Fluid Boundaries—British Binge Drinking and European Civility: Alcohol and the Production and Consumption of Public Space

Abstract

During the past few years, debate surrounding depictions of a ‘British disease’ of binge drinking in contrast to civil European drinking cultures has been a central feature of popular and political debate in the UK. This paper investigates the ways in which these drinking categories have been constructed and identifies how they have become key elements in the production and consumption of public space. Empirical findings are presented from a city in the UK to show how these labels are being translated into policy agendas through the construction of models of citizenship and ways of behaviour and operationalised through the designation and regulation of particular spaces via exclusion zones, quartering, planning and policing. The paper also highlights the ways in which discourses relating to British binge- and European-drinking are being adopted and interpreted by consumers and unpacks how this impacts on perception and experience of public space.

The authors would like to thank the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for funding the research upon which this paper is based and the anonymous referees whose comments have helped to improve the paper. They would also like to thank Ruth Holliday for commenting on an early draft of this paper.

Notes

1. Data presented in this paper were collected through fieldwork that included a telephone questionnaire survey, in-depth interviews with local residents and key informants and participant observation on public space (see Valentine et al., 2007, for more detail). The quotations in the paper are representative of a wider body of evidence.

2. The UK government's National Statistics Socioeconomic Classification is as follows: 1 = managerial and professional occupations; 2 = intermediate occupations; 3 = small employers and own account workers; 4 = lower supervisory and technical occupations; 5 = semi-routine and routine occupations; 6 = never worked and long-term unemployed; 7 = unclassified.