Social Circles

Abstract

The women themselves pointed out the importance of drinking companions in their social circles as they recounted their experiences, and in chapter 5 we looked at how workplaces sometimes provided drinking companions. In this chapter we concentrate on drinking as a recreational activity. Although some of the women did drink alone, their main emphasis, as they themselves recounted in chapter 4, was on drinking as a commonplace and frequently taken-for-granted social activity. This was governed by all sorts of assumptions about appropriate behaviour and reciprocity. Drinking was an integral part of leisure. As Allan (1996) has emphasised, such social contacts, which include friendship systems as well as kin networks, are embedded within the organisation of social life. Whilst face-to-face contact with all relatives and close friends has dropped in the last decade (McGlone et al. 1996), such contacts remain the stuff of socialising. After all, many of these women suggested that drinking was a positive thing to do with other people, giving cohesion to relationships.