ABSTRACT
The chapter examines social pathologies related to alcohol as rooted in social pathologies ‘of’ contemporary civilisation, seeing them as rooted in fundamental features of the civilising process. State formation is shown to be the key historical process that has shaped drinking culture, which has had the effect of disrupting the timeless social forms that have structured drinking occasions: rites de passage and gift relations, as described by Victor Turner and Marcel Mauss. This diagnosis is offered as an attempt to answer a riddle set by leading alcohol researchers such as Mary Douglas and Dwight B. Heath, who have made the claim that outside of complex, differentiated societies, alcohol problems are rare. The argument of the chapter is that state formation processes can help us explain this, as it subverts the highly ritualised, socially integrative nature of drinking. It is postulated that an anthropologically informed historical sociology is crucial to understanding drinking cultures and their problems, as they provide comparative-historical reference points with which to examine the issue, and insight into the key dynamics that have shaped it.
