Transgressive drinking practices and the subversion of proscriptive alcohol policy messages

Chris Hackley,Andrew Bengry-Howell,Christine Griffin,Isabelle Szmigin,Willm Mistral,Rungpaka Amy Hackley

doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.03.011

Abstract

This research makes a new contribution to alcohol policy practice and theory by demonstrating that transgression of officially sanctioned norms and values is a key component of the sub- and counter cultural drinking practices of some groups of young consumers. Therefore, policy messages that proscribe these drinking practices with moral force are likely to be subverted and rendered counter-productive. The qualitative analysis draws on critical geography and literary theories of the carnivalesque to delineate three categories of transgression: transgressions of space and place, transgressions of the body, and transgressions of the social order. Implications for alcohol policy are discussed.

Highlights

Mass consumption is often identified with conformity, yet transgression plays an important role in consumer motivation (Desmond, McDonagh, & O'Donohoe, 2000; Heath & Potter, 2005)
Excessive drinking is normalised amongst some groups in many Western economies, yet, as the data show, in some cultural contexts alcohol is seen to offer a powerful route into a liminal world of transgressive intensity
Transgression can be understood as a necessary part of social relations (Jenks, 2003), and health policy, as well as alcohol marketing and other discourses around alcohol, are constitutive (Moore & Measham, 2012) of those relations

Summary

Introduction

Mass consumption is often identified with conformity, yet transgression plays an important role in consumer motivation (Desmond, McDonagh, & O'Donohoe, 2000; Heath & Potter, 2005). Advertising and marketing offer discursive resources for the production of consumer identities through creative or adaptive consumption (Firat & Venkatesh, 1995; Holt, 1995). Marketers are astute in exploiting the transgressive dynamics of some consumer groups, by tapping into sub-cultural and counter-cultural consumer movements (Frank, 1997). Marketers seek to co-opt sub- and counter-cultural consumer practices by structuring them ideologically (Thompson & Coskuner‐ Balli, 2007). Many new branded alcohol drinks were promoted in the UK in the 1980s as if they had implied psycho-active properties at a time when the government was intensifying the policing of the illegal and drug-infused rave culture (Measham, 2004; Measham & Brain, 2005), tapping into an element of sub-cultural capital

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion