Symbolic functions
In all societies, alcoholic beverages are used as powerful and versatile symbolic tools, to construct and manipulate the social world.
cross-cultural research reveals four main symbolic uses of alcoholic beverages:
1. As labels defining the nature of social situations or events
2. As indicators of social status
3. As statements of affiliation
4. As gender differentiators.
There is convincing historical and contemporary evidence to show that the adoption of ‘foreign’ drinks often involves the adoption of the drinking patterns, attitudes and behaviours of the alien culture. This has nothing to do with any intrinsic properties of the beverages themselves - beer, for example, may be associated with disorderly behaviour in some cultures or sub-cultures and with benign sociability in others.
In Europe, the influence of some ‘ambivalent’, northern, beer-drinking cultures on ‘integrated’, southern, wine-drinking cultures is increasing, and is associated with potentially detrimental changes in attitudes and behaviour (e.g. the adoption of British ‘lager-lout’ behaviour among young males in Spain, and see Transitional Rituals below).
Historical evidence suggests that attempts to curb the anti-social excesses associated with an ‘alien’ beverage through Draconian restrictions on alcohol per se may result in the association of such behaviour with the formerly ‘benign’ native beverage, and an overall increase in alcohol-related problems.
Some societies appear less susceptible to the cultural influence of alien beverages than others. Although the current ‘convergence’ of drinking patterns also involves increasing consumption of wine in formerly beer- or spirits-dominated cultures, this has so far not been accompanied by an adoption of the more harmonious behaviour and attitudes associated with wine-drinking cultures. (This may in part reflect the generally higher social status of those adopting wine-drinking.)