the community construction of the underage drinker

“Community” is one of the most popular solutions to crime and delinquency problems in America today. But what is meant by “community” and what is its function? One function of a community is to form coalitions through which definitional processes of local problems and the construction of putative “people-types” (Loseke 1993) are accomplished. In this paper, I examine rhetoric at a series of community hearings on a local underage drinking problem in a rural, Midwestern county. Based on testimonies given at the hearing, three underage drinking people-types are discussed: the Sad Alien, the Uninformed Child, and the Artful Dodger. These people-types are used by social problems workers as resources to defend and legitimate their roles in existing strategies to reduce underage drinking and to authenticate and reproduce lines of programmatic action.

Keywords:

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Leon Anderson, the three anonymous reviewers, and the editor of Deviant Behavior for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Notes

¹Pseudonyms are used for all proper names that might identify the people and places described in this paper.

²The name, “Artful Dodger,” was borrowed from Charles Dickens’ memorable character in the book, Oliver Twist.