Alcohol: Social Drinking in Cultural Context

The purpose of this book is to provide a critical examination of human use of alcohol across cultures and through time, thereby providing a framework for undergraduate students to self-consciously examine their beliefs about and use of alcohol. Almost all books written about alcohol for college students have a problems perspective, either clinically (alcohol as a drug) or societally (as deviance, or a social problem). Many students have problems responding to these approaches. Understanding human use of alcohol anthropologically is a refreshingly different and effective method of harm reduction, which can be used by instructors to teach students how to reduce potential damage to themselves and others, while at the same time conveying the anthropological imagination.