Young People’s Drinking Geographies

Abstract

Studies undertaken by scholars in a range of disciplines in, and beyond, geography have provided important insights into geographical issues pertaining to young people’s alcohol consumption practices, for instance, elucidating experiences in a range of drinking microgeographies, such as bars, pubs, and clubs, along with differences between drinking in public and private realms and between urban and rural areas. This chapter aims to synthesize existing literature, from a range of international contexts, which brings to the fore the diverse microgeographies within which young people consume alcohol while also giving an indication of how young people manage their well-being in such spaces. Two key analytical points can be distilled from the body of work presented in this chapter. First, scholars have been somewhat fixated with preformed drinking spaces, such as bars, pubs, and clubs – typically in city centers. Second, studies exploring the ways in which spaces and places are fundamental constituents of experiences of alcohol, drinking, and drunkenness are largely theoretical. To expand, drinkscapes have typically been conceived as passive backdrops to young people’s drinking practices; and, more than this, spaces have predominantly been rendered fixed, bounded, terrains. These omissions are significant because health promotion and education discourses seeking to address problematic dimensions of young people’s alcohol consumption practices are limited by their incapacity to acknowledge and address the spaces in which drinking occurs. Consequently, this chapter goes beyond bars, pubs, and clubs to consider spaces young people create themselves as drinkscapes, including: squares, streets, parks, waterscapes, and homes. Further, this chapter signposts theoretical apparatus which may assist future researchers in elucidating the agentic and fluid capacities of young people’s drinking geographies, namely, the more-than-representational conceptual tools of actor-network theory and (im)mobilities.