‘In summer we go and drink at the lake’: young men and the geographies of alcohol and drinking in rural Estonia

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the role of place in drinking practices of young people in the context of rural Estonia. We draw on a participatory research project carried out during seven months with a group of eight young men (15–18 years of age). We focus on three locations identified as the most popular drinking places by the young men in our research – familial homes, a local hamburger kiosk and the outdoors. The findings indicate that youth drinking practices as well as the drunkenness-related risks are spatially contingent. Characteristics of individual drinking locations influence the negotiation of local and national opportunities, restrictions and attitudes toward drinking, and the associated risks. We argue that, when developing public health tools, it is fruitful to pay attention to the local context and specific places in which young people's drinking practices are negotiated.

Keywords:

• alcohol
• drinking
• drunkenness
• young people
• Estonia
• rural

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the research participants for sharing their lives with us. We would also like to thank everybody at the local high school for the warm welcome and assistance during the data collection. Special thanks are extended to the principal, the head teacher and the geography teacher of the local school as well as to the mayor of the local municipality for their support during and after the fieldwork. The authors would furthermore like to thank two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on the earlier version of this paper. Tamara Kaspers-Westra kindly helped to prepare the map of Jārva-Jaani. This project would not have been possible without the financial support from the Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen.

Notes

1. The other two priority areas are: reducing harmful drinking and reducing overall consumption (Täht 2011).

2. But see Jayne, Valentine, and Holloway (2010) for a detailed discussion on different approaches to alcohol, drinking and drunkenness. Jayne, Valentine, and Holloway (2010) discuss drinking as a social and cultural, embodied and emotional practice but also alcohol as a health, social, legislative, crime and policy problem.

3. In the sections below, we will refer to our research participants collectively as ‘the boys’.

4. In Estonia, strong alcohol is also available in supermarkets and grocery stores (Figure 2). Finland and Sweden operate with state-owned retail monopolies on the sale of alcoholic beverages and strong alcohol is only available in selected retail locations (Örnberg and Ólafsdóttir 2008).

5. It is likely that the presence of the camera might have had an additional influence on the behavior of the young people at that particular party, restraining some youth more and making others perform more actively. The young people present at the party were informed by the boys who were filming that the video will be shown to the researcher.