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Staying ‘in the zone’ but not passing the ‘point of no return’: embodiment, gender and drinking in mid-life
Public health approaches have frequently conceptualised alcohol consumption as an individual behaviour resulting from rational choice. We argue that drinking alcohol needs to be understood as an embodied social practice embedded in gendered social relationships and environments. We draw on data from...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4211357/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24447057 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12103 |
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author | Lyons, Antonia C Emslie, Carol Hunt, Kate |
author_facet | Lyons, Antonia C Emslie, Carol Hunt, Kate |
author_sort | Lyons, Antonia C |
collection | PubMed |
description | Public health approaches have frequently conceptualised alcohol consumption as an individual behaviour resulting from rational choice. We argue that drinking alcohol needs to be understood as an embodied social practice embedded in gendered social relationships and environments. We draw on data from 14 focus groups with pre-existing groups of friends and work colleagues in which men and women in mid-life discussed their drinking behaviour. Analysis demonstrated that drinking alcohol marked a transitory time and space that altered both women's and men's subjective embodied experience of everyday gendered roles and responsibilities. The participants positioned themselves as experienced drinkers who, through accumulated knowledge of their own physical bodies, could achieve enjoyable bodily sensations by reaching a desired level of intoxication (being in the zone). These mid-life adults, particularly women, discussed knowing when they were approaching their limit and needed to stop drinking. Experiential and gendered embodied knowledge was more important in regulating consumption than health promotion advice. These findings foreground the relational and gendered nature of drinking and reinforce the need to critically interrogate the concept of alcohol consumption as a simple health behaviour. Broader theorising around notions of gendered embodiment may be helpful for more sophisticated conceptualisations of health practices. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4211357 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Blackwell Publishing Ltd |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42113572014-11-17 Staying ‘in the zone’ but not passing the ‘point of no return’: embodiment, gender and drinking in mid-life Lyons, Antonia C Emslie, Carol Hunt, Kate Sociol Health Illn Original Articles Public health approaches have frequently conceptualised alcohol consumption as an individual behaviour resulting from rational choice. We argue that drinking alcohol needs to be understood as an embodied social practice embedded in gendered social relationships and environments. We draw on data from 14 focus groups with pre-existing groups of friends and work colleagues in which men and women in mid-life discussed their drinking behaviour. Analysis demonstrated that drinking alcohol marked a transitory time and space that altered both women's and men's subjective embodied experience of everyday gendered roles and responsibilities. The participants positioned themselves as experienced drinkers who, through accumulated knowledge of their own physical bodies, could achieve enjoyable bodily sensations by reaching a desired level of intoxication (being in the zone). These mid-life adults, particularly women, discussed knowing when they were approaching their limit and needed to stop drinking. Experiential and gendered embodied knowledge was more important in regulating consumption than health promotion advice. These findings foreground the relational and gendered nature of drinking and reinforce the need to critically interrogate the concept of alcohol consumption as a simple health behaviour. Broader theorising around notions of gendered embodiment may be helpful for more sophisticated conceptualisations of health practices. Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2014-02 2014-01-22 /pmc/articles/PMC4211357/ /pubmed/24447057 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12103 Text en Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Society of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for SHIL (SHIL). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Original Articles Lyons, Antonia C Emslie, Carol Hunt, Kate Staying ‘in the zone’ but not passing the ‘point of no return’: embodiment, gender and drinking in mid-life |
title | Staying ‘in the zone’ but not passing the ‘point of no
return’: embodiment, gender and drinking in mid-life |
title_full | Staying ‘in the zone’ but not passing the ‘point of no
return’: embodiment, gender and drinking in mid-life |
title_fullStr | Staying ‘in the zone’ but not passing the ‘point of no
return’: embodiment, gender and drinking in mid-life |
title_full_unstemmed | Staying ‘in the zone’ but not passing the ‘point of no
return’: embodiment, gender and drinking in mid-life |
title_short | Staying ‘in the zone’ but not passing the ‘point of no
return’: embodiment, gender and drinking in mid-life |
title_sort | staying ‘in the zone’ but not passing the ‘point of no
return’: embodiment, gender and drinking in mid-life |
topic | Original Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4211357/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24447057 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12103 |
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