ABSTRACT
“Drinks construct the world as it is,” “drinking constructs an ideal world,” “alcohol entrenches the alternative economy …”: Mary Douglas summarizes her anthropological perspective on alcohol consumption in these three statements. Anthropologists should study not only the social role of alcohol in the construction of communities (and hierarchies) and the ritual–symbolic (religious, ecstatic) aspects of alcohol consumption, but they should also examine the economic basis of the production and distribution of alcohol—a dimension which remains largely unexplored in many anthropological studies.
