Typologies of the Cultural Position of Drinking

Abstract

Objective: Typologies of the position of from the social science literature are reviewed. Method: The article re- views significant studies and literature on the topic. Results: Starting in the 1940s, two research traditions considered variations in the position of as explanations of rates of prob- lems. A tradition coded and analyzed ethnographic data on tribal and village societies, starting in the 1940s, with each study identifying a different social dimension as crucial. A sociocultural tra- dition distinguished abstinent cultures from prescriptive cultures, in which was integrated with daily life, and expected, but drunk- enness was prohibited. These types were implicitly contrasted with American drinking, which was variously characterized. Other dimen- sional and typological approaches in the literature are considered, in- cluding a little-known Jellinek typology. Problems with the widely used distinction between wetter and drier (or temperance) cultures are discussed. Conclusions: Four ideal types of the position of can be readily distinguished: abstinent societies, constrained ritual drinking, banalized and fiesta drunkenness. A large resid- ual category remains, however, and a dimensional approach to typology building may be more fruitful. Two basic dimensions are proposed-- regularity of and extent of drunkenness--and further dimen- sions are described that may be added to fit the requirements of the particular study. (J. Stud. Alcohol 61: 475-483, 2000) T HAS LONG BEEN recognized that societies differ in practices and in the position of drinking. Efforts to systematize such observations into typologies of the position of have a shorter history, stretching back about half a century. This article reviews and discusses these efforts. By the cultural position of drinking we are referring both to norms about the use of alcohol in the culture and to the relation of to other aspects of the culture. Not far from the surface, in most modern discussions of the position of drinking, is also a concern about the occurrence of problems related to in the culture. The holocultural studies tradition The holocultural tradition used a dimensional approach in correlational analyses of Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) data on preindustrial societies. Holocultural theo- ries explicitly sought to explain intercultural variations in the use of alcohol in terms of generalized functions of on the individual level. Behind the various hypotheses and analyses in the tradition lay a concern with explaining Amer- ican alcoholism. In the first such study, Horton (1943) hypothesized that the