Teenage Drinking, Symbolic Capital and Distinction

Abstract

This article analyses alcohol-related lifestyles among Danish teenagers. Building on Bourdieu's reasoning on symbolic capital and distinction, we analyse three interrelated themes. First, we show that alcohol-related variables (drinking patterns, drinking debut, experience of intoxication, etc.) can be used to identify some very distinctive life styles among groups of Danish teenagers. Second, alcohol experience is analysed as a form of symbolic capital among youths, meaning that experience with drinking/partying is decisive for individual teenagers’ position and prestige in the peer group. Third, the article shows that distinction between different drinking patterns is not only a positive phenomenon related to group cohesiveness but also a negative phenomenon related to social dissociation and potential marginalisation of some youngsters. The data used in the article are both quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative data come from a survey with a representative sample of 2000 Danish teenagers aged 15–16 (born in 1989). The qualitative data consist of 28 focus group interviews with teenagers in the eighth and ninth grades in different parts of Denmark.