Reconfiguring Drinking Cultures, Gender, and Transgressive Selves

This book presents an in-depth analysis of young people’s experiences of diverse drinking practices, including heavy drinking and drunkenness, as fun and pleasurable as they navigate gendered leisure spaces. Using qualitative data elicited through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussion, the analysis engages with theories and concepts of culture, gender, and transgression to foreground the roles that socio-cultural and material elements and human agency play in shaping alcohol consumption in contemporary Nigeria. It focuses on the enactment of hyper-heterosexual and alternative masculinities and the reconfigurations of passive and non-passive femininities through drinking practices. It also interrogates how and why multinational alcohol companies are targeting Nigerian women and youths and the extent to which their activities are contributing to changing gendered drinking and sexual practices, which are at odds with the extant local norms that promote abstinence, moderation among adults, and sexual purity among unmarried youths. Importantly, this book moves beyond solely Western theorizing by drawing on both Western and non-Western gender theories to analyze how contemporary Nigerian young men and women ‘do’ masculinity and femininity with alcohol and will be a valuable resource for social scientists, students, policymakers, practitioners, and the general public interested in youth drinking behaviours, multinational alcohol companies' activities, and decolonizing gender scholarship.

Emeka W. Dumbili is an Assistant Professor in Sociology and an Ad Astra Fellow in the School of Sociology, University College Dublin, Ireland. His research focuses on gender and identity, sociology of substance use, leisure studies, youth studies, social theories, and qualitative methodologies. Dr. Dumbili has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on gender, transgression, alcohol, and other psychoactive substance use.