Abstract
This chapter focuses on alcohol consumption as an area of latemodern risk management in the Danish welfare state (cf. Järvinen, Ellersgaard, and Larsen, 2014a, 2014b). The present day in Western societies has been characterized as a “lifestyle era” in which health is regarded as an achievement, something people have to work at. As Cockerham (2005) points out, people in previous generations may more or less have taken their health for granted, simply regarding health as the absence of illness. Today, health has been reconfigured as self-care and as something the individual is obliged to manage and maintain through specific behavior. In the lifestyle era, people encounter a stream of healthy choice messages to which they are expected to conform. Healthy lifestyles are more or less synonymous with riskavoidance, with risk being defined (often with the help of quantitative limits for appropriate versus inappropriate behavior) by the authorities (Järvinen, Ellersgaard, and Larsen, 2014b; see also chapter 9).
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© 2015 Tea Torbenfeldt Bengtsson, Morten Frederiksen, and Jørgen Elm Larsen
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Järvinen, M. (2015). Alcohol and Risk Management in a Welfare State. In: Bengtsson, T.T., Frederiksen, M., Larsen, J.E. (eds) The Danish Welfare State. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137527318_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137527318_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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