This post, like a few before it, is about an academic article
I’ve had published recently. A version
of this may or may not end up on the LSE British Politics and Policy blog, but in
any case this version has a few things included that I couldn’t fit in with the
word count – one of which is a few more words on the paradoxical
semantic/pedantic point that when academics talk about a ‘new culture of
intoxication’, this only makes sense because we’re talking about intoxication
as drunkenness, rather than something pharmacological. That’s the only point worth noting, really –
otherwise I’d point you to the
article itself, which is free to access and probably more clearly written
(if in a more academic style).
Alcohol – and public policy in relation to it – seems to be
a fascination in Britain not only for governments, but the media and academics.
A common academic view has been that British night-time high
streets, and our drinking behaviour on them, have been shaped by a form of
neoliberalism, exemplified by the perceived loosening of licensing laws – for
example through the 2003 Licensing Act that supposedly ushered in 24-hour
drinking. This has taken place, it is
suggested, as part of a
broader trend for consumption such as drinking to replace productive work in
importance to the UK economy and young people’s
identities.
But this apparent liberalisation hasn’t meant that
government has been indifferent to people’s drinking choices. The neoliberal approach is
characterised by its response to those drinking practices it considers
undesirable: where governments with a different ‘mentality
of government’ reshaped the drinking environment – for example through
precisely those licensing laws that more recent UK governments dissolved – neoliberal
governments have focused on the drinkers themselves, trying to change
behaviour through education and social marketing such as the ‘Would You?’ and ‘Change for
Life’ campaigns.
This means that governments don’t think each person’s way of
laying out their own life is the best by definition, as some classical liberals
might; neoliberal
governments actually have strong ideas of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ drinking. This distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’,
though, isn’t inherent in the neoliberal approach to government. A neoliberal approach could focus on health
issues, or disorder, or indeed celebrate drinking as a valuable contribution to
the economy; the difference would be in the programmes designed to educate
consumers.
Both in the media and academic work it’s common to see
discussions of how ‘good’ and ‘bad’ drinking are defined. Often it’s suggested that the government has
criminalised intoxication, or certain forms of pleasure. In a
recently published article I’ve argued that the concept of the
carnivalesque is actually more helpful in understanding alcohol policy in
England.
But what does the carnivalesque mean, if it’s to be of any
use? Carnival is a time when rituals
turn the world ‘inside out’ – for example, when a peasant is made ‘carnival
king’ for a day. Much academic work on
the carnivalesque has drawn on Mikhail
Bakhtin. His idea of the
carnivalesque includes free and familiar contact between people, profane speech
and grotesque realism, with an emphasis on the body, and attention drawn to its
natural features and functions, such as sex and excretion.
One of most evocative descriptions of carnival is given by Mike
Featherstone: ‘The popular tradition of carnivals, fairs and festivals
provided symbolic inversions and transgressions of the official ‘civilized’
culture and favoured excitement, uncontrolled emotions and the direct and
vulgar grotesque bodily pleasures of fattening food, intoxicating drink and
sexual promiscuity.’ Parallels with the
alcohol, excitement, (apparent) transgression, kebabs and sexual promiscuity of
the night-time economy and its ‘binge’ drinking are immediately apparent.
Bakhtin in particular, though, has been criticised for taking
a rose-tinted view of carnival – both in
general and with
specific reference to drinking.
However, he describes the way in which festivals and carnivalesque impulses
were co-opted by institutions such as state and church and his
analysis of Rabelais is centred on the ambivalence of profanity and
carnival laughter, through which shame and triumph, death and life, are felt
simultaneously. Moreover, carnival has
always been an event that has been commercialised and sanctioned by the state
in some sense. As Terry Eagleton
put it, using Shakespeare’s words, ‘there is no slander in an allowed fool’.
But what’s the use of this concept in thinking about
government alcohol policy specifically, as opposed to describing the night-time
high street? (And I wouldn’t
be the first to do that.) I’d argue
that the strength of the concept of the carnivalesque is in this ambivalence:
government’s toleration of but discomfort with certain practices. And the carnivalesque takes us beyond ideas
of pleasure and intoxication, which don’t quite capture what does actually make
government uneasy.
There’s a strong case that in drug policy at least, what the
government is condemning is indeed pleasure and/or intoxication. The Observer recently published a ‘Drugs
Uncovered’ special, and one article claimed that “the
biggest taboo surrounding drugs today isn't taking drugs, but saying that
they're fun”, while Adam
Winstock has suggested that harm reduction policies would be much more
effective if they acknowledged people’s pleasure in drug taking.
In a recent academic article in Addiction, Alison
Ritter asked ‘Where is the
pleasure?’ when thinking about drug regulation. Fiona Measham –
particularly in her work with Karenza
Moore – has suggested that governments in Britain have made certain
pleasures ‘impermissible’
and even ‘criminalised’
intoxication.
Measham, though, would be the first to point out how
government policy has fostered ‘the new culture of intoxication’ in relation to
alcohol. Alcohol is something of a
special case when it comes to drug policy – it’s one of the few recreational
psychoactive substances actively endorsed by government.
Government does not accept that there is a fundamental
problem inherent in alcohol, and it’s perfectly happy with people taking
pleasure in its consumption. Just think
of David Cameron describing his family as having ‘a
reasonable drinking habit’, or opposition from politicians from all parties
to minimum unit pricing (MUP) on the basis that it would penalise people’s
legitimate pleasure in drinking.
But then the standard academic position – for alcohol, at
least, as opposed to other drugs – isn’t so much that no form of
pleasure is permitted; it’s that certain forms of pleasure are ‘impermissible’. And it can seem that it’s precisely an
impermissible pleasure of intoxication that’s being condemned when successive
alcohol strategies have defined ‘binge’ drinkers as those who ‘drink to get
drunk’.
But although it might seem like a game of semantics, a
genuine distinction can be made between intoxication and drunkenness. The former implies something like a
physiological change, and might be judged in the same way that impairment for
driving is: by blood alcohol content.
Government concern is something more than this. The 2004 Strategy
worried about ‘the culture of drinking to get drunk’, where ‘there is little
social control’. It stated quite clearly
‘there is no direct relationship between the amounts or patterns of consumption
and types or levels of harm caused or experienced’. Counterintuitively, it’s actually this
culture that is being condemned when academics have referred to ‘the
new culture of intoxication’.
But it could still be argued that if it isn’t exactly pharmacological
intoxication that government is condemning, perhaps it’s still a certain form
of ‘impermissible’ pleasure. However,
there are two key problems with this.
First, drinkers aren’t necessarily experiencing ‘pleasure’
in the night-time economy. As Barton
and Husk have recently noted, preloading is often chosen over going
straight out onto the night-time high street not simply because it’s cheaper,
but because people find it more comfortable and pleasurable to drink at home in
a more controlled environment and be able to have proper conversations. But, crucially, those drinkers do still end
up going out into that slightly uncomfortable world of altered social norms.,
attracted not by pleasure exactly but the ritual, communal, ‘controlled
loss of control’ that I’d say is captured well by the idea of the
carnivalesque.
But more importantly in this context, it’s not just that
drinkers don’t necessarily experience this as pleasure; the government doesn’t
think it’s pleasurable either.
This is best illustrated by looking at one government
initiative specifically (admittedly from a few years ago). We can see this clearly in the ‘Would You?’
social marketing campaign that ran in 2008.
Without going into great detail, the actions shown and the way in which
they are portrayed are characteristic of the carnivalesque. The world is quite clearly turned ‘inside
out’, as a boy and a girl are depicted getting ready to
start the night as they might end it, with plenty of illustrations of what Bakhtin
would refer to as the ‘grotesque’ body complete with the flow of bodily fluids
– urine, blood, vomit.
The appeal to the viewer is that ‘you wouldn’t start a night
like this’, assuming not only that in everyday, sober life certain norms are
shared between viewer and government, but also that such norms could and should
apply to the NTE. The adverts aren’t
suggesting that drinkers should deny themselves the pleasure of this behaviour
in favour of higher or deferred pleasures, or because the actions are selfish
and impinge on others (the whole scene takes place within a private place where
each actor is alone). Instead, the aim
is to highlight that these actions and consequences are specifically not
pleasurable, and so behaving in a different way would be more pleasurable as
well as sensible.
I’d like to think that, just like the distinction between
intoxication and drunkenness, this idea of the carnivalesque isn’t simply a
game of semantics, but has genuine implications for policy. If we see this as the motive behind
government policy, it opens out the question of whether this is an appropriate
aim: should we be concerned about the carnivalesque culture, or actually should
policy focus more directly on crimes and health harms? Certainly there’s
evidence that there’s a different approach developing in Scotland, and it
might be worth thinking about how well that works.
Alternatively, if the problem really is the carnivalesque,
we’d probably make better policy if the debate was clear and open about this
being its aim. It might also be a useful
concept to use to think about illicit drug policy – or does the government only
need to make this sort of distinction between responsible and irresponsible
consumption when the substance is legal?
And given that my analysis is all of public documents and
statements, it might be worth thinking about whether this is how government
officials really think about alcohol policy: the concerns of policymakers and
the reality of the process might be quite different from these statements
designed for public consumption. But all
the same, I’d still say it’s useful to think about things in these terms.
