ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates and explains the relationship between consumer culture, the nighttime leisure economy, and excessive alcohol consumption. Excessive or otherwise 'inappropriate' drinking tends to be framed as deviant, drawing moral opprobrium, public consternation, and in some instances criminalization. The majority of literature appears to agree that drinking alcohol and getting drunk is an accepted if not integral part of social interaction within British culture. The socio-economic upheaval has its roots in the adoption of neoliberal free market economics throughout the 1980s, a period characterised by declining industry and the rise of the consumer economy. Social scientists are broadly in agreement that the consumption of goods and services is the predominant way in which most contemporary Western individuals construct identities. Fundamentally, consumer culture encourages the basic levels of interpersonal competition that lie at the heart of neoliberal societies.
