Alcohol, Age, Generation and the Life Course

"This fascinating collection examines relationships between alcohol, age and generation and illustrates how people across the life course actively construct their identities through drinking narratives (or sobriety stories), and how attitudes to drinking mirror changing power relationships over time and space. Importantly, this book challenges the notion that there is a simple, linear relationship between age and drinking."

- Carol Emslie, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK

This volume explores generational differences in alcohol consumption practices and examines the changing role of alcohol across the life course. It considers generational patterns in where, how and why people buy and consume alcohol and how these may interact with identity and belonging and considers how drinking alcohol in adolescence, adulthood, middle-age or later life takes on different functions, meanings and tensions.

Alcohol is shown to play an important role in biographical transitions, such as in the coming of age rituals that mark the passage from adolescences to adulthood, whilst drinking alcohol in adulthood and in later life takes on new meanings, pleasures and risks in light of shifting roles and responsibilities relating to work, leisure and the family. The empirically-informed contributions draw on a range of diverse disciplinary backgrounds and a range of cultural contexts provides a nuanced examination of the role of alcohol at different life course stages and explores both continuity and change between generations.

Thomas Thurnell-Read is Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University, UK. His research on drinking culture has been published in leading international journals and he is a regular contributor to national and international media debates relating to pub culture, alcohol and drunkenness.

Laura Fenton is a Research Associate in the School of Health and Related Research at the University of Sheffield and in the School of Environment, Education and Development at the University of Manchester, UK. Her areas of expertise include alcohol, youth, gender, the life course, and biographical methods.