European research
Although European countries are among the world’s highest consumers of alcohol, the literature review showed that very little research has focused on social and cultural aspects of drinking in Europe.
Most national and cross-cultural studies of drinking in Europe have been of a purely quantitative, epidemiological nature and provide little or no insight into the social contexts and cultural roles of drinking.
The majority of such studies have also been explicitly ‘problem-oriented’ - sometimes to the extent that ‘non-problematic’ countries such as Italy have been deliberately excluded from the samples. This has led to an unbalanced perspective.
Of the very few genuinely ‘sociocultural’ studies, most have involved small-scale ethnographic research in remote regions or unrepresentative sub-cultures, rather than mainstream cultural contexts.
The only up-to-date, sociocultural work focusing on mainstream drinking-cultures in different European societies is Heath’s (1995) International Handbook on Alcohol and Culture. Although by far the most informative source currently available, this is a global survey with only 10-12 pages on each country.
There is a clear and urgent need for large-scale systematic research on social and cultural aspects of drinking in Europe, and for continious monitoring of shifts and changes in mainstream European drinking-cultures, particularly in terms of the effects of cultural ‘convergence’.
Although written for a mainly European audience, this SIRC report is based on a global literature-review and draws on evidence and examples from a wide range of drinking-cultures around the world. This broader perspective in part reflects the limited relevant research material available on European drinking-cultures, but is also a deliberate attempt to avoid the parochialism which often characterises research on alcohol.