‘Are we punks? – Yes, we drink!’: The politics of drinking in a youth subculture

Abstract

Abstract This article investigates the role of excessive drinking in a subcultural scene of Russian punk. Based on an extensive long-term field research, our work demonstrates that the loss of identity and withdrawal from the projects of social identification, usually associated with excessive consumption of alcohol, might not explain The article suggests that in certain situations drinking, disgrace, alcoholic exploits and ‘heroic incompetency’ surrounding the consumption of alcohol cause the opposite effect, through which individuals do not dissolve their identity, but rather construct alternative agency recognized and enacted within a subcultural collective. On the basis of the observations of drinking practices in three geographically defined Russian punk scenes and reflections on these practices produced by the members of the scenes, we conclude that excessive drinking can be seen as a specific response through which members of the subcultural groups construct alternative agencies and reclaim their political subjectivity.