Reconfiguring Drinking Cultures, Gender, and Transgressive Selves

by Emeka W. Dumbili

Overview

This book presents an in-depth analysis of young people’s experiences of diverse drinking practices, including heavy drinking and drunkenness, as fun and pleasurable as they navigate gendered leisure spaces. Using qualitative data elicited through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions, the analysis engages with theories and concepts of culture, gender, and transgression to foreground the roles that socio-cultural and material elements and human agency play in shaping alcohol consumption in contemporary Nigeria. It focuses on the enactment of hyper-heterosexual and alternative masculinities and the reconfigurations of passive and non-passive femininities through drinking practices. It also interrogates how and why multinational alcohol companies are targeting Nigerian women and youths and the extent to which their activities are contributing to changing gendered drinking and sexual practices, which are at odds with the extant local norms that promote abstinence, moderation among adults, and sexual purity among unmarried youths. Importantly, this book moves beyond solely Western theorizing by drawing on both Western and non-Western gender theories to analyze how contemporary Nigerian young men and women ‘do’ masculinity and femininity with alcohol and will be a valuable resource for social scientists, students, policymakers, practitioners, and the general public interested in youth drinking behaviours, multinational alcohol companies' activities, and decolonizing gender scholarship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783031533174
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	03/24/2024
Series:	Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences
Edition description:	2024
Pages:	321
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Emeka W. Dumbili is an Assistant Professor in Sociology and an Ad Astra Fellow in the School of Sociology, University College Dublin, Ireland. His research focuses on gender and identity, sociology of substance use, leisure studies, youth studies, social theories, and qualitative methodologies. Dr. Dumbili has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on gender, transgression, alcohol, and other psychoactive substance use.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Drinking Cultures in Nigeria, Gender and Transgressive Theories, and Methodology.- 2. Gendering of Alcohol and Transgressive Selves.- 3. Gendered Struggles for Leisure Spaces.- 4. Reconfigured Drinking Cultures? Intoxication and Pleasure.- 5. Drinking Bouts: Motivations, Resistance and Transgression.- 6. Alcoholic Bitters for Sweet Sex? Masculinity, Femininity, Alcohol and Sex consuming Selves in Heterosexual Relationships.- 7. Conclusion.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Alcohol has diverse usage: as an intoxicant, medicine, antiseptic, for pleasure, in ritual, and as exchange value. The cultural intervention to impose regulation on the who and how of this usage negatively impacts the socio-political dynamics of gender, age, race and class. We thus get the reactions of resistance, transgression and subversion. Emeka Dumbili’s very interesting book, with its focus on Nigerian youth, examines the local contexts of these dynamics. Insightfully, it also shows the global and intercultural reach of the contradictions embodied in male-gendering of drinking alcohol and an associated macho-culture that is promoted by patriarchy and capitalism. The excluded categories, the youth, in particular, resort to secrecy with its detrimental consequences, such as heavy drinking, intoxication and violence. In this corrupting process, capitalism undervalues and undermines the natural African and traditional local productions and industry. With new alcohol products, promises of enhanced sexual performance and new drinking habits that generate new personna, class and gender consciousness, the youth and women express new modernity-derived status through drinking new brands of alcohol. They thereby relegate the peasant masses to a derogatory supposed primitiveness. This is an informative, enjoyable and educational book, with a rich and detailed narrative of people’s lived experiences that supersedes the simple problematization of alcohol." (Ifi Amadiume, Professor, Dartmouth College, USA)

"A valuable addition to the literature on gender and alcohol consumption, with a welcome and timely focus on the Nigerian context that complicates the assumption that youth drinking is ‘in decline’ globally. Dumbili’s nuanced, rich and comprehensive work meaningfully extends our understanding of gender and drinking in an African context, centring a particular geographical space yet at the same timepresenting arguments and insights with wider applicability to a range of global settings. The foregrounding of the theme of ‘transgression’ presents a powerful lens through which to interrogate gender and drinking and enhances contemporary theorisations of sexuality, masculinity and femininity in both Western and non-Western contexts." (Dr Emily Nicholls, Lecturer in Sociology, University of York)

"The research literature on alcohol and society in Nigeria is sparse at best. Clearly lacking are analyses that highlight the social and demographic factors associated with drinking and its consequences. Using findings from qualitative research, Dr Dumbili has provided an in-depth analysis of the drinking culture among Nigerian youth, drawing on many years of experience. The work focuses attention on critical issues like alcohol and gender, drinking motivations, and the pernicious behaviour of the alcohol industry of targeting youth. This is a significant contributionto research on alcohol in Africa with immense policy relevance, especially at this time when Nigeria and other countries are grappling with the development of national alcohol policies." (Isidore S. Obot , Professor, Executive Director, Centre for Research and Information on Substance Abuse (CRISA), Uyo, Nigeria)