Handling complexity: constituting the relationship between intoxication and violence in Australian alcohol policy discourse

Abstract

Anthropological, sociological and historical research has long argued that drug use and intoxication are shaped by the cultural, social and political-economic contexts of consumption (Becker, 1953; Douglas, 1987; Gefou-Madianou, 1992; Heath, 1958; Levine, 1978; Lindesmith, 1947; MacAndrew & Edgerton, 1969; Mandelbaum, 1965; Marshall, 1979; Nicholls, 2003). In this framing, drug effects and experiences, including intoxication, arise from the interactions between ‘drug’ (pharmacological properties), ‘set’ (individual characteristics) and ‘setting’ (sociocultural context) (Zinberg, 1984). Criminological research has also taken a keen interest in the relationship between intoxication and aggression (Fagan, 1990; Felson & Staff, 2010; Miles, 2012; Tomsen, 2005), youth research in the emerging cultures and practices of intoxication among young people (Blackman, 2017; Measham & Brain, 2005; Measham & Moore, 2008), cultural studies in the relationship between intoxication and modernity (Alexander & Roberts, 2003; Nancy, 2016; Reith, 2005), and recent sociological research in the gendering of intoxication (Hutton, 2020; Moore, 2020), media representations of intoxication (Ayres & Taylor, 2020; Ruddock, 2020), ‘less florid’ forms of intoxication (Keane, 2020), and intoxication and sexualities (Pienaar et al., 2020a; 2020b). Show more