Conclusions and Futures

Abstract

The purpose of this piece of work has been to describe and illuminate the lived experiences of committed adult consumers within the alcohol-based night-time economy (NTE) under global capitalism. The participants within these pages are in the unique position of having experienced first hand the inexorable rise of conspicuous consumption in a number of guises, not least the meteoric rise of what has become known as the NTE. Set against the backdrop of epochal changes in the economic and social fabric of society, the experiences and anxieties of these individuals are symptomatic if not representative of the challenges facing a generation. The atomisation and insecurity that is fast becoming synonymous with contemporary adulthood brings to bear a question mark over economic and social development in a future that is made all the more uncertain by the pressures born out of economic recession as we head into the second decade of the new millennium.