‘It's Just Like the Teenage Stereotype, You Go Out and Drink and Stuff’: Hearing from Young People who<i>Don't</i>Drink

Abstract

In this article, we report on a study in which 39 final-year students at two New Zealand high schools were interviewed about their adoption of alternative subject positions in relation to the prevailing norm of alcohol consumption. There were four ways in which participants in our study constituted themselves as non-drinkers in relation to this norm: (1) by constituting legitimate alternative subject positions such as ‘sporty’ and ‘healthy’ or by complying with other norms defined by participants’ cultural and/or religious practices; (2) by constructing alternative leisure identities; (3) by reconstituting the norm of alcohol consumption as abject, as a way of legitimating their non-drinking subject position; and (4) by ‘passing’ as a drinker in social spaces where alcohol was being consumed. We show how participants used these processes in constituting opposition to the norm of alcohol consumption. We conclude with some suggestions about how these theoretical insights might be put to practical use.