). However, the economic crash of 1929 brought Treasury minds back to excise on alcohol as a source of revenue and the alcohol industry as a source of employment, and pressure to repeal Prohibition grew stronger. Ultimately then, the temperance movement won the battle but lost the war, as through the repeal of Prohibition there was a considerable breakthrough towards centralisation by Washington as it now possessed federal income tax as well as the reintroduced federal excise on alcohol (Gerritsen 2000: 114). Nonetheless, while there was a breakthrough towards centralising tendencies, a liminal, frontier habitus had become an aspect of the American personality structure, not only through the various successful struggles by the margins, but through the disruptions to the patterns of the culture of everyday life that these caused.

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Crime Crime infringes on the monopolies of the state, so the state must seek to eliminate its manifestations (Mennell 1998: 68). In the field of alcohol and psychoactive substances there is a continual struggle between the state and ‘illicit’ production and supply, as the state asserts its claims to its dual monopoly as it seeks to draw all revenue possibilities under its aegis. The struggle was/is particularly sharp while governments were/are primarily dependent on import duties and consumer taxation. One aspect of this is achieving definitions of deviance, as viewing the matter in a long-term perspective, there is nothing unusual, and indeed it is entirely normal for people to produce their own alcohol. The state however seeks to undercut this belief and assert that any production requires official sanction. Due to the underdevelopment of the supervisory apparatus of the state into the early modern period much production and distribution of alcohol was a part of the unofficial economy8 with very large sub-systems of illegal drinking establishments. In early modern Germany for example the figure was as high as 50% (Frank 2002: 15, 21). This struggle drove the development of a supervisory apparatus to both police unofficial and licensed producers/suppliers whose ‘fraudulent’ practices had to be contained in order to ensure revenue maximisation’ (Price 1995: 180). This, however, was traditionally a difficult task for states with long, exposed seacoasts and long land frontiers. The state also was often compelled to turn a blind eye to such activity also, such as in early modern Europe, where without the income from running drink shops, their poor owners, who were often widows would have to be supported by the parish (Frank 2002: 25). The mutual influence of the monopoly of violence and taxation is evident in how for a long period the state struggles to assert its authority over illicit producers and smugglers as it does not have the necessary force at its disposal to tame these groups. If this is the case illicit activities will increase, depriving the state of more potential revenue, decreasing its capacity to fund coercive operations to limit them.9 The state’s capacity to police production and supply also sets limits to the basic tax rates, as if it is set too high there will be a decrease in demand for licit alcohol, and illicit producers/suppliers will be attracted into the market (Gerritsen 2000: 93). In the grand scheme of things, the struggle did however give governments more control over the citizens/subjects in their territory, and ultimately made it possible to impose more and more direct taxes on larger sections of the population, with the culmination of the process being universal income tax and value added tax (94). So, in spite of frequent reversals, the overall trajectory is one of centralisation, though in the twentieth century there emerged the major caveat of the illicit supply of psychoactive substances made newly illegal, which channelled revenue away from states and towards ‘criminal’ organisations. Tax and (limited) revolution The state’s attempt to tax alcoholic beverages as part of its project of centralisation has been resisted throughout history. While dearth of bread sits prominently

144 The politics of centralisation in the popular imagination as a common source of revolutions, the heavy taxation of alcohol is another, less known one. In 1794 for instance, in the USA, the federal armed forces had to put down the Whisky Rebellion of the grain farmers of Pennsylvania, which was in response to the levying of a tax on whisky by the federal government. In Sweden in contrast a similar uprising was successful. In 1776 a state-controlled monopoly on distilled beverages was established to raise additional revenue but had to be withdrawn however in 1787, as it was extremely unpopular, with production for private use again being allowed, and in 1809 the restrictions were reduced further (Bjerén 1992: 158). While, as Elias (2000: 356) notes, increasing taxation caused a sense of opposition to the central authority, outright rebellion can only ever be a temporary option, as the majority of tax was spent (until the second half of the twentieth century) on military expenditure. The cost of military defeat for these groups was more severe than the taxes, and this necessity married with resentment over it was the anchor of continual struggles.

Alcohol tax and democratisation Equality before the state The process until the end of absolutism was towards an imbalance of power in favour of the king, to the extent that they were able to raise taxes without agreement from assemblies. With the advance of the monopoly mechanism taxation becomes a cause of continuous discontent and political mobilisation, as sections of society gained the sense of being squeezed dry by the central ruler (Elias 2000: 347, 355–6). However, while one aspect of the overall process of state formation is a shift in power towards governments expressed in their increasing capacity to levy taxes, the other is the increasing power of the citizenry as the state and its people become bound in an increasingly intense relationship of interdependence. This process can be seen through the relationship between two variables, the first being the burden of taxation and the second being government spending on ‘care arrangements’ (i.e. social security, heath, education and the social infrastructure). Before the nineteenth century the high burden of taxation on the people was used to fund the lifestyle and the military ambitions of ruling elites and to maintain their position through the coercive apparatus. From the nineteenth century, however, tax was used more for ‘care arrangements’. A somewhat anomalous case however is again that of the USA, which combines a low level of taxation with low provision of ‘care arrangements’ (Gerritsen 2000: 89). Apart from this case, the increasing obligation to pay taxes that has arisen over time could only be imposed successfully when provided in exchange for rights, whether they are civil, political or social (91). Thus, the centralisation of power in the government has been married with more democratic controls over it. In addition to the shifting balance of power between the people and the state, there was a shifting balance of power between different social groups.

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The nobility and the bourgeoisie were particularly active in the politics of taxation, with an important political project of the bourgeoisie being the ending of noble tax exemptions and privileges, so that there would be a redistribution of the tax monopoly in their favour (Elias 2000: 347, 362). The aristocracy tended to have a range of privileges regarding the control of tax on alcohol, and also exemptions from tax themselves. In feudalism and absolutism for example, a major tool of the central ruler for playing each side against each other was the provision of sinecures and tax farming. This represented a step away from feudalism and towards the more democratic system of an impersonal bureaucracy. While tax farming is not an aspect of rational bureaucracy, it represents a step along the path towards it. This is because it shifts the burden of converting income into money on to the office holder, thus presenting the central ruler with a relatively constant flow of money, thereby helping to eliminate fluctuations in revenue and enabling ‘public budgeting in the organisation of finance’ (Weber 2005a: 342). In Britain and Ireland customs duties on wine were farmed until the reign of Charles II (Ludington 2006: 171) when ‘customs and excise duties were granted in perpetuity to the crown, becoming part of what was termed the hereditary revenue and thus replacing the old system of feudal dues’ (Malcolm 1986: 14), providing the king with a secure income, independent of the nobility. Before this a monopoly on granting alehouse licenses and licenses for the retail of wine and whiskey were farmed out, and they were highly profitable for those who received them (Malcolm 1986: 5). Queen Elizabeth granted the privilege of issuing wine licenses, setting its price and imposing fines on offenders to Sir Edward Horsey, a court favourite in 1570, who was the first of the ‘Receivers of Wine Rents’. However, in 1623 the holder of this office was made into an employee of the Crown and not for private gain. In the early seventeenth century in England, Sir Giles Mompesson was successful in persuading James I to give him the authority to license inns. He abused this office, using it for his own personal enrichment and in 1621 as a result of complaints by innkeepers as well as the populace in general due to the rising cost of visiting an inn, the House of Lords ruled against his actions and they were repealed (Hunter 2002: 71, 73). His sentence for extortion included a heavy fine, the loss of his title, imprisonment and the punishment of walking down the Strand with his face in a horse’s anus though he fled to France and subsequently was able to return to England. This series of events led to his fame as an archetype of official corruption and epitome of rent-seeking. In contrast, the slower pace of the state formation of Russia can be seen in how this process occurred much later. There the farming of taxes on alcohol began to be granted to members of the nobility in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century and was ended by the only in 1863 (Herlihy 2006: 191, Snow 2002: 198). This situation pertained for other psychoactive substances also. In the eighteenth century in continental Western European states tobacco monopolies were commonly a privilege farmed to private interests (Price 1995: 167). A transition to rational capitalism can be seen in Britain and the Netherlands however where monopolies were not farmed out to private interests, as ‘commercial

146 The politics of centralisation interests were strong enough to keep out monopolies and to prevent the state’s fiscal demands from interfering with transit trades’ (Price 1995: 179). Where the tobacco monopoly was farmed it was difficult for the government to resist the pressure to increase prices. The consequence of this however, was that the level of taxation and hence price was driven too high, resulting in a decline in sales (of the legal variety at least) and consequently a decline in revenue for the state, which was avoided in more capitalist states such as Britain due to the absence of this system (Price 1995: 175, 179). Thus, a more rational system was the aspiration of states, when the capacity to shift towards one emerged. After the bourgeoisie had risen to become the dominant social class, typically in the course of the nineteenth century, though much later in other places, their power was expressed in the nature of the tax system. Ardant (1975: 232) noted how ‘the fiscal system of the 19th Century weighed most heavily on the popular classes. It was surely one of the most striking manifestations of the triumphant bourgeoisie’. Indirect taxes, which are imposed on the producer who then incorporates it into the price of the commodity so that the consumer pays, were the dominant instrument of taxation. They operate as a class tax as they are a means of generating tax from those without property or a regular income, i.e. the majority: the poor; and place a disproportionate burden on the incomes of the poor (Gerritsen 2000: 92–3). It also acted as a paternalistic class tax, extracting money from the lower classes, while using this to support and elevate them through care arrangements. While the machinery of state and ‘care arrangements’ were paid by those with relatively low incomes the upshot was that it made the state dependent on the lower orders, thereby increasing their power, setting the ground for their enfranchisement. However, there was a disproportionate delay, considering what they contributed (97, 101, 106). Private to public monopolies The above are examples of what Elias (2000) calls the movement from private to public monopolies. The overall process in a civilising process is from free competition to private monopolies to public monopolies involving control of these by broader strata in a process of democratisation. The driver of this is the demands imposed by the increasing complexity of the task of securing and administering the monopolies, meaning that the monopolist must allocate control to increasing numbers of others (Elias 2000: 274, 312, 433). [T]he more [monopoly power] is accumulated by an individual, the less easily can it be supervised by this individual, and the more surely he becomes by his very monopoly dependent on increasing numbers of others, the more he becomes dependent on his dependents. (Elias 1998: 142) This extends to the point where power becomes so dispersed that it becomes impossible to discern the rulers from the ruled (Elias 2000: 315).

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The equalisation of power throughout society and the parallel decrease in power of the central ruler is evident through the ‘royal mechanism’. With the transition from private to public monopolies, the equalisation of power throughout society and the parallel decrease in power of the central ruler, their power becomes based more on the distribution of forces in society than their economic and military power. Their power came to rest on managing the tension between and maintaining relative equilibrium in power between the major social groups (Elias 2000: 319, 324, 353, 363). Inherent in the linkage of the state with psychoactive substances thus, are power struggles between different groups, with different interests, such as consumers, merchants, planters, tax farmers and state treasuries, which rules must seek to balance (Price 1995: 165). The concentration of the alcohol industry in the nineteenth century from a diffuse mass of petty produces to a number of large firms, for example, gave it a powerful voice with government, but it continually found itself balanced in a hostile system of tensions with temperance movements (Wilson & Gourvish 1998: 7), and later by public health advocates (Butler et al. 2017). Temperance, public health and conservative interests also found themselves in conflict with agricultural interests, which relied on a high rate of alcohol consumption to maintain prices (Stivers 2000: 22). A major source of the dependence of the ruling authority on society at large, is through the reliance on the lower strata as a source of tax revenue, which is directly correlated with the granting of civil and political rights in exchange over time. Thus, from the Early Modern period there was growing concern over the behaviour of lower social group, as they became more and more important for the fiscal health of the state. As the centralised ruling apparatus comes to depend on ‘the people’ increasingly as a source of revenue, they must work to protect the people from uneconomic exploitation in order to secure these revenue flows (Weber 2005a: 343). From the thirteenth century in England, for example, there were laws regulating the price, measures and quality of alcohol sold by retailers that were enforced locally (Hunter 2002: 65). In fact, the earliest act concerning the selling of ale is from 1266 and was concerned with these matters. This principle that it pays to protect the people can be seen in action in the role of the psychoactive substance tobacco in international competition in early modern Europe. Britain, the state that emerged from this struggle as the most powerful and influential, while taxing heavily, was willing to sacrifice revenue where necessary to facilitate agricultural development and economic growth. In contrast, France and Spain, in jealously defending its revenues from tobacco caused its tobacco production to collapse and made themselves increasingly dependent on foreign supplies. A balancing of interests is constantly required as pushing the demands of revenue too far acts against the interests of producers, leading to a strangling of the source of revenue. Hence, an adequate balance has to be struck to reconcile the competing demands of revenue and agricultural/commercial development. For instance, the numerous increases in duty during WWI and the restriction of materials due to the need to secure food supplies had the

148 The politics of centralisation effect of stimulating collusion in the brewing industry and causing a decline in supply (Boje & Johansen 1998: 66). There is parallel need to balance the level of taxation against consumer demand as setting tax levels too high could drive them towards illicit supplies (Price 1995: 174, 179). Indeed, the drive to maximise revenue from psychoactive substances resulted in revolts such as the one by Cuban tobacco growers in the early 1720s and most famously the Boston Tea Party. This process also resulted in the gradual removal of traditional feudal privileges such as exemption from paying customs duty on alcohol, the right to distil and brew for themselves (which the peasantry did not necessarily share) and the right to impose fines for illicit sales of alcohol (Ludington 2006: 168; Herlihy 2006: 186–7). While we have already noted the important role of drinking establishments as a revenue source, their status in the eyes of the establishment was one of ambivalence. In Britain for instance, the institution of the alehouse spread in the sixteenth century as a response to economic uncertainty, by providing employment for some, a base and information hub for itinerant workers forced to seek employment away from their home locality, and a place of comfort for those with time on their hands, thereby becoming an important economic institution. However, it also became a focus of anxiety for ruling groups, anxious over the idleness of the lower orders. They were concerned over a pattern of workers labouring just long enough to accumulate money to spend on beer, rather than conforming to the norms of rational capitalism and creating taxable activity and wealth (Nicholls 2009: 10; Weber 2002). The consumption habits of the mass became politicised also because of the contribution that the production and trade of alcohol made to the exchequers of rival states. French wines were embargoed partly for this reason in the UK in 1679, along with brandy and other spirits in 1689. This led to the promotion of gin, as a national drink that could support national interest groups, and national revenue. While the policy was a great success, promoting mass consumption, greatly stimulating revenue, it nonetheless caused deep anxiety as its consumption was associated with women and the lower orders, demonstrating that while the centre relied on revenue derived from the promotion of alcoholrelated consumerism among the mass, it was still deeply anxious of the social forces this would unleash (Nicholls 2009: 30–1, 36). Eventually, control over the centralised and monopolised resources becomes ‘a function of the interdependent human web as a whole’ (Elias 1998: 148). In this transition, instead of nakedly optimising sectional interests, there is an increasing demand for the optimisation of the functioning of the overall network of interdependencies, through controlling the monopoly centres in a certain way, rather than by certain groups (Elias 2000: 439). Consequently, there was a shift from thinking about alcohol policy purely in terms of class privilege, or a revenue stream to fund the ambitions of a particular clique, to thinking about how to optimise the overall figuration through seeking to understand the blind processes and abstract dynamics that shape social and economic life, and setting policy appropriately. The gin craze in eighteenth century Britain was an

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important point in this transition, in many ways establishing the major policy positions that are still with us today, that are continually returned to for effecting the impact that alcohol has on society. It represents a point in history where a more complex array of social forces competed over a public issue, and how it should be managed, in which there was high levels of ambivalence in the interests of each group. It was also a significant episode, as it taught the lesson that attempts to control the functioning of complex figurations often result in unanticipated consequences, and a spiralling out of control, with the affair coming to represent the potential uncontrollability of mass consumer society. The key issue was how the abstract and impersonal entities of state, market, health and public morality, as well as reason, civility and progress, could be reconciled. As noted above, gin had been promoted to increase revenue for the British exchequer, and to deny revenue to its international rivals. To this end, in 1690 a major social innovation was introduced, with the control of gin by the guild system broken, with the trade opened to all, with no requirement for a licence to act as a retailer. This act replaced concrete associations with the abstract principle of the free market, as Nicholls (2009: 36) notes: ‘[h]ere was a new economic dispensation: no guilds, no protected interests, no licensing’. Nonetheless, the move was by no means purely focused on stimulating the efficiency and output of society at large, as it did have a class basis, benefitting landowning interests through increasing demand for grain. The impact on society at large however could not be ignored though, as the rapid increase in its consumption resulted in concern over the social degradation it was contributing to (Nicholls 2009: 36). In response, new discourses about market, state and society emerged. Advocates of liberalism took a stand against regulation in the debates, arguing that personal responsibility lay with the consumer, and that private vices could contribute to public prosperity, as set out by Bernard Mandeville in ‘The Fable of the Bees’, who used gin as an example of this. The debate around the control of access to alcohol was later important for J. S. Mill’s (1859) thinking on liberty, and the gin craze represented an important historical background, and it raised deep difficulties for it. There was the problem of compulsive consumption, which raised the difficult question for liberalism about how rational individuals could lack significant ‘will’, and engage in behaviours that were destructive to themselves. Furthermore, the debate helped the formulation of the classic liberal problem of deciding what the position to judge what were benefits and harms, and how these could be defined, was; as well as the problem of how attempts to curtail harms might produce greater harms (Nicholls 2009: 36, 38, 43). At the same time, there were growing calls for government intervention to manage the social effects of consumption, with one faction proposing ‘a radical and previously untried strategy: gin legislation which was “in its nature a prohibition”’ (Nicholls 2009: 37). Those proposing prohibition as the solution to the gin question framed their discussion in terms of disease afflicting the individual, that spread like an infection throughout society, and argued that this feature demanded state intervention. This created a contradiction where a

150 The politics of centralisation belief in individual sovereignty that was at the heart of political and economic thought was simultaneously undermined by a model of people as prisoners of their biological impulses and their lack of will (39–40). The result of the debates was an experiment with prohibition, as the 1736 Gin Act introduced such a high price for a licence that it was in effect a ban on sale. This was ineffective, however, as retailers continued to trade illicitly, and considerable social disorder was caused by attempts to enforce it, and the quality of the product decreased, and it promoted corruption. It was repealed in 1743, and was followed by a new policy of encouraging the ‘respectability’ of traders, which gentrified consumption (38, 44–5). The debate replayed itself with the debate around the 1830 Beer Act, where an alliance of drinks manufacturers, representing the rise of bourgeois interests, in alliance with the central state, which was concerned with increasing revenue, and broader bourgeois interests concerned with promoting free trade and breaking private monopolies, were victorious over local aristocratic interests, who stood as magistrates, and who sought to limit alehouses due to their concerns over public order, and controlling the leisure of their social inferiors. The act introduced a radical system of free trade in the sale of beer. However, just as with the gin craze, laissez fair ideology was opposed by temperance movements arguing for the pursuit of millennial ends that would be produced by the spiritual act of rejecting alcohol, or middle-class campaigners seeking to ‘civilise’ the working class, or those arguing for public control over markets to minimise their social cost (Nicholls 2009: 80). The medical and legal profession also gained an interest in the drink question, reflecting how with greater social complexity there is an empowerment of government functionaries, with rulers becoming more dependent on the other strata to carry out their functions (Elias 2000: 177, 273). This added an extra layer of complexity to the discourses seeking to define how state, market, personal liberty, social influence, revenue, health, public order, national power could be reconciled in the ‘drink question’. It also reflected how deep and wide interdependencies had grown, as at the heart of the work of legal and medical professionals in relation to alcohol was the question of selfhood, will, the capacity for self-control, and responsibility, which become an acute concern in mass society, when ‘more people are forced more often to pay more attention to more and more other people’ (Goudsblom 1989: 722), and where failure, refusal or incapacity to exercise control became more and more of a concern, and a target for intervention and correction (Foucault 2001). Moves to regulate the market in turn led to critiques from advocates of the philosophy of subsidiarity, which was as concerned with the dangers the extension of state power posed, as with the effects of the market (Nicholls 2009: 124–5). In any case, the question of regulating markets became more complex again when drinks manufacturers began to float themselves on the stock exchange in the late nineteenth century, making the idea of the drinks lobby quite diffuse, as ownership dissolved into society at large (albeit unevenly and unequally). It was the experience of total war in WWI and experiments

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with command economies, that shifted policy to public control, in the shape of a type of national partnership between the different interests, under the aegis of government, with the prospect of the nationalisation of the drinks industry at some point, which however never came to pass (Nicholls 2009: 154–7). Thus, between the eighteenth and early twentieth century, the discourses that constitute the alcohol policy field were largely in place, composed of abstract philosophies over how to promote the greatest amount of ‘good’ in the overall social figuration, with each connected to particular interests in a complex field of players, but in ambivalent and contradictory ways. At this phase of development, the ambivalence of social relations (in terms of overlapping interests and antagonisms, so that people and groups become simultaneously allies and enemies) increases, so that the ruler can no longer help to bring about any decisive compromise or conflict (Elias 2000: 320, 344). This leaves us with one of the key malaises of our age: a society full of tensions and problems, with an elusive ability to grasp or address them.

Notes 1 As in finds from Phrygia and Persia of drinking implements (Nelson 2005: 17, 19–20). 2 In Poland in the 1700s in the royal court there were special wine cups without a base so that drinkers would have to consume the contents in one gulp and drinking contests with a prize of high state positions for the winners (Moskalewicz & Zielinski 1995: 228). 3 In Ireland this can be seen from the middle of the sixteenth to the end of the seventeenth century as alcohol policy came to be driven by the enforcement and the furthering of the English crown’s monopoly of taxation over the local oligarchs, though this involved a protracted struggle with peers and boroughs. In this period, the wine monopoly was farmed and controlled by the merchant oligarchies that dominated Irish port towns. They controlled the internal production of alcohol also, largely independently of the central authority. When the crown eventually did succeed in wresting authority from these players, it was very profitable for them, with overall revenue from Ireland increasing by 15% as a result of it (Malcolm 1986: 7, 11–3, 16; Malcolm 1999: 55). 4 As in the case of the distilling industry (Hunter 2002: 75). 5 The case of Ireland is illustrative. In England, the first licensing law for retailers of ale and beer was passed in 1552 (Hunter 2002: 65). This was followed in Ireland in the 1660s with the establishment of an excise administration, which involved the supervision of brewers and distillers through requirements for reports and checks by gaugers. At this stage however, the system was not very effective however (Malcolm 1986: 15). Even into the late nineteenth century attempting to regulate drinking establishments was a very dangerous endeavour and because of this Constables of the Dublin Metropolitan police were not allowed to enter and investigate licensed premises, with only certain sergeants permitted to carry out this task. On top of this, the laws that had developed over time to regulate drinking were themselves contradictory, making action difficult to take. It was difficult to act also due to the pressure of public opinion, which did not regard breaches of the licensing laws as serious. For these reasons, it was recognised that there was a limit to how far regulation could be pushed. For instance, the government and police resisted temperance pressure for Sunday closing as it feared that this would lead to widespread illicit distilling (Malcolm 1986: 213–14, 216, 235).

152 The politics of centralisation 6 Similarly, as a result of the pressing need for revenue there was a massive increase in the production of spirits in Poland from the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century. ‘While income from the manufacture of alcohol accounted for .3% of the overall income of rural properties in 1564 and 6.4% about a century later in 1764 it accounted for 37.6% of the overall income. By 1789 the proportion of revenues from the sale of alcohol reached 40.1 percent’ (Levine 1987: 250). 7 In Holland in 1965 it amounted to 2.3% and in 1975 1.8% of total revenue (Gerritsen 2000: 103). 8 As in the Chiapas Highlands (Crump 1987: 245). 9 As in the case of eighteenth century Britain and specifically Scotland (Ludington 2006: 171, 173).

10 Peace, violence and trauma

Introduction Alcohol, and wine in particular, is a totem of civilisation, as its widespread existence rests upon and expresses the core feature of it: a long-term commitment to a specific place along with the achievement of peace, a degree of plenty and stability in social relations. The question then is why, if alcohol has such positive cultural meanings as the very symbol, of civilisation does it also have such negative meanings, with serious concern over its disruptive effects. Such ambivalence is not an inherent necessity as we have seen through our analysis of small-scale societies, with it generally being an unproblematic and socially useful part of their culture. The following chapter examines how drinking culture becomes pathological in state formation as it becomes subject to contradictory imperatives that produces a deep ambivalence about it. As we have seen in the previous chapter, alcohol and other psychoactive substances became crucial to the survival and expansion of state societies through their revenue generating capacities. However, their identity generating capacity comes into conflict with the imperative to harvest revenue, as while they were relied on to fund the administrative, repressive and military apparatus, as well as provide a focal experience for the cults of official political communities, they were also a continual threat to this centralising project as they simultaneously acted as a unifying experience and totem of oppositional political communities. Hence, alcohol comes to gain a particularly ambivalent position, particularly among those with a history of resistance to incorporation to a state formation process, as while on the one hand there is a project to problematise it, which is subsequently internalised, and push it outside of mainstream life, on the other it gains positive meanings as a symbol of political dissent and achievement of increasing power ratios. The project of the centre to regulate consumption as a result of this, much as we have seen in the previous chapter tends to have highly disruptive, ambivalent and counterproductive effects, disturbing cultural frameworks, leading to subversion of the ritual context of drinking, that encloses liminality. Another consequence is the division of the culture into elite and popular levels, which breaks the unity of culture, and infuses shame and envy into cultural models. A

154 Peace, violence and trauma contradiction also emerges in the concern over the capacity for effective defence and attack, that is, the capacity to conduct effective violence. Alcohol is widely associated with violence, whether of the interpersonal or of the organised kind. It is popularly perceived that there is some kind of active element within alcohol that stimulates this type of behaviour. However, it is more accurate to say that alcohol serves as a cue to separate from everyday roles and enter into a sphere of liminality where killing may occur, and for the reintegration into normal social relations after. While this positions alcohol as socially useful in mobilising people to face dangers, there is a conflicting concern in large-scale societies of enervation. Drinking culture historically has been widely associated with decadence and the internal corruption of a society, resulting in a decreasing capacity to cope with external dangers. A further source of friction emerges with the onset of the age of mass war, which demands a great extension of disciplinary power, entailing the command and efficient use of all the resources of the state, resulting in a culture of asceticism in which pleasure can become defined as waste and disorderliness. Similarly, while psychoactive substances are on the one hand held up as problematic by such societies, on the other they rested heavily upon them in their projects of conquest and colonisation as an economic base and source of reliable revenue in these precarious endeavours, as well as serving as a means of establishing their primacy in the world-system of trade. The overall result of this process of extending control over the means of violence is to subvert traditional ritual life, as the monopoly of violence and principle of revenue maximisation becomes the primary mechanisms underpinning the social order in place of rites de passage and gift giving. Order becomes guaranteed by force, with this external constraint subsequently being internalised, to the point where such an underpinning of violence becomes inaccessible to reflection (Elias 2000). Hence everyday life becomes infused with violence and repression, in spite of the fact that it may be scarcely identifiable by people.

Alcohol and political dissent The essence of the contradiction driving the social pathology of contemporary civilisation’s relationship with alcohol is that while on the one hand alcohol was relied upon in order to fund the administrative, repressive and military apparatus, on the other hand it was a source of danger to the central ruling authority as a potential source of disorder, subversion and revolution. Psychoactive substances and the traditions that surround them are important in constructing collective identity (Heath 1987: 16). Because of their identity generating capacity they are important for the formation of official political communities. Major state occasions such as coronations throughout history have been marked by public festivities with the provision of alcohol to provide the ruling cult with the image of legitimacy and success. There is evidence of this from early in civilisation. For example, in the Neo-Assyrian period in the early first millennium BC, 10,000 wine skins were drunk at the ‘inauguration of the new capital built at

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Nimrud by Assurbanipal II’ (Sherratt 1995b: 18). Outside of kingship, and in the realm of democratic political communities, such as in the early American Republic, the ‘drinking of healths at taverns had become a popular means of mental and physical devotion to the abstract entity of a new republic’ (Conroy 2006: 50). However, the other side to this is that psychoactive substances, because of their identity generating capacity are important for the formation of oppositional political communities. This is a major reason for restrictions, due to ‘the powerful potential of such substances to accrue symbolic meanings, and to provide focal experiences in the formation of dissident communities’ (Sherratt 1995b: 15–16). Drinking establishments have operated as centres where ‘general dissatisfaction among the population could be translated into organised social protest’ (Gerritsen 2000: 105) and hence for subversion and revolutionary activity, with revolts often having their origins in them (Kümin & Tlusty 2002: 9; Frank 2002: 18; Brändle 2002: 88; Heiss 2002: 173). In addition, festivity is associated with revolutions, as they are driven by the same sentiment and impulse to invert the social order (Peillon 1982: 44).1 In France, drinking establishments, for example, were sites of political organisation against the status quo, with their importance evident in how Haine (2006: 123) tells us that a momentous and dramatic moment occurred on July 12th, 1789 when the young journalist and revolutionary Camille Desmoulins stood on a café table in the Café de Foy and exhorted the crowd ‘To Arms!’ Two days later the crowds inspired by his words overwhelmed the hated symbol of royal despotism, the Bastille fort on the eastern side of Paris. (Haine 2006: 123) In France again, amongst the middle class there was a perception that the Paris Commune was caused by intoxicated Communards (Munholland 2006: 78). In terms of alternative psychoactive substances, the bourgeois revolt against the aristocracy was centred to a significant extent on a coffee cult (Sherratt 1995b: 16) and the contemporary age is marked by large oppositional subcultures based around the taking of specific drugs. For this reason, public drinking throughout history has been viewed as a threatening source of disorder.

Intoxication and killing While alcohol is threatening to the political centre, it has also been a very widely used technique by warleaders to aid the fighting ability of their men. Alcohol and other psychoactive substances are associated with war and the capacity to be violent. The connection it seems is a timeless one, though with greater complexity, their use tends to become more and more problematised. Such substances are associated with war, battle and killing with them being widely used for marking the transition into the alternative liminal state of war, and then to mark the reintegration to society afterwards. For instance, beer was important to the Abipone2

156 Peace, violence and trauma for frequent but important parties that precede and follow combat among male warriors. Before going into battle, they drink, in the belief that beer makes them both more quick-witted and braver. After a successful battle, they again drink beer to celebrate (Heath 2000: 37). Raiders such as the Vikings and the Scythians used alcohol to prepare themselves for their attacks and historical accounts state that the Thracians drank when they went into battle (Nelson 2005: 28; Heath 2000: 171). ‘Sura’, a strong beer, which was associated with the warrior caste in ancient Indian civilisation, was also used particularly in times of war (Mohan & Sharma 1995: 131). Other psychoactive substances are used in a similar way, with kola used in central Sudan by soldiers before battle, to bring about a change in being, making men tough, brave and eager for combat (Lovejoy 1995: 115). In more recent history, in WWI soldiers were given alcohol before going over the top to steel them and in the Yugoslavian conflict soldiers were given alcohol before they committed atrocities on civilians, in a demonic example of the liminal ‘time-out’. In the first Gulf War, pilots after returning from bombing raids would also frequently be given spirits as a ‘calmant’ (Heath 2000: 171). At the margins of state’s monopoly of violence in contemporary societies, this mode of alcohol use persists. Among gang members, alcohol is an important technique for preparing for violent encounters with outsiders or other gangs, facilitating (for example in Hispanic gang members in the USA) ‘locura’: wild or crazy behaviour, where people enter the fray without thought for consequences, thereby unnerving their opponents and weakening their resolve (Hunt & Laidler 2001). It is also used to ‘pump people up’, emboldening them prior to a job that may escalate into a violent encounter (Hunt 2003). Research in the UK has shown that hooliganism follows a similar pattern (Dunning 2002), for example with members of football firms, as a part of their bonding, but also as a facilitator of a mind-set capable of entering violent encounters, consuming alcohol together with cocaine (Ayres & Treadwell 2011).

Enervation The state throughout history has at the same time been concerned with alcohol as it has been perceived as a threat to its capacity to conduct violence. Alcohol was problematised in particular due to its perceived enervating effects, with the decadence that it implies blamed for defeats in wars and overall, poor performances on the international stage. The early Romans for example were ambivalent towards wine, seeing it as being associated with weak characters (Cottino 1995: 159). Such a perspective was also widespread in the nineteenth century, with a common theme being fear of the degeneration of the population. For instance, anxiety over France’s position on the international stage was articulated through alcohol. In 1857 the doctor B. A. Morel classified habitual drinking as a social and individual ‘disease’. ‘In labelling overindulgence as such, Morel both conveyed anxieties in France about the moral, physical, and hereditary consequences of intemperance and promoted public

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hygiene as the means to thwart the major social ramification of industrialisation’ (Garfinkel 2006: 63). This became intensified following the loss of the FrancoPrussian War as social commentators, physicians and moralists became increasingly vocal about the place of alcohol in society, connecting it with France’s decline. A declining birth rate, a spike in prostitution, legalisation of divorce followed by a rising divorce rate, young men disqualified from military service, an increase in work-related accidents, a growing number of mentally ill, an increase in juvenile delinquency – all these problems and more were blamed on cafés and the excessive drinking they seemed to encourage (Haine 2006: 133). In contrast, Prussia’s success was explained by some by the greater sobriety and discipline of the Germans (Garfinkel 2006: 64). This discourse persisted as Marshal Pétain blamed alcohol for France’s defeat in WWII, through its undermining of the will of the armed forces (Munholland 2006: 84). In Italy, too, alcohol was blamed by the professional elite for Italy’s failure to emerge as a great power. The fact that Italy lagged behind other European countries economically and socially and the army’s humiliating defeat in Ethiopia in 1896 was explained through excessive alcohol consumption. This explanation was also given for why army recruits were so unhealthy and malformed that huge numbers had to be rejected (Garfinkel 2006: 61, 65). Similarly, in Holland in the 1850s there was a campaign to encourage a shift from spirits to beer by workers, as the former was seen to contribute directly to their poor nutrition and living conditions. A comparison was made with the purported health and strength of men in Germany and Britain where beer was the dominant beverage (Unger 1998: 16).3 Thus, as Bancroft (2009: 31) notes: ‘The rise of the nation-state and the decline of empires went along with closer control over drugs and their use, which corresponded with concern about the damage done to the national and racial soul by drugs and alcohol’. Consequently, even in contexts where groups are small, and military encounters are quite unstructured, where success is often aided by a drug-induced frenzy, the consumption of psychoactive substances may also be problematised. For example, amongst gangs, where alcohol is often used to produce aggressive, wild states, so that members will be less fearful to expose themselves to risk, and also unsettle opponents, control and abstemiousness are also important, as intoxication increases member’s vulnerability. They may not fight effectively, or they may be caught off guard, and become a victim of predatory violence themselves (Hunt 2003). Certain football hooligans thus have policies of abstaining from alcohol before games so that they can be appropriately disciplined in their fighting (Dunning et al. 2014). The cause of the problematisation of alcohol in war can probably be found in the increasing demand for interdependence in fighting. Max Weber (1968: 48) used berserkers as an example of the charismatic authority of warriors. However, professional armies involve the routinisation of charisma, marking the end of the berserker, just as the transition in Antiquity to the polis and the phalanx, marked the end of the warrior charisma that Achilles embodied. While Euripides

158 Peace, violence and trauma (1987) noted that Dionysus also has a certain share of Ares’ domain, with the rise of disciplined fighting formations, war became more the domain of Apollo. With the transition in warfare from mounted aristocrats to the hoplite phalanx the use of alcohol was problematised. The phalanx is an icon of discipline, order and organisation, yet alcohol use was prevalent in Greek armies, being used by hoplites to gain courage and maintain morale. However, its use was problematised, for example with Xenophon recounting how Spartans enforced a practice of hoplites walking home from collective meals without a torch, as a means of discouraging drunkenness, and giving examples of the Spartans themselves losing battles because alcohol had been consumed unwisely, not to calm nerves, but to confuse wits (Hanson 2009: 126–31). Thus, by the time of Rome it appears that alcohol had lost its function as a means of providing courage in battle. Though soldiers drank wine, as part of their rations, as Coulston (2013: 17) explains, the military diet ‘was supposed to be based on wine and bread, with little emphasis on meat. Over-indulgence in meat and unwatered wine was an uncivilised trait ascribed particularly to northern barbarians’. The role of berserkers was to break the ranks of the opponent, to create gaps, and to sow panic. The success of the tactic was based on mental dissociation, fury, unpredictability, discounting of the consequences of one’s actions, and the fear this inspired in others, with the aggression of the berserker provoking fright, and signs of timorousness in opponents provoking further aggression. They showed unrestrained aggression, howling, biting at their own shields, and demonstrating their reckless lack of consideration for their own safety by not wearing mail (the name comes from ‘bearskin’, indicating their lack of armour). Though Weber (1968: 48) doubted the connection with intoxication, it does seem that such states were created through a combination of alcohol (containing bog myrtle, fly agaric), as well as group dynamics. Berserkers, however, were a danger to their own side also, potentially not distinguishing a friend from a foe. Once the condition passed, the person also found themselves in a state of complete exhaustion, rendering them of little use, and quite vulnerable on the battlefield. This may not have mattered much however in a simple society, as the practice presumably relied upon a certain surplus of people, where life was not so valuable, and where the short life of a berserker was likely attractive for the temporary special treatment they received (Sprague 2007: 80–2). Thus, by the twelfth century, as kingdoms were becoming more stable, larger and more complex, the practice had died out. In large, complex armies, which in modern contexts are subject to reasonably high accountability for the actions of individual soldiers, alcohol use and intoxication thus becomes quite problematic. In the army of the USA in Korea and Vietnam for example, it was associated with ill-discipline, presenting a considerable problem for effective leadership and command. Alcohol and drug use was a feature of oppositional behaviour, expressing the in-group solidarity of groups of soldiers against the military organisation as a whole and refusal to comply with its dictates. Alcohol and drug use has also long been an example of as well as implicated in the ‘disintegration’ of discipline and the chain of

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command, such as discretion, fragging, combat refusal, and mere incapacity to fight effectively (Kellett 2013: 102–12). The problematisation of alcohol, can also be seen in critiques of leader’s character and ethos, and in particular in the accusation of hubris, with classical examples in the shape of: Alexander, a problem drinker, who marked the transition from the polis to ecumenic age; Alcibiades, another excessive consumer who symbolised the decadence of Athens, guilty of the worst military blunder in the Peloponnesian War; and Marc Antony, who exemplified in his giving in to temptations regarding sex, adultery and alcohol, the decadence and path to decline signalled by the transition from the Roman Republic to Empire. Furthermore, alcohol has become problematised, not simply for the effect it has on soldiers and military leaders, but in the context of total war, society as a whole, as the command and efficient use of all the resources of the state became crucial. WWI was a watershed in alcohol policy for this reason, as we have seen previously, marking a dramatic intensification in the regulation of it. Alcohol is consequently a problem for the military ambitions and security of states, because of its link with internal subversion, as well as the undermining of military discipline and effectiveness. However, just as alcohol creates a pathology within the heartlands of states because of the contradictory mobilising cultic role, and their threat to efficient organisation, it, and other psychoactive substances, are even more implicated in sowing disorder, and producing the conditions for permanent liminality at the peripheries, which expansionary states are seeking to impose their dominion over.

Psychoactive substances and international rivalry Psychoactive substances have a role to play in the system of international competition through the use of customs and excise duties to encourage and discourage trade with other states. For instance, in the USA following the American Revolution there was a shift in consumption away from rum towards whiskey through higher taxes on the former as it was dependent on products from European Caribbean colonies unlike the latter which was made from domestic grain (Blocker 2006: 227). In its series of wars with France, Britain discouraged the importation of wine and brandy from France, and in its rivalry with Holland it discouraged the importation of genever (Gerritsen 2000: 37; Hunter 2002: 77). Psychoactive substances however have had their greatest effect in fomenting permanent liminality, in their critical role in funding colonialism from the seventeenth to the twentieth century . As Trocki (1999: xii) notes: ‘It may be argued that the entire rise of the West, from 1500 to 1900, depended on a series of drug deals’. The expansionary foreign policy of the USA following the Civil War for example was largely funded by revenue generated from newly imposed excise on alcohol, facilitating the acquisition of Alaska, the annexation of Hawaii, the annexation of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines through the Spanish-American War, and the internal suppression of Native Americans (Goodman 1995: 131). Tobacco was critical to its very origins, as it was the

160 Peace, violence and trauma economic lifeline of the English colony in Virginia and following the success of it the French, Dutch and Swedes imitated this ‘tobacco colony’ (Price 1995: 169–70, 178–9). States followed a policy of encouraging production in their own colonies, while using duties to discriminate against the products of other countries and countries sought to avoid having to import from competitors (169, 173). Opium was also an important tool of colonialism with the British beginning the opium trade with China due to the desire to reverse the one-way flow of trade and British money due to their demand for tea (Sherratt 1995a: 8), with the additional dividend of gaining Hong Kong following China’s defeat in the First Opium War, as well as breaking its economic sovereignty.4. Thus, while today we think of drug wars as struggles against the production and distribution of drugs by states against non-state actors, the first drug wars were wars by states to force the importation of drugs by them into other states. It was typical for colonial powers to also fund their administration through establishing alcohol monopolies in their colonies, ultimately making anti-alcohol movement closely aligned with anti-imperial and de-colonisation movements (Peters 2004). In addition, the psychoactive substances (tea, coffee, chocolate, tobacco) that entered Western markets and everyday life as a result of colonialism were an important part of the foreign trade sector, but more significantly became important raw materials for manufacture and re-export (Goodman 1995: 131), thereby contributing to the global politico-economic mastery of these societies.

Trauma While alcohol and other psychoactive substances were critical sources of revenue for the security and expansionary projects of states, the agents who carry this task at the frontiers have a particular association with problematic alcohol use, due their experience of trauma. The experience of war can lead to heavy use of psychoactive substances, though this can be limited to the stressful experience of involvement in war, and not necessarily have long-term effects. For example, the use of heroin and other opiates by American soldiers in the Vietnam War represented a natural experiment on the question of addiction. According to simple concepts of addiction based on the ‘addictive’ powers of the substances themselves, the soldiers would remain addicted and this caused concern that a large problem-population of addicts would return to the USA. However, while 45% of returning American soldiers in 1971 used opiates, and 20% were found to be physiologically habituated, only 2% reported addiction on return to the USA and the great majority stopped using them without any treatment or reports of difficulties (Bancroft 2009: 95). War does seem to produce long-term difficulties with alcohol though, for many of those involved, particularly those who have been on the front line, as it were, as there is a strong link between the experience of traumatic events and alcohol problems. The key relationship appears to be between alcohol abuse and PTSD caused by psychological trauma. PTSD refers to a number of symptoms that emerge due to exposure to a threat to the ‘physical integrity of

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the self or others’, typically involving exposure to grotesque deaths and mutilation, that produces experiences of ‘fear, helplessness, or horror’ (Stewart 1996: 83–4) (American Psychiatric Association 1994). It expresses itself in the shape of considerable distress over a prolonged period of time, with the event being re-experienced in a variety of ways, such as through intrusive thoughts or nightmares, and with people attempting to avoid cues that will lead to such re-experiences. PTSD sufferers experience emotional numbness alongside heightened emotional arousal, for example being hypervigilant and vulnerable to being startled, as well as having difficulties with concentration and irritability (Stewart 1996: 83–4). The disorder and its association with alcohol problems, is linked with experiences of combat, disasters, accidents, assault and abuse. Large increases in alcohol consumption have followed natural and man-made disasters for example, with an increase in alcohol abuse amongst survivors, and women with sexual abuse histories (childhood victimisation, incest, other sexual abuse) also have very high levels of alcohol problems, with more severe abuse correlated with greater risk of problematic alcohol use. Combat experiences, are closely linked with PTSD and pathologies associated with alcohol, with such problems being the most prevalent psychiatric diagnosis coexisting with other diagnoses amongst soldiers in the US Military. Studies have shown that 41–85% of combat veterans with PTSD have alcohol problems, compared to 19–29% within the general male population. Exposure to combat is the key explanatory factor, and probably the traumatic experiences associated with this, with a parallel outcome in the high rates of alcohol abuse among fire disaster responders who have been exposed to badly maimed bodies. Furthermore, the more severe the trauma, the more likely are there to be alcohol problems. In the comorbid relationship between PTSD and alcohol problems, trauma precedes alcohol problems in the great majority of cases, and patients typically perceive a causal relationship themselves. In the case of veterans for instance, other psychiatric disorders are more explainable by pre-war variables, while combat experience and PTSD related to this, seem to come before subsequent alcohol abuse (Stewart 1996: 83–7, 93–4). While PTSD symptoms are consistent across cultures, agency and the cultural influences over the interpretation of the meaning, and decisions over how to manage the symptoms are important in the extent to which they lead to alcohol problems. So, while PTSD is largely not a social construction, the cultural background shapes the likelihood of alcohol use being seen as an option for coping with traumatic events, and as we have seen earlier, the expectancy effects of its impact shapes the effect that alcohol does have.5 Stewart (1996) explains how there appears to be something particular about alcohol in this connection, with it not simply one response to trauma among others, such as insomnia, self-harm, anger, withdrawal and so on, as it is the most prevalent coexisting psychiatric diagnosis amongst veterans. Alcohol seems to be a particularly useful technique for controlling or reducing PTSD symptoms. For example, PTSD is characterised by increased physiological arousal, and

162 Peace, violence and trauma alcohol reduces the physiological reactivity to stressful events, particularly at high doses, inhibiting the neurotransmitter in the regions of the brain associated with anxiety production. PTSD is linked with avoidance of anxiety producing stimuli associated with the trauma, which alcohol can be used to overcome, for example in helping those who have been sexually abused engage in sexual activity. PTSD is also linked with a numbing of emotional responsiveness, a dread of expressive emotions, attempts to avoid feelings linked with the trauma, alongside emotional lability, and consequent feelings of guilt and depression. Alcohol is consequently used, as it is useful in reducing negative emotions (Stewart 1996: 95–7). Alexithymia, meaning ‘no words for moods’, is another feature of PTSD, where sufferers cannot verbalise emotional states, lose contact with their emotional life, and become oriented only to concrete external matters rather than inner states. Alcohol use again can help counteract this, by reducing negative affect, and improving mood. Alcohol inhibits REM sleep, and so it can help prevent terrifying nightmares. It can help to stall intrusive cognitive experiences, such as feelings of threat, narrow attention to the most immediate cues, thereby reducing hypervigilance, and can help reduce the ability to recall trauma-related memories (Stewart 1996: 97–101). While it could be said that alcohol is ‘functional’ in certain respects for managing PTSD by sufferers, its use may heighten the possibility of suffering from PTSD at the same time, as it may increase anxiety and arousal levels, through causing stressful life events, or guilt associated with drinking heavily, blocking the process of working through past experiences. Indeed, the relationship between alcohol and PTSD may be circular, with alcohol problems developing from the experience of trauma, but with alcohol abuse increasing the chances of being a victim or perpetrator of trauma. Furthermore, while alcohol use may begin as a means of coping with PTSD symptoms, users will have to deal with the effects of withdrawal symptoms, following bouts of drinking, which may exacerbate panic reactions, as withdrawal symptoms may be interpreted as anxiety symptoms, causing recall of the trauma, motivating further consumption (Stewart 1996: 83, 93, 102). The above discussion is based on psychological studies, which face the considerable difficulty of attempting to precisely operationalise constructs such as ‘alcohol problems’, which have been shown earlier in the study to be extremely difficult to pin down. The question of what is pathological regarding alcohol is a very tricky issue, with perhaps the best solution being to define it as use leading to a failure to fulfil the obligations associated with one’s role, alongside impaired control. Of course, this is something that cannot be perfectly quantified, as it is an interpretive category. Similarly, traumatic events are defined differently, and different psychometric instruments of varying quality are used in different studies. Thus, in different studies there are considerable differences in the level of overlap demonstrated between trauma, PTSD, and alcohol problems, probably due to the problem of definition of what is being measured. There are difficulties regarding people providing information

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regarding trauma, due to memory problems, sampling biases, based on the populations that researchers have access to, and studies often do not, and cannot involve control groups also (Stewart 1996: 89–90). In any case, it seems unarguable that war has produced large quantities of traumatised people, reflected in problems with alcohol, that in turn has created negative models of alcohol consumption, as something that is not at the heart of an enchanted social life, but an escape from suffering. As we know from the mimetic nature of humans (Tarde 1969), once a model is established, it can spread widely beyond the original basis of its emergence, and so solitary drinking to escape negative psychological states can become established as a ‘social fact’, which the untraumatised can nonetheless become socialised into.

Collision cultures A political economy of health identifies the source of pathologies within a broader context of the power relations between states and the capitalist worldsystem (Singer 1986: 116), which local contexts have collided with. Globalisation has thus dramatically changed the role and use of alcohol in what were once small-scale societies, as they become integrated into centralising states and capitalist economies. Indeed, the baleful impact of these process on the manner of drinking in small-scale societies goes some way to demonstrating the credibility of anthropologist’s account of the constructive role of alcohol in small-scale societies prior to their collision with metropolitan powers. Deritualisation States have subverted the types of drinking rituals studied by anthropologists in local, small scale contexts, through political and economic domination. Domination resulted in the destruction of the protective ritual context that alcohol or indigenous psychoactive substances had been consumed in, as when metropolitan states encountered tribal societies through colonisation, the destruction (or moulding and co-option) of their rituals and practices was a priority, as a means of achieving control over these societies (Singer 1986: 123). Alongside political domination there is an assertion of economic domination. Singer (1986) argues that there are three historical phases to state policy on alcohol in metropoles. Prior to industrialisation, alcohol was primarily seen as a source of revenue through its taxation, as we have seen. Following industrialisation labour discipline emerged as a new concern, resulting in a growing sympathy towards temperance by sections of the political establishment. Then, following WWII, the primary policy trajectory was the state-led (or facilitated and encouraged by the lobbying of the alcohol industry) creation of a highly concentrated alcohol industry, composed of a small number of transnational players, with the German beer market a rare partial exception. States have facilitated this by continuing a long-term commitment to heavily regulate and restrict noncommercial production of alcohol, which of course is the only source of

164 Peace, violence and trauma alcohol in small-scale societies, while deregulating the alcohol industry (Singer 1986: 119–20). Following colonisation and/or economic domination, the inflow of commercial alcohol from Western corporations has had a dramatic effect on communities in underdeveloped countries (Singer 1986: 117 119). Research indicates an increase in availability, consumption and in social problems, violence and problematic modes of consumption following this. Consumption that was once socially controlled by traditional practices, and limited by the seasonal availability of crops, became disrupted by the availability of alcohol all year round. Production traditionally occurred within the family or community, and its distribution was rooted in complex networks of reciprocities, which limited and structured the distribution of and access to it. Commercialisation however reduced the sacred meaning and ritual significance of it (Singer 1986: 117), as the influx of commercial alcohol fatally undermined the ceremonial context of alcohol use in any case (Heart & DeBruyn 1998: 69), as rituals that had provided protection against pathological consumption were thus subverted. While the suddenness that this occurred with in colonial contexts made it a particularly destructive encounter, it could however be argued that this has become a general experience, as the sources of informal social control that anthropologists have studied are actively destroyed, through replacing indigenous, local worldviews with a corporate worldview. As Singer (1986: 122) notes: Worldview refers to the conception of reality developed within a particular society. Increasingly, corporate leaders eschew the concern with cultural variation inherent in this conception and instead embrace a view of the world in which diverse peoples, lands and societies are lumped together to form a global market, a set of raw materials and a multisectorial labour force…. As summed by one corporate spokesperson: ‘The world’s political structures are completely obsolete’ because they impede ‘the search for global optimisation of resources’. The deregulation of alcohol markets, and advertising to mould attitudes, and create new drinkers are the critical elements of this. Degradation and trauma Pathological modes of consumption were learned by groups with either no previous experience of alcohol, or refined Western beverages, and distilled spirits, through their contact with European conquistadors and frontiersmen. These violent, frequently traumatised, and not particularly moderate individuals, living in largely all-male groups on the margins of their society, were the role models, establishing the ‘expectancy effect’ of what the outcome of consuming these substances would be (McAndrew & Edgerton 1969; Heart & DeBruyn 1998). Alongside this, and more significantly, the trauma of domination by an external colonial power, with its associated outcomes of poverty, physical and

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symbolic domination, stratification and deculturation, have tended to result in problem drinking in the populations that have suffered this. The effects of imperialist and economic-imperialist expansion on local cultures is in fact a persistent theme in anthropological research on alcohol (Singer 1986: 114–15, 117). Increases in inequality through the absorption of underdeveloped regions into larger political units and the capitalist world system produces radical alterations in status, increasing the injuries of status difference. Capitalist production also increases status differences by ending the role of local communities in producing their own alcohol, and the status that was achieved through cooperation in production, and networks of reciprocity in its distribution, in favour of the creation of a number of very wealthy individuals in a concentrated alcohol industry. Pathologies relating to alcohol are to be expected due to these reversals and extending of status differences, as drinking problems are associated with males of low-status (Singer 1986: 118). Singer (1986: 115) notes that Marshall’s study of the Truk is exemplary of this, where, in this Micronesian society traditional practices of warfare were banned by the colonial authorities, leaving Trukese men without the traditional avenue towards achieving status, resulting in warfare being thus replaced with drunkenness and fighting. Similarly, the binge drinking and violence against women that occurs in colonial and post-colonial contexts, has been interpreted as rooted in frustrations among men over a lack of economic and political control of their community and households (Perez 2000). Alcohol became representative of a politically and economically unjust social order in general. In colonial contexts for example, alcohol is associated with the degradation of workers, through its role in the exploitative labour practices. A typical example is payment in alcohol rather than money, increasing employer control over workers, while also putting grain surpluses to use in distilling (Singer 1986: 118, 120). Alongside acting as a means of securing control over indigenous labour, trade in alcohol was used in treaty and economic negotiations, as a highly unequal item of exchange for what was received by colonial powers, for instance in treaties made with Native Americans (Heart & DeBruyn 1998). The alcohol industry was also important, through the imposition of colonial alcohol monopolies, but also with gaining economic control of the private sector through the entry of Western companies, which formed important alliances with local compradors (Diduk 1993). One outcome in the character of drinking occasions, is the growth of a quite toothless political form of drinking. For example, ‘protest drinking’ has been observed among many indigenous communities, where drinking in a messy or provocative manner acts as a tame expression of resistance to the colonising power (Singer 1986: 114). Alcohol, the symbol of sociability, is used in a Cynic fashion to demonstrate the true lack of these values in the world. Hence, Native American drinking has been characterised as ‘the world’s oldest on-going protest demonstration’ (Heath 1988: 370). It also amounts to a profanation of a sacred that these groups are excluded from, as European colonial powers across the globe attempted to impose prohibition on indigenous people (Heath 1999: 67;

166 Peace, violence and trauma Blocker 2006: 225–6). Most Aborigines, for example, did not possess alcohol before the arrival of Europeans, though some made alcohol from fruit, eucalyptus, sap, honey, flowers and nectars, and they also used a narcotic herb called pitchery, with the availability of large supplies of alcohol associated with the arrival of Western ‘civilisation’. Exclusion from alcohol was symbolic of their exclusion from political society, with laws passed in the nineteenth century to prevent the sale of alcohol to Aborigines and their consumption of it, which remained in place after WWII with the last restrictions being lifted in 1972, and informal racial discrimination ran parallel to these legal restrictions. Hence, on the one hand this created a problematic mode of drinking centred on furtive and rapid consumption, and on the other the assigning of a high value to drinking as it became associated with equal status and membership of the national community (Kirkby 2006: 212–13). Drinking in this context of external domination also takes on new functions among oppressed groups, in creating a circle where their collective identity can be maintained, creating gatherings where disrupted bonds and social relationships can be sustained, offering a relief from isolation in the context of the fragmentation of community, providing an avenue for venting frustration and anger, as well as sphere where they can feel powerful, and it can act as a tradition to replace traditions that have been lost (Singer 1986: 115). Indigenous people, Native Americans and PTSD Heavy drinking by indigenous people is associated with acculturative pressures and sociocultural deprivation and the tensions and anxiety that are inherent in this (Heath 1988: 368). Conflict with a dominant alien culture is often cited as a rationale for drinking, and that, in turn, is treated as almost an obligatory response. Sometimes referred to as ‘despair drinking’, this pattern is widespread around the world in colonial and quasi-colonial situations where the social hierarchy tends to be rigid, and those who are dominated tend to be resentful or otherwise stressed by pressures that derive from social and cultural conflicts … has quick intoxication as a goal, supposedly to forget one’s troubles, or to seek oblivion. (Heath 2000: 184) Hence, studies have shown that groups such as the Maoris and Aborigines have 2–3 times the average level of consumption of the general population. The mode of drinking also tends to be more hazardous, with more drinking to intoxication (Babor et al. 2003: 51). While experientially it may be necessary, it is counterproductive however, only worsening the situation of the drinker leading to incarceration and alienation from their group (Heath 2000: 184). A powerful example of the manner in which the expansion of powerful states has produced social pathologies related to alcohol in the peripheries they

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have extended their domination over is the mode of alcohol use of Native American communities. They have the worst health outcomes of any ethnic group in the USA, with social pathologies related to alcohol use being the gravest indicator of this, as they are 770% more likely to die from alcoholism than people from other groups (Sotero 2006: 101). Harmful patterns of alcohol use are also associated with a range of other ills such as suicide, accidental deaths, homicides, physical and sexual abuse (Heart & DeBruyn 1998: 60). Intergenerational cultural trauma appears to be a major cause of this (Heart & DeBruyn 1998: 60). The original trauma is the subjection of a people by a dominant power, which, though it becomes less brutal following the subjugation of the group, a legacy remains in the shape of racism, discrimination, social disadvantage and deculturation. Offspring of survivors from communities, who have endured traumatic experiences manifest a range of trauma responses, as enumerated earlier in the case of PTSD, such as substance abuse, self-destructive behaviours, depression, lack of efficacy, depersonalisation, withdrawal, memory difficulties, denial, repression, nightmares, emotional numbness, dissociation, and preoccupation with death, survivors guilt and a sense of obligation in sharing in the suffering of ancestors. Populations who have historically experienced collective trauma, through genocide, war, slavery and colonisation, continue to experience higher levels of pathologies several generations after the traumatic event (Sotero 2006: 94, 96, 99; Heart & DeBruyn 1998: 67) The trauma is transmitted through how this experience damages the capacity for parenting, creating early experiences of stress, which manifest themselves physically as well as psychologically. Offspring who have not lived through the initial traumatic experience, can become traumatised in turn by the maladaptive behaviours developed by their survivor parents, such as substance abuse, sexual and physical abuse, mental health problems and suicide, with the trauma then recycled to their children in turn. ‘Vicarious traumatisation’ can occur through the narratives of the community, sustaining the collective memory of the trauma, with subsequent generations imaginatively sharing in the pain of their ancestors. Subsequent generations also continue to experience the trauma in real ways through the loss of ancestral culture and language, as well as direct experiences of discrimination and their low position in the ethnic and economic hierarchy. All of this contributes to a culture characterised by ‘unresolved grief’ (Heart & DeBruyn 1998: 60). While the trauma and outcomes are somewhat similar to the experiences of the agents charged with carrying out the state capacity for violence, these victims of state directed violence, suffer additionally in one respect. As Sotero (2006: 95, 100) notes, Responses to deliberate perpetration of mass trauma are very different from those caused by accident or forces of nature. Trauma as the result of deliberate intent produces a profound sense of dismay and alienation. Intentional violence threatens basic assumptions about an orderly, just world and the intrinsic invulnerability and worthiness of the individual.

168 Peace, violence and trauma The impact is worse again if the victims live within the state that has committed these historical atrocities on them (Heart & DeBruyn 1998). Heart and DeBruyn (1998) understands the connection of alcohol with this collective trauma as a form of internalised aggression, where impotent anger is turned upon oneself (through destructive alcohol use), and one’s group (through the violence and abuse opened up by alcohol use against family members and members of the community). The vain hatred and anger against the dominant culture is turned inwards, in self-destructive acts. The experience of deculturation and cultural imperialism, also leads to inevitable identification with the oppressor, producing self-hatred and depression (Heart & DeBruyn 1998: 70). Jilek-Aall (1974: 357), summarises the accounts of Native Americans for their harmful drinking, that it was based on the emotionally charged cluster of sociocultural ideas resulting from his own and his forefather’s experiences with the white man, generating hostility towards the white oppressor; anger about overt and covert discrimination; frustration because of identity conflicts; shame over the moral confusion of his people; despair over the disappearance of the Indian way of life and over the destructive effects of the white man’s ‘firewater’.

Conclusion: anti-imperial and anti-alcohol Pathologies associated with alcohol, as well as, what could be interpreted as the pathology of the rejection of alcohol, as a form of nihilistic rejection of the world, are associated with the destructive consequences of state formation. This can be seen clearly in how the world religions view alcohol. Religious stands are usually against things that are seen as senseless (Weber 1948b: 280). However, they are also rooted in an affirmation of life, which is where the original place of alcohol in religious thought and practice can be found, and the use of alcohol in religion is ancient (Heath 1995c: 350). Alcohol has strong mystic associations, being linked with the experience of unity and an intimate relationship with the divine. For this reason, drunkenness was for William James (1997) one of the ‘varieties of religious experience’. In sharp contrast, a rejection of alcohol is a feature of all the world religions with abstinence a feature of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, Islam and other religions (Heath 2000: 94). The religious rejection of alcohol is an aspect of the broader ‘religious rejections of the world’ (Weber 1948a). The basic psychological motivation underlying world rejection and the building up of secondary realities in its stead is the experience of suffering (Szakolczai 2003: 11). As Weber (2005b: 51; 2005c: 182; 1948b: 274) explains, while privileged status groups of warriors, aristocrats (and modern equivalents such as financiers for instance) tend to be ‘this worldly’, valuing their ‘beauty and excellence’ and even feel that they succeed in spite of the gods who are envious of them, underprivileged status groups tend to be world rejecting, basing their self-worth on the future, the next world and the mission they have been set by God as a part of a ‘chosen people’.

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Magic and religion is initially this-worldly, aiming to eliminate potential threats and disasters through magical acts and rituals. A novel development in the transition from village level societies to large urbanised socio-political units is that a stable and taken for granted experience of the world, punctuated by various sudden external threats is replaced by one in which suffering may become a permanent condition for those strata locked at the bottom of the social structure and experienced as an intolerable pressure as a consequence of this. This occurs because, as one side of out of ordinary situations was the permanentisation of the strata who were the bearers of charisma (magicians, warriors) at the apex of society, there was a parallel permanentisation of the position of the groups vanquished in war at the bottom of society (Szakolczai 2003: 14–15, 24, 28). This underprivileged situation gives rise to the ‘hostility to life’ and the revaluation of values in the slave morality identified by Nietzsche (1989: 17) and the transition from the primarily magical religious orientation of peasants before the weight of civilisation comes to weigh too heavily upon them (Weber 2005c: 175). Thus, what is new is the potential for suffering, which previously had been a universal but temporary experience, to become permanent (Szakolczai 2003: 29). It is this need to overcome the arbitrariness of human existence (suffering) that gave rise to the idea of salvation in a secondary reality (Eisenstadt 1986: 3). If the present produces suffering and is not tolerable, people will assume a future-directed orientation. The source of this is the failure of magical responses to address the problems of a hostile reality. Asceticism is a form of voluntary suffering, which in its origins was a magical practice aimed at coercing a wrathful god. However, in a cruel world ‘bad men’ will continue to succeed, so a new strategy to make the world liveable becomes necessary (Weber 1948b: 275). The incongruity between merit and destiny results in an otherworldly focus, where perhaps after this life the unjust will go to hell, or the idea that one is in a broader process involving reincarnation and the suffering for sins in previous lives, or the idea of the wickedness of all creatures. In any case, the basic response is one of instituting a permanent initiation, where this life loses relevance in favour of the world to come, with the expression of this through the glorification of suffering (or denial) through the practice of magical asceticism. By rejecting alcohol, which is associated with pleasure in the here and now, the present is obliterated as relevant, and the better time to come emerges as the thing of real significance. The specific form this takes is a transformation of ritual life, from a cycle of rites aimed at addressing worldly contingencies, to a vision of life as a single initiation ritual for preparation for the next life. As a result of this, the first phase of a rite of passage, which prepares people through ascetic techniques, becomes permanent, lasting for the entirety of life, and people never arrive at the point of celebration. The primary reasons that people give for drinking alcohol are pleasure or hedonistic reasons, centring on celebration and relaxation (Heath 2000: 167). From the perspective of people preparing for a better tomorrow, such activities can be seen as frivolous, slothful and demoralising (167, 169).

170 Peace, violence and trauma Alcohol, as a significant aspect of culture is synonymous with civilisation as it coincides with the formation of socio-political units in Mesopotamia. Wine also became a central symbol of aristocracy stretching back to the Bronze Age, as already noted (Sherratt 1995b). Hence, from the beginning alcohol is tied to empire. The problematisation of alcohol by the salvation religions is rooted in this fact, as while on the one hand they are driven by a simple need to escape the tensions produced by large-scale socio-political communities, they are also movements that seek to resist their logic. For example, Judaism has a long tradition of the rejection of empire, stemming all the way back to Abraham’s exit from civilisation and rejection of its logic of realpolitik, and is characterised by the rejection of worldly power (Szakolczai 2003: 89). The manner of its resistance was not through an active attack on it, but more through abstention and withdrawal, thereby discrediting its very goals and rewards (Mumford 1967: 261). In the salvation religions, there was a re-emphasis on life on the normal human dimensions of the village scale. For instance, the synagogue re-established ‘I-and-Thou, face-to-face association’, and so was an assertion of a village-scale form of society. They sought to reassert the values of noble self-restriction, sharing, co-operating and loving and crucially the preciousness of human life over its cheapness. The Sabbath also was a means of bringing the megamachine to a halt and asserting the power of the components that the machine suppressed (Mumford 1967: 232, 258–9, 261). As a result, unlike the logic of excess and power that found expression in the worldly pleasure of hedonism in aristocratic courts, the Hebrews and later Jews, as an anti-imperial culture are characterised by moderate drinking, rooted in the informal social controls characteristic of societies on a human level. Hence, in contrast to aristocrats inflicting themselves with gout and even alcohol poisoning, virtually all Jews drink and experience very few related problems. There is a saying in Yiddish: ‘Schikker ist ein Goy’ (to be drunk is a gentile thing) (Heath 2000: 90). This impulse has continued beyond the Ecumenc Age, in modernity. Temperance movements are a descendent of this resistance to empire. While they have a number of sources, such as acting as a technique of distinction in group competition, temperance movements are also closely associated with anti-imperial independence movement. Temperance has very frequently been an important aspect of independence movements in colonies and other conquered territories (Heath 2000: 39) and among people’s seeking emancipation in oppressive states.6 The nineteenth century British and American temperance movement was closely allied to the anti-slavery movement, and in the USA the abolitionist and temperance movement joined in the 1830s, leading to a dramatic increase in African American support for the temperance cause, as freedom from alcohol became associated with freedom from slavery. It is significant that the opponents in this struggle were the Southern gentry, who pursued typical aristocrats’ lifestyles. Then, following the Civil War, abstinence from alcohol became constructed as a vehicle for social mobility for African Americans, resulting in the long-standing tendency for them to drink less than their white counterparts (Plant 1995: 291; Hanson 1995: 305). Indigenous peoples also have a tendency

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to have considerably higher levels of abstention from alcohol than surrounding groups. Hence, an unusual proportion of people abstain from alcohol in postcolonial societies, or societies that have experienced something like internal colonisation. Indeed, so significant is the connection that prohibition was written into the Indian constitution following the winning of independence (Heath 2000: 38).

Notes 1 For instance, in the German Peasants’ War of 1524–5 the public house was used for drawing up plans and for articulating social criticism (Frank 2002: 18). In England in the sixteenth century ‘[t]here was a widespread opinion that alehouses were a threat to orderly society and that the poorer sort of people who frequented them had become a new and increasingly dangerous force’ (Hunter 2002: 67). 2 In another example: ‘A warrior’s first kill was marked by a communal beer fest lasting several days among the Tupinamba.… In sharp contrast, the Jivaro warrior spends several days away from the village, eating little and drinking beer, while restoring his equilibrium after having heatedly killed an enemy. If he was lucky enough to take his victim’s head, it may take a week for him to shrink it meticulously to the size of a tennis ball. Such a trophy infuses the victor with extra strength, after which he can rejoin his fellow warriors to celebrate with a beer fest’ (Heath 2000). 3 Such a discourse emanated from elite professional circles as G.J. Mulder, a prominent writer and scientist and professor of medicine at the University of Utrecht saw that the ‘sickness and lack of intellectual and physical strength’ of the people was due to poor nutrition as a result of the rise of spirits over beer. He claimed that the very rise and fall of the power of the Netherlands was connected with the rise and fall of the Dutch brewing industry (Unger 1998: 16). 4 Similarly, in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries a government monopoly of opium was used to help cover the cost of Japanese imperial expansion and occupation. Its operation spread outwards as Japanese imperialism spread from Taiwan into China and then South-East Asia (Meyer 1995: 189, 198). 5 Thus, Hispanic Vietnam veterans had much higher rates of comorbid PTSD and alcohol problems than other ethnic groups. Individual differences are also a factor, with those with lower IQs more likely to develop PTSD, due to their lower coping abilities, and people who are particularly anxiety sensitive, who believe that the symptoms of anxiety are harmful in themselves are also more likely to use alcohol to cope with anxiety (Stewart 1996: 88, 92). 6 As in the case of temperance movements in Poland (Moskalewicz & Zielinski 1995: 225), and Russia as we have already seen (Snow 2002; Herlihy 2002).

Conclusion

This book began with the quotes by Nietzsche, concerning the need to understand the basis of meaning and vitality and the threat to these, and by Durkheim, concerning the pathogenetic quality of modernity, and the morbidity that is associated with the loss of limits that it is characterised by. It does seem that there are social pathologies regarding alcohol in our contemporary civilisation, which threaten disenchantment, nihilism, and anomie. The point of the work has been to show that to understand these social pathologies of contemporary civilisation we must historicise them, to understand that they are historical contingent complexes, that often have their origins in the distant past, and that have developed over vast spans of historical time. To mix and garble two aphorisms of Karl Marx and Mark Twain: if history does not always repeat itself exactly, it at least rhymes, often in tragi-comic ways. With regard to alcohol, a crucial basis to health are the timeless social forms of the ritual process, which protects against anomie and produces experiences that are somehow enchanting, expressed in gift-relations that bind communities, and that impose obligations and limits that prevent descent into egoism and a loss of regulation of consumption. Crucially the ritual process, in its intact form, binds liminality, within limits, preventing the outbreak of the paradox that is permanent liminality: a liminality without limits. Recognising this constitutes a recovery of value, and a sense of perspective, from the past, that comes through a historical-comparative understanding. Such a perspective also reveals things that have become so fundamental that they have become all but invisible. The discussion of state formation has focused on the monopoly mechanism, one of the most fundamental dynamics shaping our society, yet one that has become largely obscured. Sociologists and public health researchers tend to focus their attention on social problems, which the state should presumably address through some reform, considering the severity of the issue as has been dramatised by these researchers. This looking downwards, into social problems – the social pathologies in contemporary civilisation – and then the demand for action from above, has the problem of leaving the truly fundamental dynamic of contemporary and historical societies obscure: the fiscal state, and the security state, which have been shown in this study to be the source of the social pathology of contemporary

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civilisation. The state, and its inextricable roots in this mechanism, promoting consumption, deregulating, seeking to maximise revenue, while also repressing, marginalising disorder, and reregulating, before the next cycle of deregulation, constitutes an actor that is the heart of this social pathology. A de-civilising process of de-ritualisation runs parallel with the civilising process of political centralisation and internal pacification, that produces conditions of permanent liminality, disturbing drinking culture, that is at the heart of historical and contemporary civilisation. This book did not want to just deal with problematisations – hence the attractiveness of the language of pathology, as deeply contested and complex as it is. It is indeed true that the dominant concepts used to map this terrain – such as addiction and ‘alcohol problems’ – have needed to be, and have been comprehensively deconstructed, but if this is the last step, where does it leave us? Questions of health and pathology are, in this instance, simply in the eye of the beholder. Rather than simply deconstructing shaky orthodoxies, an attempt should be made to find some ground – in this study being deep anthropological forms, and long-term directional processes – from which to speak about pathology. These also act as reference points with which to assess the meaning and significance of a social phenomenon, in this case drinking, and its outcomes. Though it makes one vulnerable, exposing an argument that may not be on fully stable ground, running against currents of thought which focus more on internal disciplinary conversations about epistemological uncertainty, a concrete diagnosis about the social basis of health should be attempted, rather than simply problematising problematisations in an infinite spiral of deconstruction. Though everything is symbolic and political, there are also relatively solid social forms – such as the biological-emotional dimension of behaviour, and the ritual process, and civilising processes – that make the issue not entirely contingent and relative. Such a form of thinking is more important again, in the context of globalisation, social acceleration, desymbolisation, detraditionalisation, and a retreat of sociologists into the present, where the ability to grasp the meaning of anything at all becomes difficult: such is the contemporary condition of permanent liminality.

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Index

academic disciplines researching alcohol: anthropology 1, 10–15, 17, 41–2, 57, 64, 69, 71–5, 81, 86–8, 94, 106, 163–5, 173; archaeology 3, 30, 91–3, 101–2, 129; economics 20–3; epidemiology 4, 6, 73–4, 87; ethnography 3, 71–5, 86–7; genetics 7–8, 30, 33, 172; historical sociology 10–1, 75, 77, 172; neuroscience 8, 23, 25–7, 162; political economy 86–7, 106, 163; psychiatry 6, 31, 117, 161; psychology 9, 19–20, 87, 162; public health 2, 117, 120, 132, 140–1, 147, 172 alcohol pathologies: addiction 2, 5, 10, 21–2, 76, 160, 173; alcohol problems 4–6, 31, 108, 117–8, 160–2, 171, 173; alcoholism 2, 5–8, 10, 20, 31–2, 72, 113–4, 116–7, 119, 167; cirrhosis 4; crime 2, 77, 101, 113, 143; cultural immunity 31, 39, 88; disease concept 5; PTSD 160–2, 166–7, 171; trauma 15, 36, 58, 73, 160–4, 167–8 alcohol and the state: dissident political communities 17, 108, 155; enervation 112–3, 154, 156; proto states 90, 99, 104, 107; subversion 17, 89, 110, 116, 120, 153–5, 159, 163–4 Alcoholics Anonymous 22, 36, 67 Alexander the Great 65, 159 alienation 83, 105, 166–7 animal use of psychoactive substances 24–30, 33, 39 anxiety 22, 25–6, 35, 43, 62, 75, 82–3, 86, 98, 138, 162, 166, 171; see also stress 23, 26, 31, 83, 123, 160–2, 166–7 artists 68–9

Bateson, G. 34, 36, 56; see also schismogenesis 56, 64 Beccaria, C. 21–2 Bourdieu, P. 34, 52–3, 94; see also symbolic violence 2, 17, 64, 105 complex/simple societies 13–4, 18, 20, 52–3, 58, 72, 76, 87, 132; see also small-scale societies 11, 13–5, 17, 41–2, 57–8, 71–3, 76, 86, 90, 99, 107–8, 110, 115, 125–6, 153, 163–4 constructionism 19 crisis 42, 67, 70, 88, 104–5, 108, 110, 112–4, 116, 118 culture: deculturation 36, 73, 165, 167–8; acculturation 166 Darwin, C. 19; see also evolution 7, 11, 15, 17, 20, 23–5, 27, 29–30, 33, 39 degradation 96, 105, 109–11, 116, 149, 164–5 depression 26, 31, 162, 167–8 Dostoevsky, F. 110 Douglas, M. 14, 38, 43, 57, 60–1, 65, 70–1, 84, 87, 129, 131 drinking establishments 63, 81, 111, 115–6, 118, 124–5, 129–30, 137, 143, 148, 151, 155; see also bars 32, 55, 62; alehouses 120, 133, 145, 148, 150, 171; coffeehouses 54–5, 125, 132, 138; inns 122, 124–5, 127, 130, 132, 145; pubs 43, 49, 62–3, 82, 124–5, 130, 133–4, 171; taverns 54, 62, 111, 124–5, 132–3, 155 drunken comportment 15, 19–20, 37; see also expectancy effect 19, 161, 164; drug, set and setting 9

Index 191 Durkheim, E. 1, 10–1, 15, 31–2, 40–1, 47–8, 51, 59, 70, 72–3, 75, 79, 172; see also anomie 32, 72, 172; egoism 32, 76, 172; suicide 31–2, 72, 167 economy: alcohol industry 81–2, 85, 89, 120–1, 123, 125–8, 132, 139–42, 147, 151, 163–5; capitalism 15, 52, 73, 86, 108, 117, 125–6, 128, 145–6, 148, 163, 165; colonialism 15, 73, 75, 87, 128, 154, 159–60, 163–7, 170–1; commerce 94–5, 122–9, 131, 138, 145, 147, 163–4; communism 15, 86, 110, 115–8; industrialisation 6, 29, 105, 108, 115–6, 125–8, 132–3, 140, 142, 157, 163; infrastructure 107, 124–6, 129–30, 132–3, 144; night-time economy 84, 121 Elias, N.: centralisation 16, 86, 89, 106, 110, 121, 129–30, 132, 139, 140–4, 173; centrifugal to centripetal forces 16, 89, 131–2; civilising process 16–7, 27, 41, 42, 85, 88–9, 137, 139, 146, 173; controlled decontrolling 9, 61, 66; court society 94, 123, 127, 135, 137–8, 145, 151, 170; decivilising process 17, 42, 89–90, 105–6, 108; etiquette 38, 42, 49–50, 52, 58, 64–5, 79, 138; functional democratisation 56, 68, 78, 131, 137–8, 141, 144–6, 155; interdependence 14, 16, 21, 27, 35, 41, 60–1, 89, 99, 123, 131, 137, 144, 148, 150, 157; internal pacification 16–7, 89–90, 107–8, 113, 122–4, 131–2, 173; monopoly mechanism 10, 41, 88–90, 99, 107–8, 122–4, 131–2, 139, 144, 173; private to public monopolies 146–7; royal mechanism 147; self-control 16, 20–3, 33–6, 62, 64, 85, 97, 138, 150; state formation 13, 16–7, 86, 88–90, 101, 104–5, 107–10, 112, 124, 129, 137, 138–9, 144–5, 153, 168, 172; shame 3, 85, 96–8, 138, 153, 168; symbol emancipation 33, 40 emotions 12, 14, 19–20, 23, 25, 35–6, 41, 43, 55–6, 60, 63, 66–7, 138, 161–2, 167–8, 173 Euripides 68, 157 Eurocentrism 11, 13 Foucault, M. 75, 150; see also problematisation 2, 6, 14, 16, 70, 74–5, 132, 153, 155–9, 170, 173 Freud, S. 20, 26

gangs 68, 101, 156–7 Geertz, C. 38 gender 3, 9, 38, 51–2, 56, 66, 105; see also boys 44, 57; females/males 7, 44, 51, 53–5, 57, 64, 66, 96, 105, 118–9, 156, 161, 164–5; girls 44; patriarchy 55; women 51, 53–8, 63, 68, 91, 105, 113–5, 125, 133, 148, 161, 161, 165 Gennep, A. van 42, 61, 77, 82 Girard, R. 98–9; see also mimetic desire 90, 96, 98–100, 104–6; sacrificial mechanism 68, 98–100, 105, 147 globalisation 1, 86, 163, 173 Goffman, E. 40, 77, 80, 83, 94; see also impression management 57, 94, 135, 138; keying 77, 80 Gorbachev 114, 117–8 Gutenberg 127 habitus 8–9, 21–2, 26, 34–5, 37, 39, 57–8, 69, 141–2, 148, 156, 160 health: morbidity 41, 73, 119, 172; mortality 73, 86; life expectancy 118–9 Heath, D.B. 3, 7–9, 12–4, 31–2, 35–7, 43–4, 45–55, 57–65, 67, 69, 71, 87, 90–3, 103, 106–8, 120, 123, 125, 128–9, 134, 136, 140, 144, 154, 156, 165–6, 168–71 hedonism 22, 29, 77–8, 81, 84, 169–70 hierarchy 13–4, 16–7, 20–1, 26, 28, 48, 59, 64, 74, 78, 84, 89, 93–5, 97–8, 103, 122, 136, 166–7 historical eras: absolutism 89, 108, 117, 130, 144–5; Ancient Greece 3, 65, 91, 93, 95, 97, 103, 105; Ancient Near East 91, 103, 105, 125, 127, 136–7; Antiquity 122, 128, 157; Axial Age 86; Bronze Age 93, 136, 170; Celtic society 92–3, 95–9, 103, 105, 108; Celto-Germanic society 92, 98–9, 105, 108; Dark Ages 91, 101, 108, 124, 126; early modern period 17, 58, 63, 82, 121–5, 129, 133, 137, 143, 147; Ecumenic Age 92, 159; Egypt 91, 102–5, 123, 137; feudalism 90, 129, 145, 148; Göbekli Tepe 102–4; Hallstatt period 91, 93; hunter gathering society 68, 99, 102; Ice Age 102; Incan Empire 91, 106; Iron Age 90–1, 93; Mesopotamia 60, 101–3, 105, 122–3, 170; Middle Ages 41–2, 49, 63, 89, 101, 122, 124, 126, 129, 137, 139; Minoa 103; monasticism 107, 124, 126–7; Mycenaea 103; Neolithic 3, 91, 102, 105; Roman Empire 3, 5, 20, 42, 47,

192 Index

Marx, K. 15, 20, 108, 172 Mauss, M. 10–1, 13, 17, 49, 56, 64, 94, 109; see also gift relations 10, 13, 15, 17, 19, 47, 49, 51–2, 56, 64, 90, 94, 99–100, 105, 109, 131, 154, 172; charis 91, 97 modernity 1, 3, 7, 11, 13–5, 17, 29–30, 33, 35, 47, 51, 53–4, 56–8, 62–3, 71–2, 76–9, 82, 94, 108, 120–5, 129, 131–3, 137, 143, 147, 158, 168 morality 2–3, 5, 20, 59–60, 66, 68, 73–4, 79, 81, 112–3, 130, 149, 156–8, 168–9

Pasteur, L. 128 Pavlov, I. 37 Plato 4, 13, 95–6 pleasure 2, 4, 18, 27, 35, 38, 42, 48, 73, 78, 84, 91, 97, 154, 169–70 potlatch 10, 17–8, 64, 90–100, 102–8, 122, 132, 136; see also Pacific Northwest 94, 97, 103 problem perspective 2, 11 prohibition 53, 74–5, 111–3, 115–6, 140–2, 149–50, 165, 171 pseudo-science 5, 74 ; see also scientism 19 psychoactive substances: alkaloid 23–5; amanita muscaria 24; amphetamines 23; barbiturates 8, 23; beer 3–4, 15, 27, 30, 35, 44–6, 49, 51, 54, 57–8, 60, 67, 69, 93, 95–6, 101–5, 108–11, 120–1, 123, 125–7, 129, 133, 136–7, 148, 150–1, 155–7, 163, 171; betelnut 3, 23, 27, 29–30, 62–3; cannabis 102; chicha 91, 106; cigarettes 3, 23, 83; coca 23, 27, 30, 47, 53, 57–8; coffee 3, 23–4, 27, 47, 54, 75, 77, 125, 128–9, 132, 138, 155, 160; drugs 2–3, 8–9, 11, 25, 29, 80, 83, 120, 132, 155, 157, 160; gin 120, 126–7, 148–50; hallucinogens 25, 68; hashish 23; heroin 9, 160; homebrews 29, 31, 103, 129, 137; kava 58, 106; khat 24, 30; kola 43, 45, 58, 91, 128, 138, 156; LSD 23; magic mushrooms 24, 102; marijuana 9, 23, 74; mead 69, 92–3, 95, 98–101, 103, 111, 136; methadone 23; opiates 8, 10, 23, 160; peyote 23–4; pharmaceuticals 3, 23; pituri 30; quinine 23; rohypnol 23; rum 69, 127–8, 132, 159; spirits 15, 50; synthetic intoxicants 23, 30; tea 3, 23, 47, 128, 132, 138, 148, 160; tobacco 8, 23, 30, 52–3, 58, 68, 75, 122, 128, 133, 138, 142, 145–8, 159–60; tranquilisers 23; vodka 110–4, 116, 118–9, 127, 140; wine 2, 15, 27, 31, 35, 40, 43–4, 46–7, 50–4, 57, 65, 67–8, 85, 91, 93, 95, 102–3, 107, 111–2, 116, 121–5, 127, 129, 133, 136–7, 139, 142, 145, 148, 151, 153–6, 158–9, 170; yaje 24 public sphere 2, 16, 55, 66, 115, 130

Nietzsche, F. 1, 20, 169, 172; see also nihilism 64, 110, 168, 172 normality 2–4, 19, 37, 59, 61, 66, 69–70, 76, 80, 84, 89, 104, 109, 137, 143, 154, 170

race 1, 7, 113; see also ethnicity 45, 49, 167, 171 reference points 11, 69, 173 regions/societies: Africa 45, 63, 66–7, 91, 106, 125, 128, 138, 170; Anglo-Saxon

100–1, 107–8, 123–4, 126, 139, 156, 158–9; Russian Revolution 112–3, 115; Viking society 99, 156; WWI 121, 142, 147, 150, 156, 159; WWII 58, 116, 134, 138, 157, 163, 166 Hobbes, T. 10, 106 Homer 91 hormesis 30 Huizinga, J. 4, 35, 51, 59, 62, 64–6, 73 identity 5, 11, 32, 44–5, 47, 49, 53–5, 57–8, 69, 78, 80, 82–4, 89, 95–6, 101, 130, 136, 153–5, 166, 168 imitation 35, 56, 137–8, 160 indigenous peoples 15, 36, 73, 163–6, 170; Aborigines 30, 166; firewater myth 7, 75, 96, 168; Maoris 166; Native Americans 7, 32, 68, 94–6, 103, 105, 128, 159, 165–8 individualisation 7, 14, 16, 31, 36, 48, 51, 75, 77–8, 115, 117, 141 intersubjective understanding 35–6, 38 intoxication 3–4, 9, 15, 17, 24, 26–8, 36, 42–3, 64, 68, 75–7, 80–1, 85, 92–3, 137, 155, 157–8, 166; see also drunkenness 9, 15, 19–20, 31, 35–7, 42, 45, 54–5, 66, 70–2, 80–1, 85, 95, 109–10, 112–7, 154, 158, 165, 168, 170; moderation 4, 8, 26, 31–2, 63, 65, 74–5, 95–7, 114, 164, 170 leisure 2, 35, 47, 61, 75, 77, 118, 125, 133, 150 Lenin 115–6

Index 193 societies 14–5, 85; Asia 102–3, 106, 125, 128, 171; Camba 14; Caribbean 159; China 32, 44–5, 49, 52, 91, 103, 128, 160, 171; Eastern Europe 14–5, 66, 114, 129, 140; Europe 14–5, 30, 46, 56, 58, 66, 69, 85–6, 90–3, 95, 101, 105, 107–8, 114, 122, 124–7, 129, 133, 138–43, 145, 147, 157, 159, 164–6; France 32, 36, 108, 110, 112, 137, 145, 147, 155–7, 159; Germany 92–4, 98–100, 103, 105, 108, 143, 157, 163, 171; India 12, 67, 125, 156, 168, 171; Ireland 58, 85, 91–2, 97–8, 121, 125, 130–1, 133–4, 141, 145, 151; Italy 32, 58, 127–8, 157; Japan 32, 49, 58, 63, 91, 111–2, 114, 134, 171; Latin America 50, 67; Levant 91, 107; Mediterranean 4, 14–5, 31, 50, 53–5, 67, 91–3, 95, 97, 101, 103, 122; Netherlands 139, 141, 145, 152, 155, 157, 159, 171; non-Western societies 1, 13, 69, 71, 75, 87, 93; North America 52–3, 58,68, 87, 94; Northern Europe 15, 69, 85, 93, 95, 126; Oceania 58, 87; Russia 101, 108–16, 118–9, 140, 145, 157, 171; UK 4, 14, 62, 85, 98, 120–1, 130, 133, 139–41, 145–8, 152, 156–7, 159, 165; USA 4–5, 7, 10, 16–7, 37, 45, 66, 68, 74, 94, 101, 103, 112, 117, 119, 121, 127–8, 131, 139–42, 144, 150, 156, 158–62, 167, 170; USSR 109–10, 114, 116–9, 131, 134 regulation 2, 13, 20–1, 31–2, 34, 41, 43, 139, 141, 147, 149–51, 153, 159, 163–4, 172–3; see also departmentalism 141; justice 141; licensing 111, 118, 133, 139–40, 143, 145, 149, 151; police 21, 62, 88, 131, 143, 151; social work 6; welfare 141 relativism 10–1, 15, 19 religion 21, 36, 75, 116, 168–70; see also Buddhism 168; Catholicism 47, 66; Christianity 22, 47, 51–2, 67–8, 100, 168; Dionysos 51, 65, 68–70, 100, 158; Hermes 100; Hinduism 168; Islam 12, 43, 53, 66–7, 168; Judaism 32, 44, 170; Odin 99–100; prophecy 37, 68,-9, 100; Protestantism 67, 74; puritan 74, 123; shamanism 68–9, 128; taboos 2, 9, 61, 76, 84–5; the sacred 17, 48, 64, 68, 70, 72, 84, 98–9, 104, 164–5 ritual: agons 56, 64–5, 67–8, 70, 109, 115, 118, 151; carnival/carnivalesque

47, 59, 62, 66, 84, 112; commemoration 46–7; deritualisation 75, 82, 85, 163; drinking occasions 13, 16, 19, 36, 38, 41–2, 44, 46–8, 51–2, 55, 59, 61–2, 64, 66–7, 69–70, 73, 76, 78–9, 81–2, 85, 88, 95, 165; festivity 47, 52, 58, 64–6, 69, 78, 94, 102–3, 109–11, 115, 123, 137, 154–5; hazing 81; meals 2, 15, 32, 38, 47, 49, 60, 94, 158; nightlife 83; rite of life projects 78–80, 82, 84; saturnalia 47; symposia 13, 63–4, 95, 97; see also Turner, V.: anti-structure 46, 59, 62, 69–70, 109; communitas 47–52, 67, 73, 81, 93; liminality 4, 13, 15, 17, 43–4, 46–8, 51, 58–64, 66–7, 69–70, 73, 76, 82–4, 88–9, 106, 108–10, 120–1, 142, 153–6, 159; liminoid 15, 61, 76–7, 80; masters of ceremony 63, 77, 81–2; neophytes/initiands 43, 48, 62, 77, 80–1, 89; reflexivity 66, 68–9; rites de passage 10, 13, 17, 19, 42–3, 61, 69, 76–8, 80, 82, 84, 90, 94, 154; sacra 67 Room, R. 6, 10, 15, 19–20, 47, 58, 71–4, 77, 82–3, 86; see also problem deflation 71–2 sex 7, 54, 66–7, 159 sociability 2, 11–2, 18, 26, 37, 39, 42, 48, 51, 56, 73, 96, 98, 105, 111, 123–4, 131–3, 136, 165 social capital 42, 84, 119, 124, 136, social class 138, 146; see also aristocrats 91–3, 101, 122–4, 126, 133, 135–8, 145, 150, 158, 168, 170; bourgeoisie 35, 109, 115, 117, 123, 135, 145–6, 150, 155; lower strata 93–5, 113, 122, 137, 143, 146–8, 171; peasants 112–3, 115–6, 135, 169, 171; priests 135; social control 14, 17, 20–1, 30, 34, 39, 41–2, 62, 71–2, 76, 78, 87, 111, 164, 170 social order 13–4, 17, 34, 40, 42–3, 48–9, 61–3, 66–7, 70, 89, 96, 99–100, 104, 108–9, 154–5, 165; see also deviance 3, 21, 72, 143 social pathology 1, 4, 7, 10–1, 13, 16–8, 32, 71–2, 86–8, 108, 138, 154, 166–7, 172–3 social problems 2, 4, 6, 11, 15, 72–4, 117, 164, 172 sovereignty 85, 92, 98, 105, 150, 160 specialisation 16, 75, 77, 125, 127, 130, 132

194 Index Stalin 116–7 St. Augustine 22 suffering 14–5, 20, 26, 36, 50, 52,100, 161–3, 165, 167–9 surveillance 21, 85, 115–6, 139 symbolic interactionism 19 Szakolczai, A. 7, 11, 13, 36, 58, 63, 67, 69, 81, 88–9, 96, 99, 105, 135, 168–70; see also permanent liminality 17, 88–9, 106, 108–10, 121, 159, 172–3 technology 8, 96, 101–2, 126–7; see also agriculture 3, 25, 29–30, 101–3, 126, 132; alchemy 96, 105, 127; anal administration 29; brewing 8, 29, 31, 44, 91, 101, 103, 105, 108–10, 121, 125–6, 129, 137, 148, 151, 171; distillation 8, 29–30, 32, 38, 111, 113, 116, 118–9, 125–8, 144, 148, 151, 164–5; domestication 30, 95, 101–2, 107; fermentation 24–5, 30, 38, 96, 101–3, 105, 127–9; injection 29; refinement 29–30, 164; smoking 9, 21, 23, 29, 43, 51, 74; sniffing 24, 29 temperance 2, 5, 10, 74, 112, 114–8, 131, 140–2, 147, 150–1, 156, 163, 170–1 Tocqueville, A. de 56, 110, 141 trickster 70, 81–2, 98, 100 utilitarianism 10, 21, 48

violence 1–2, 4, 11, 14–7, 42, 62, 64, 70, 73, 81, 88–90, 96–7, 99, 101, 105–8, 112, 122, 129–31, 135, 143, 154–7, 164–5, 167–8 ; see also armies 14, 78, 90, 112, 117, 130, 157–8; battle 64, 92, 155–6, 158–9, 161; berserkers 157–8; military 89–90, 101, 107, 111–3, 115, 122, 124, 130, 133, 135, 144, 147, 153–4, 157–9, 161; soldiers 130, 156, 158–61 vodka monopoly 113–4, 116, 118–9 Weber, M.: asceticism; 21, 154, 169; bureaucracy 6, 15, 100, 103, 129–31, 145; charisma 15, 52, 63, 99–100, 135, 157, 169; disenchantment 75–6, 85, 172; enchantment 62, 73, 75, 77, 84; legal domination; religious rejections of the world 168, 170; traditional domination 15, 132; worldview 15, 34, 36, 164 wet and dry societies 15 World Health Organisation 4, 6 youth 28, 45, 50, 55, 58, 78, 80–5 , 91, 155, 157; see also adolescence 32, , 47, 77, 79, 82; adult; childhood 43–4, 50, 53, 55, 76, 82–3, 96, 161, 167; courtship 44–5, 57; puberty 47; socialisation 8, 20, 34, 36