Responding to drunkenness in Scottish Society : a socio-historical study of responses to alcohol problems

Abstract

This thesis explores the nature of responses to problems associated with drinking and drunkenness. The aim is to consider how perceptions and responses to the issue have changed over time, and, crucially, to analyze the implications of the resulting evidence for policy and practice. There are two interdependent issues which the thesis seeks to expose and debate. First there is the process of emergence, the historical development of alcohol abuse as a social problem. It is possible to see in the historical record the continuities and (just as importantly) the discontinuities of responses to drinking behaviour from the Industrial Revolution to the present day. it is important to realise that some important aspects of contemporary explanations of problem drinking are in fact 'hangovers' from an earlier tradition and, in particular, from the Temperance response to alcohol problems. Ultimately, however, this is a thesis about the practice of managing contemporary alcohol related problems. It is about how the modern institutional network of criminal justice, medical, and social welfare agencies perceive and respond to problem drinking in Scotland. How do police officers, procurators fiscal, magistrates, doctors, and social workers view problem drinking? How do they respond to the problem drinker? The thesis then is about attempts to control, treat, and/or rehabilitate deviant drinkers, but it is also about the attitudes, perceptions, and experiences of the individuals whose job it is to realise policy as practice. In as much as it is based on the belief that in order to understand the modern system of management of the problem, it is necessary to understand how 'alcoholism' came to be defined as a social problem in the first place, the analysis is informed by perspectives and concepts that have been developed in the sociology of social problems. Chapter I considers the main features of this analytical framework and outlines the structure of the thesis.