NEW CULTURE OF ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION: BINGE DRINKING – CONSUMPTION INSTEAD OF COMMUNICATION
Text topic: Culture and Deviance
Text author: Слађана Драгишић Лабаш
This paper studies new patterns of alcohol consumption among adolescents and young adults – binge drinking. It regards this type of gathering and socializing as a culture (subculture) that emerged in Serbia at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. A question is posed whether this model of drinking is related to the need to belong to a group or whether the group instead only presents a necessary context for the fulfilment of individual needs. It is also noted that the new drinking culture significantly challenges the existing gender stereotypes (both in terms of the model and the intensity of drinking). Besides presenting a number of studies on binge drinking and the cultural and social risk factors, two narratives are also analysed, of a male and a female respondent. Findings show that the new culture of drinking significantly differs from the traditional one, not only in regard to the manner of consumption but also to the context, spatial and social, as well as the motivations behind it. The former “socialization” paradigm is now being replaced by the individual motive, hence a new term “consumption instead of communication” is added to the old term of “controlled loss of control”.