Issues relating to alcohol ‘misuse’ can only properly be understood within their social and environmental contexts. This research and practice based book explores social models of alcohol misuse to offer a sociological approach to its treatment.
Through considering the social meaning of women’s alcohol use, the book challenges current policy and practice in the field. It raises concerns about the political role of ‘treatment’ in making women behave, or to be ‘well’, and aims to develop a new approach to women’s drinking and new ways of aiding recovery, at national and local levels.
With contributions from service users, academics and practitioners, this is essential reading for those studying addiction, gender and the social background to alcohol problems.
Alcohol consumption is frequently described as a contemporary, worsening and peculiarly British social problem that requires radical remedial regulation. Informed by historical research and sociological analysis, this book takes an innovative and refreshing look at how public attitudes and the regulation of alcohol have developed through time. It argues that, rather than a response to trends in consumption or harm, ongoing anxieties about alcohol are best understood as ‘hangovers’ derived, in particular, from the Victorian period. The product of several years of research, this book aims to help readers re-evaluate their understandings of drinking. As such, it is essential reading for students, academics and anyone with a serious interest in Britain’s ‘drink problem’.
167 SIX Alcohol, crime and disorder Introduction Chapter Five traced the lessening in efforts to morally regulate the use of alcohol in the inter-war period before identifying the beginnings of a recovery in the 1960s. What was the fate of this renewed moral regulation project? Simple keyword searches reveal that the number of references to ‘alcohol or ‘drink/drinking/drinker(s)’ in The Times and The Guardian rose more or less exponentially between 1965 and 2000.1 There was also a flurry of legislative activity affecting alcohol around the turn of the
Chapter objectives To provide an understanding of recovery and peer-led provision within a Welsh context. To explore two exemplars: North Wales Recovery Community and Recovery Cymru. To analyse some of the core considerations of inclusion, identity, (non) commissioning, community and power. To understand the role that Welsh social workers can play in facilitating, promoting and supporting peer-led provision and recovery. Introduction Between us, we, the authors of this chapter, have more than 120 years of direct experience with alcohol and
17 ONE The context for a social model of alcohol use Peter Beresford Introduction We know that dependence on, and inappropriate use of, alcohol is now widely seen as a global social problem. It is closely associated with crime and violence. It is a major contributory factor to road traffic and other accidents, resulting in countless deaths and serious injuries. It creates massive costs in terms of both personal and familial unhappiness and distress, it creates economic inefficiency and it imposes a massive burden on healthcare through reducing life
Social workers and other social care professionals regularly face the challenges of working with people with alcohol and other drug problems. Yet many receive little, if any, training for working with these issues. As substance use and its social impact on communities and families rises up the political agenda, this book offers a timely support for social workers and other social care staff working in this area.
Supporting people with alcohol and drug problems addresses the current gap in social work and social care education. It provides a combination of research evidence, policy frameworks, and practical hints and tips for good social work practice. Based around practice examples supplied by social workers from both adults’ and children’s social care, it combines knowledge with action. It also provides an important introduction to the evidence base on assessment, intervention and partnership working with specialist substance use colleagues. This book is for all those working in children’s and adults’ social work and social care settings who are working with people who use, or have problems with, alcohol and other drugs.
85 FIVE Domestic abuse and women’s use of alcohol Sarah Galvani, with Christine Toft Introduction For centuries, society has legitimised men’s violence to women at the hands of their fathers or husbands. In their review of the history of men’s violence to women, Dobash and Dobash (1979, p 50) highlighted evidence from the 16th to 19th centuries, which saw the ‘legitimate use of physical chastisement’ meted out to wives, children and servants from the husband or father of the house. In some cultures and families, this belief in a man’s right physically to
15 Part One The social construction of women’s alcohol use
175 Part Three A social approach to women’s alcohol treatment
65 FOUR Alcohol, young women’s culture and gender hierarchies Alison Mackiewicz Introduction The aim of this chapter is to draw attention to the ways in which social factors influence how young women’s alcohol issues in the United Kingdom (UK) are understood. Exploring current debates around neoliberalism, post-feminism and consumerism, together with my research on young women’s articulations of femininity within the UK’s culture of intoxication (Mackiewicz, 2012), I argue that femininity constitutes a hybrid of complex and contradictory discourses
