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I don't know anyone that has two

drinks a day: Young people, alcohol
and the government of pleasure
a

Lyn Harrison , Peter Kelly , Jo Lindsay , Jenny Advocat &

Chris Hickey
a

School of Education, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Australia

School of Political and Social Enquiry, Monash University,

Melbourne, Australia
Available online: 05 Aug 2011

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I don't know anyone that has two drinks a day: Young people, alcohol and the government of
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Health, Risk & Society

Vol. 13, No. 5, August 2011, 469486

I dont know anyone that has two drinks a day: Young people, alcohol
and the government of pleasure
Lyn Harrisona*, Peter Kellyb, Jo Lindsayb, Jenny Advocatb and Chris Hickeya
a
School of Education, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Australia; bSchool of Political and
Social Enquiry, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Downloaded by [Deakin University] at 16:16 21 September 2011

(Received 14 July 2010; nal version received 22 March 2011)

Problematic alcohol consumption is a major public health, health education and
health promotion issue in Australia and internationally. In an eort to better
understand young peoples drinking patterns and motivations we investigated the
cultural drivers of drinking in 1424 year-old Australians. We interviewed 60
young people in the state of Victoria aged 2024 about their drinking biographies.
At the time of interviewing, the draft guidelines on low-risk drinking were
released by the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia, and we
asked our participants what they knew about them and if they thought they
would aect their drinking patterns. Their responses indicate that pleasure and
sociability are central to young peoples drinking cultures which is supported by a
range of research. However, OMalley and Valverde claim that pleasure is
silenced and/or deployed strategically in neo-liberal governance discourses about
drugs and alcohol such as these guidelines which raises questions about the limits
of such discourses to aect changes in drinking patterns.
Keywords: pleasure; neo-liberal governance; risk; drinking cultures; health
education; young people

Introduction
In October 2007 the National Health and Medical Research Council in Australia
(NHMRC) released draft guidelines for low-risk drinking (ratied in 2009). These
guidelines suggest that individuals should not consume more than two standard
drinks a day if they want to avoid risky levels of alcohol consumption.
Binge drinking amongst young people has long been a concern in Australia and
similar western countries and there have been suggestions that this is currently the
norm rather than the exception among young people. It is claimed that the most
likely group to engage in this behaviour are aged between 18 and 24 (Mancini-Pena
and Tyson 2007, p. 35). However, public health, and health education and promotion
concerns about risk and bingeing are often not shared by young people who drink, or
these young people do not see themselves as being addressed by health promotion and
public health agencies such as the NHMRC and the discourses that they shape.
At around the same time as the NHMRC guidelines were released, we were
awarded a tender by Drinkwise Australia and the Commonwealth Department of

*Corresponding author. Email: lynh@deakin.edu.au

ISSN 1369-8575 print/ISSN 1469-8331 online
2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13698575.2011.596190
http://www.informaworld.com

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L. Harrison et al.

Health and Ageing to investigate the cultural drivers of drinking in 1424-year-old

Australians: an acknowledgement perhaps of a trend towards the need to better
understand young peoples drinking cultures if we are to improve the eectiveness of
health education and promotion interventions. In this paper we report on some of
the issues and themes that emerged from this research. In particular we present data
from the research which suggests that many young people do not see their drinking
practices, the settings and relations in which these occur, and their understandings of
risk, responsibility and pleasure as having much correspondence to the ways the
NHMRC imagines and frames these things. Bergmark (2004, p. 11) has argued that
pleasure seems to be structurally excluded from prevention discourses.
We begin by providing some background on young peoples drinking patterns
and locate this discussion in relation to an outline of the NHMRC guidelines. We
then provide a rationale for, and a description of, our Drinking Biographies study in
which we interviewed 60 young people between the ages of 2024 years. In the
section that follows we introduce Keith, Steven, Melanie, Allison and Tami, ve
participants from the study, and tell some of their life story and provide an account
of their understandings and uses of alcohol. Importantly we include their
observations about the guidelines for low-risk drinking. In the nal section we
situate these observations in a discussion of neo-liberalism, subjectivity and the
government of pleasure.
What we argue in this paper is that health promotion and education discourses
that seek to address problematic dimensions of young peoples use of alcohol are
fundamentally constrained by their incapacity to acknowledge and address the
pleasure, sociability and complex relations between discipline and abandon that
shape the way many young people use and understand alcohol. This paper cannot
solve these tensions and dilemmas but we do make some contribution to thinking
dierently about young people, alcohol, pleasure and risk.
Australian guidelines for low-risk drinking
The NHMRC describes itself as an independent statutory agency within the
portfolio of the Australian Government Minister for Health and Ageing. It is
Australias peak body for supporting health and medical research; for developing
health advice for the Australian community, health professionals and governments;
and for providing advice on ethical behaviour in health care and in the conduct of
health and medical research (NHMRC 2010). In the draft edition of the NHMRC
drinking guidelines1 risky and high risk drinking are dened as: Any drinking
above the guideline levels . . . (NHMRC 2007, 18) thus eectively increasing the
parameters of riskiness.
Bergmark (2004, p. 8) argues that alcohol policy measures in most western
societies are characterised by an information/persuasion strategy and this is evident
in the research reported on in the NHMRC document such as: alcohol aects brain
development in young people; thus, drinking, particularly binge drinking, at any
time before brain development is complete (which is not until 25 years of age) may
adversely aect later brain function (NHMRC 2007, 70 emphasis added). In these
guidelines the NHMRC focuses on the reduction of accident or injury and
development of alcohol related diseases and the reduction in the lifetime risk of
death from alcohol-related injury (NHMRC 2007, 9). This is consistent with the
harm minimisation approach to health education and promotion that the guidelines

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are premised on. Such approaches are indicative of health promotion discourses
where . . . responsibility is transferred from the expert to the informed individual
(Bergmark 2004, p. 9). Bergmark has described this as a new form of remote
control based on the individuals internalization of health values. The NHMRC
recommendation for low risk drinking is two standard drinks or less in any one day.
Young people in the 2029 year age group are identied in this document as having
the riskiest drinking prole (NHMRC 2007, 34).
The NHMRC provides information so that people can objectively assess their
level of risk. At the same time the NHMRC acknowledge that dierent groups in
Australia will have dierent views about what is sensible or responsible drinking
(NHMRC 2007, 25). As the NHMRC indicate, there are considerable variations in
alcohol guidelines across Western countries with many non-Western countries
having no guidelines at all (NHMRC 2007, 82).
Bergmark and Oscarsson (1992, cited in Bergmark 2004, p. 7) writing about
Swedish alcohol discourse between 1970 and 1990 noted the repetition of alcohol as
the most serious social and medical problem in Swedish society. Given the
timeframe it is suggested that policy has therefore had little eect on consumption
and that the basic conditions of this discourse have restricted discussion to a series
of ahistorical repetitions. Related to this Bergmark (2004, p. 8) has identied two
dominant public health strategies: information/persuasion or more of the same
and maintains that the former could arguably be described as one of the most
important categories of alcohol policy measures in most western societies.
In the NHMRC guidelines there is only a short reference to the social and
psychological benets of alcohol in relation to enhanced creativity and a
therapeutic value in times of stress (sociability is mentioned briey on two
occasions in the new guidelines). This mention is immediately followed by a list of
the harmful eects that increase exponentially with any increase in alcohol intake
(NHMRC 2007, 28). The remainder of this section in the guidelines concentrates on
alcohol related diseases and susceptibility to alcohol. The word pleasure in relation
to alcohol consumption is never mentioned.
It should not necessarily be surprising that reference to pleasure is absent from
the proposed drinking guidelines. The harm minimisation approach (McBride et al.
2004) that the guidelines reect means that the focus is necessarily on harms and
risks: mention of inappropriate pleasure (hedonistic, fun, enjoyable) could undo the
work that this risk discourse seeks to do. In later sections we argue that in neoLiberal governmental programmes pleasure is to be found in the exercise of control
and in drinking in moderation. Such behaviours and dispositions are necessary in
order to comply with guidelines developed and deployed in these and similar health
education and promotion discourses. The free subject of neo-liberal governance is
one who is capable of being rational, reasonable and responsible (OMalley 2006).
Young peoples drinking: Biographies, trajectories, cultures
The aim of the research we report on here was to explore drinking trajectories of
young Victorian (Australia) drinkers in dierent locations and contexts to identify
major triggers of change in drinking patterns. The literature suggests that dierent
age groups exhibit dierent drinking patterns. In industrialised countries such as the
US, UK, Australia and New Zealand there is a general pattern of transition from
teenage drinking which involves infrequent episodes of heavy drinking to sustained

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L. Harrison et al.

heavy drinking in terms of both frequency and amount at ages 1824. This is
followed by a further transition to older adult drinking styles which involve more
frequent drinking but reduced amounts drunk per session (Caswell et al. 2002).
Although these national contexts vary considerably in terms of drinking cultures, the
general pattern holds of risky experimentation in the teenage years, leading to
sustained heavy drinking particularly in the early 20s and maturing out or settling
down into controlled drinking patterns as people take on the responsibilities of
marriage and parenthood (Harnett et al. 2000).
Specic life transitions, which shape alcohol consumption patterns, have been
identied in the international literature. It is well established that leaving home and
living with peers is likely to increase consumption (Caswell et al. 2002). The
residential college at university is a particularly wet context (White et al. 2006).
Employment also has an impact on drinking. Although there is no simple causal
relationship, this transition may act to increase consumption by introducing young
people to heavy drinking networks and providing funds and access to the nighttime
economy, particularly for young people still living at home (McMorris and Uggen
2000, Lindsay 2001, White et al. 2006). By contrast the demands of work may also
play a role in decreasing consumption for some groups of young people. It has been
claimed that entering relationships has an impact on consumption: research suggests
that marriage is likely to decrease consumption (Caswell et al. 2002, Eng et al. 2005).
Some research also indicates that in heterosexual relationships men encourage
women to drink more while women play a role in reducing mens consumption
(Lindsay 2006). Having children has been shown to decrease consumption. However,
individual drinking is often quite varied and some research claims that heavy
drinkers in adolescence are likely to remain heavy drinkers relative to their peers at
other life stages (Auerbach and Collins 2006).
In relation to peers, Demant and Jarvinen (2010), in their longitudinal study of
1819-year-old Danes, have found that heavy drinking is one way of presenting
oneself as a socially engaged and popular young adult (p. 4). However, they also
found that there are norms around not losing control, not drinking alone and not
drinking for the wrong reason that act as signicant moderators of young peoples
drinking. In relation to this these authors identify a new ideal of controlled
drunkenness (p. 5) not evident in their earlier studies and that drinking in the right
way is central to the gaining of social resource capital (p. 10).
Harnett et al. (2000) have claimed to identify four distinct stages in drinking
biographies. First, childhood drinking usually consisting of tasting that is practiced
within the family setting. Adolescent drinking involves infrequent opportunities for
alcohol consumption. The third drinking stage is more diverse and occurs within the
socially open space of contemporary youth lifestyles. This stage includes
experimental drinking, sociable drinking and safe drinking in certain contexts, and
recreational drinking (which involves drinking to intoxication). The nal stage is
structured drinking where drinking is tted around other responsibilities such as
work and family (including the work/leisure cycle). Alongside these drinking styles
Harnett et al. (2000) identied therapeutic drinking where alcohol is used to deal
with various problems (see also Coleman and Cater 2005). This typology provides a
useful reference point for our Australian-based drinking biographies research.
According to Australian household data the age of drinking initiation or
consumption of rst full drink has fallen over the past 50 years with successive
generations (Roche et al. 2008). The most recent data suggests that by age 15 just

Health, Risk & Society

473

under half have consumed a full glass of alcohol, at age 16 over 60% have drunk
alcohol, at age 17 over 70% have drunk alcohol, and by age 18 90% have drunk
alcohol (Roche et al. 2008). Most Australians over 15 drink alcohol. The proportion
of drinkers rises with age from 63% of 1417-year-olds, to a peak of 90% of 2124year-olds where it remains fairly steady till age 5059 where it declines to 85%.

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Methods
The drinking biographies project set out to examine change in drinking patterns over
time and inuences on high-risk and low-risk drinking. The interviews focussed on
experiences with alcohol over the life course so far, as well as imagined future
consumption. The study was comprised of individual, in-depth qualitative interviews, along with structured questionnaires, with drinkers in the 2024-year-old age
group. We reasoned that this age group could discuss and reect on past and present
drinking practices, and their possible futures. After gaining relevant University ethics
approval for this project we conducted 60 individual in-depth interviews. Twenty-six
males and 34 females participated in the research, 73% were studying full-time, 20%
worked full-time and 62% worked part-time. The data from our interviews was
transcribed and then coded, entered and managed using the NVivo data management platform. Our recruitment strategy was designed to capture a diverse sample in
terms of gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background. As geographic dierence
is particularly important in shaping young peoples opportunities and experiences we
chose three key sites for comparison. We used the broad categorisations of
metropolitan (Melbourne: cohort 40% male and 60% female), a de-industrialising
provincial city (Geelong: cohort 45% male and 55% female), and a rural seaside town
(Warrnambool: cohort 45% male and 55% female) to access a diverse sample for
dierent elements of the project. Geelong is a provincial city with a population in
excess of 190,000, with many small towns nearby on the Surf Coast, such as Lorne
and Apollo Bay. Warrnambool is also a provincial city, but much smaller than
Geelong, with a population less than 30,000. Initially, we planned to recruit
Melbourne-based participants from specic suburbs and locations around
Melbourne, to get a purposive sample with varied socio-economic status. However,
recruitment from specic places such as cinemas and shopping centres was extremely
dicult whereas University students were much more willing to participate. Our
Melbourne and Geelong sample was, therefore, made up largely of University
students. In Warrnambool we were able to connect with a more diverse social
network and as a result this sample was less dominated by university students.
Interviews collected demographic and personal data, and encouraged participants to discuss their introduction to alcohol in their family lives growing up,
throughout their time as young children, during high school, their experiences within
their social groups and the role alcohol played beyond high school during their
transition out of high school into University or full-time work. We asked questions
that explored their beliefs about the drivers and deterrents of alcohol use and about
the risks and benets of alcohol and the eects they believed it to have on their
health. The drinkers interviewed were mostly experienced with alcohol from at least
some point in their life. They were asked to reect on their own induction into
drinking cultures including where and how they learned to drink. We asked
questions to understand how they dene dierent types of drinking, and we gathered
information about changing drinking patterns over time and what cultural drivers

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L. Harrison et al.

propelled them into stages of high risk or low risk drinking. We collected in-depth
information about links between alcohol consumption and study, work and leisure.
Important insights into young peoples perceptions and understandings of risk
taking and changing leisure and consumption landscapes were documented in these
interviews. We also examined drinking trajectories and identied cultural drivers, or
triggers, of change between dierent patterns of drinking for young drinkers in their
early 20s.
Participants were also asked what they thought of the then recently released
NHMRC draft drinking guidelines and what eect they might have on their drinking
patterns. In the following section we present personal narratives of a number of
participants in the study. These accounts include the observations made by Keith,
Steven, Melanie, Allison and Tami. These observations oer thoughts on such things
as dierent readings and understandings of the meaning of the guidelines; notions of
responsible drinking and looking after yourself; and understandings of risk and
motivations for drinking. Rather than provide a number of disembodied extracts
that are illustrative of these themes in order to prove the veracity of our data and
theme selection we have elected to construct accounts that convey some sense of the
presence of participants (Gergen and Gergen 2000).
Like, no-one drinks two glasses of anything: Young peoples reactions to the drinking
guidelines
Bergmark (2004, p. 11) and others categorise risk in terms of new versus old risks
and the presence or absence of a dread reaction, alcohol risks being regarded as
old and well-known and low in dread reaction (mad cow disease is given as one
example of new risks with a high dread reaction). He also points out that there is a
body of evidence that indicates that people perceive the eects of alcohol on others
as greater than the eects on themselves. The following accounts echo these
perceptions of risk.
Keith
Keith is 20 years old and living in Geelong with his mother. He has two older
brothers, neither living at home. At the time of the interview he had deferred study
for a year and was working in his mothers retail shop part-time. Keiths parents split
up when he was in Year 7 and at this time he spent some time with extended family.
He thinks his father became an alcoholic during the separation and after. He doesnt
get along with his father. His fathers drinking got worse as high school progressed.
However, he wasnt physically violent.
Keith started drinking in Year 9 when he was aged 15 and hanging out at friends
houses every weekend. Since about 17 he would have one scotch and coke with
family at dinner, so all together he drank twothree days a week. If he were just
hanging out with friends he would have threefour drinks, but if there were a party it
would be more like 812. He bought his own alcohol from 1618, and never got
carded (asked for his proof of age). His parents would also buy him alcohol and he
tells the story of his mum one time buying him alcohol before school, which he then
smuggled into school to take out that night.
He drinks more frequently since turning 18 (foursix days a week). His venues of
choice are bars and pubs rather than clubs, and he drinks less at the pub than when

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he goes clubbing, which involves pre-drinking as well. He invariably ends the night
drinking sugary, girly drinks because they are cheaper. Keith considers himself a
heavy drinker, but is not comfortable with the associations of that with abuse or
messiness. He is more likely to drink when happy, not when he is sad or depressed.
When asked to imagine what he would be drinking like in the next ve years he
thinks it will be a lot though it wont be clubbing, but in pubs and maybe just drinks
with dinner every night. For Keith responsible drinking means knowing your limits.
This year of not studying is the time he thinks it is right for him to be drinking a lot,
as he sees it as his time to shine. He smokes pot and has taken ecstasy on occasions
and thinks the negative eects of alcohol consumption include health issues. He
doesnt feel that the drinking guidelines apply to him because it is up to each
individual to gure out how much to drink. As Keith says: I think its up to the
individual. Theres no other person but myself that can gure it out, and no one else
that can say you cannot take this, or if you have one more youll be gone. He also
believes that you cannot have a one-size ts all approach. In his opinion there are
psychological and social factors that aect drinking that the guidelines do not take
into account when it is reduced to a formula related to such things as average height
and weight. He relates this to smoking and eating junk food and maintains that:
. . . smoking causes cancer. You can smoke all your life and not get cancer. You can
smoke for two years and quit and then 10 years later youve got cancer. You can be a
non-smoker and you can get cancer. Its just its that broad . . . I mean, yeah I mean its
not alcohol but Maccas (McDonalds) takeaway, you see people have it every day, and
then see people that are obese and then like t and old people that have it every day, and
theyre just dierent. It aects them dierently too because of other factors.

Steven
Steven is 20 and in his third year of university studying architecture, living on
campus and working as a residential assistant, in charge of 21 other students in
residential accommodation. He grew up in Mount Waverley (a suburb of
Melbourne) and has been in Geelong for three years.
He describes his father as a wine connoisseur and both parents have a glass of
wine with dinner. Alcohol was always around but didnt stand out for him as a
prominent part of his childhood. His fathers interest in wine meant he learned about
dierent wines from him during his teenage years (from 1617). He considered this
late to start drinking as many friends started at 14 or 15 years old. Sport was more a
priority for him during this time, but when he did drink with friends it was just for
birthdays and played only a minor role in his social life at this time. He recalls that
most of his friends were drinking during this period. However, he drank less than
once a month consuming threefour drinks on these occasions. In his rst year at
university he got drunk for the rst time just before turning 18 with mates at a
birthday drinking beer. His parents didnt like him getting drunk then, but in his
opinion, thats what university is for.
He only drinks wine when he is with his father since good wine is too expensive
for him to buy. He drinks mixed drinks and beer with friends, but prefers mixed
drinks because they dont make him feel bloated. When he is on duty in his
residential position he must not drink. He regards alcohol as quite prevalent in his
social life now, and consumes 712 drinks a session twothree days a week. Steven
considers himself to be a heavy to average drinker, more average where heavy is

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dened as someone who cant just have one drink with dinner. In the future he will
not go to nightclubs. In 2030 years time he wants to be like his father, only drinking
wine with dinner.
For Steven responsible drinking is about knowing your limits and not drinking to
excess: which would mean throwing up or blacking out. He enjoys getting tipsy,
because it makes him feel freer, but he doesnt like pushing it too far, especially when
he hasnt eaten during the day. Steven thinks that alcohol use has negative impacts
when people drink for no happy reasons, to treat depression or problems in life. He
understands that alcohol reduces tness levels and has myriad eects on health. He
claims that the drinking guidelines do not apply to him because he knows his own
limits. Hes here for a good time, not a long time. As he states:
You are, like who you are, and so some people, who they are allows them to drink so
much. I know quiet people who can drink fteen drinks and because theyre so quiet and
theyre just so in control and they can handle their alcohol very well, like stoic people,
they dont have to worry about these recommended guidelines, because it wont make a
dierence to their life. They know, theyve tried, and other people can drink one drink
and theyll fall apart . . . so I nd these guidelines are very, very guideline.

Steven talks about the positive aspects of drinking in the following ways:
. . . [alcohol] just relaxes you a lot and its the point where everyone can be very social
and you meet more people and its very social to do and it helps everyone mix and you
can increase your friendship and it means youre also not meeting the same batch of
people every day. If you go to class and then you go home and you go to class, then you
go home, all you know is your home and your architecture friends, for example, for me.
But if I go on the Thursday night I can meet an engineer; I can meet someone who likes
computer games; I can meet someone who goes skydiving every week; I can meet
someone who sits at home all week, but enjoys a good drink on the weekend. It exposes
you to a lot more, which for me as someone who is very social and a very big extrovert, I
nd that very good.

Melanie
Melanie is 19. She was born in Australia, lives in suburban Melbourne and has a
boyfriend that she has been seeing for 12 months. She is in her second year at university
studying primary teaching and criminology and has several part-time jobs (tutoring,
retail, the local gym and occasional child care). She remembers her parents allowing her
to have one or two drinks at family events from age 14 onwards as they would rather
have her drinking at home than outside the house. She describes her parents as
occasional drinkers who have taught her that you dont need alcohol to have fun.
From the age of 16 she started drinking at friends parties on average once a
fortnight. Melanie describes the rst time she got drunk as follows:
Id been tipsy [before] and things like that, so this night I just went Oh stu it, Ill have
whatever, So I had a lot to drink and we played, me and a couple of boys played a
Snakes and Ladders drinking game with Vodka, and they were all you know piking out,
like theyd do half the amount of shots it said, and I was just like no thats ne and had
chasers to follow as well so I, yes probably had about eleven shots of vodka plus all the
alcohol Id had previously and lets just say I lasted about twenty minutes before I was
puking my guts out for . . . I had the worst hangover the next day, like all day and oh it
was shocking.

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477

Although this incident taught her a lesson she still continued to drink; perhaps if
something terrible had happened like someone getting their stomach pumped she
might have had second thoughts about drinking. Melanies mother often talked to
her about her drinking and would ask her questions like How much did you have?
and, as Melanie said, You leave out a few little details but generally I tell her all that
stu.
She is more social and more likely to drink in summer and lists the dierent
suburban pubs near the university that her and her friends go to on dierent nights
of the week. She is inclined to drink more if she is dancing as well as this makes the
night more fun. Saturdays they usually go into the city for a pub crawl. They tend
to alternate driving with dierent members of the group taking it in turns to be the
designated driver. Because she works so much she usually limits her social life to
three nights a week.
Her boyfriend is a footballer and he and his mates often get into ghts when they
have been drinking. He says: I wont get into ghts unless someone starts me which
she describes laughingly as bullcrap. Melanie says that if she goes out with him and
his friends: We can normally assume that well be kicked out of a place because one
of the mates will start it and then theyll all have to get in to help so that usually
makes me an unhappy girl, because I was having fun dancing. In her view drinking
enhances your mood. If you are in a good mood it makes it better and vice versa. She
feels like she needs to go out every Saturday night because: I just need to get
something out of my system so I can handle the rest of the week of work and
homework and all the crap that comes with that. As she says: Its just, I dont
know, I need to have that outlet, just that crazy night of drinking and retardedness
and just forgetting about all the responsibilities, because I can be a bit of a stress
head so [pause] yeah, its just, alcohol just lets me relax. She also links drinking
alcohol to: . . . fun times. Its when you can just go up and talk to random people
and not be thought of as crazy and you can just you know, make friends with people
and have fun. For Melanie responsible drinking is about:
. . . knowing your limits, like as in throwing up. I know youd probably consider that
irresponsible but I think its something that you have to go through. I think . . . so thats
almost, I wouldnt say its responsible but . . . Put it this way, irresponsible drinking is
getting to the point where you have to have your stomach pumped . . . So I consider
responsible drinking is just knowing your limits and knowing your responsibilities as
well the next day.

She also thinks that responsible drinking is not drinking and driving. Although
Melanie emphasises the fun to be had she is also aware of the downside of drinking
to excess and sounds this word of warning to young people starting their drinking
careers:
Id say to denitely choose your friends wisely so that you know who youre drinking
around. Like I dont think getting drunk is a bad thing because I think everyones got to
experience it but I think knowing the friends that youre around, the people youre
getting drunk around is really important because as I said, none of my friends have been
raped or things like that around friends who have been drunk, but like its something
that you hear about and its something that can easily happen. Like . . . have good
friends around you as well, so if you do get drunk youve got people, someone sober
there to pull your hair back when youre throwing up, things like that, and just get you
safely into a cab home, things like that. So that would be probably the key thing, and
just to drink in moderation, knowing your limits.

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Allison
Allison is 24 and was born in Ballarat (a provincial city about an hours drive from
Geelong) and moved to Geelong with her family when she was three years old. She is
studying and in her fourth year of a primary education degree. She rents a house
with her boyfriend and works as a part-time waitress.
Allisons parents didnt drink a lot but when her grandparents visited they would
all have drinks, particularly gin and tonics and believes thats where I got my love of
gin and tonics, through my family. Her father drank beer but was not often around
for dinner as he worked as a chef. There would be wine at dinner and her mum
would have one while preparing dinner. When little (sevennine years old) she would
ask her father for a taste of beer while he was at the BBQ and youd get a mouthful
of the beer which she said there was not a big fuss around, so it just tasted normal.
Otherwise she didnt drink before high school. She thinks her parents attitude
toward alcohol allows her to not see it as a big thing now and that she can only have
one or two and doesnt need it to have fun.
Allison didnt start drinking until she was 18 at the start of Year 12 and waited
for her friend to turn 18 before going out drinking. She did other things such as mini
golf, bowling and swimming. Friends were spread along the coast so she didnt catch
up regularly out of school, but did so on special occasions such as birthdays. Though
she turned 18 before her friends and they expected her to buy them alcohol, she
didnt think that was my position and I thought if they were allowed to then they
can do it. Her and her friends would get together for birthdays, a movie night at a
friends house to watch videos and to do each others hair. She has an aunt that
would come to her house and oer her a drink of wine at 16 and her parents said
okay so she did.
She had her 18th birthday party at home and recalls one friend drinking and
taking it too far, not to the point where she was drinking too much. She just acted
like she was really drunk and just went berserk and just ruined the whole night.
Allison didnt drink a lot because she realised that it was my body that was having
to put up with what I did to it. She preferred to drink at home with her family at this
time although she does describe a time when she behaved irresponsibly when
drinking:
Thinking that Im right to drive and right to drive my boyfriend home and then friends
saying no, no weve seen how much youve had to drink, leave your car here. And
thats the thing that stresses me out the most is that I do not like leaving my car in places
where 1) theres a restriction which means I cant even move it because Ive had
something to drink and 2) leaving it somewhere where it could be vandalised which Ive
had happen before. I just dont like the thought of leaving it there, Id sleep better and
Id be much happier knowing its at home in the garage or in the street where I am and
theres not the big hassle of waking up rst thing in the morning and having to go get it
. . . which means youre over the limit anyway because youve had a big night so it kind
of doesnt work. So thats the thing that really annoys me and in those instances thats
why I probably would try and drive home when I have had too much.

She claims that these occasions were few and far between and that now she will
only have one or two glasses if she has driven her car. Her boyfriend drinks quite a
bit but she doesnt want to be the girlfriend who always stops him. Because she
worked in hospitality she would meet up with friends after work but would usually
drink wine with friends at home. She was more likely to drink mixed drinks at a club.

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In terms of consumption she might have threefour drinks or sometimes a bottle of

wine, which is a struggle to nish.
At present she would drink twothree days a week and have maybe vesix
drinks in a sitting. She might have a glass of wine with dinner now, although she
often goes a couple of weeks without drinking. She imagines that she may drink
more regularly in the next ve years as she gets nineve work but less in 20 years,
when she hopes that she will have children. For Allison, being responsible means
knowing when to stop, knowing your limits. She currently works at a pub in Geelong
where she is encouraged to serve underage or intoxicated customers. Allison denes
heavy drinking as 14 drinks in one session. In her view not drinking every day
makes up for the binge on the weekend:
I kind of think that if Im going to have a big night Ill have a big night, if that wrecks
me it wrecks me. I kind of think Im out there to have . . . Im only going to live this life
once so hopefully the damage that Im creating now isnt going to hit me until Im 70.
By then Ill have my super to pay for my hospital bills to get a new liver or something
[laughter].

Tami
Tami is 21 years old. She grew up in Warrnambool and is currently living on
residence at university while she completes her teaching degree and works part-time
in a local cafe. Her parents are social drinkers and she has little recollection of
alcohol use in her family growing up. Between the ages of 16 and 17 she would have
had a drink once a week on average, usually at friends parties. On these occasions
she would have between ve and seven standard drinks. Her consumption patterns
have not changed since she turned 18 but she does curtail her drinking if she is
working or has study commitments the next day. Being on residence means she goes
out drinking at pubs on uni nights (usually Wednesday) and on the weekend. She
enjoys drinking for the social aspects and for the condence it gives her. She
characterises her drinking as between average and heavy. Sometimes she just does
not go out drinking if she feels that her body needs rest if she has been going out a
lot or studying too much. She imagines drinking a lot less in the future because of
work commitments. For Tami responsible drinking involves judgement based on
experience:
I would say that . . . you know how much you can handle without going overboard . . .
you probably would have had to experience going overboard to know. So then you
become responsible. You know your health and stu, what youre doing and you know
the social behaviours that can happen . . . dierent drinks might trigger you dierent
ways, make you more emotional or angry or something like that or happy. And you still
have a sense of awareness I think, youve got to have that if youre responsible, so you
can look after your friends and stu or anything like that.

She admits to going overboard a few times but thinks she has learned from her
mistakes. For her drinking means that:
. . . you lose a bit of your inhibition or something, I dont know . . . a lot of funny stu
happens and you think its funny at the time and the next morning . . . think its a bit
funnier . . . a bit more condence and that, so thats probably why things happen more
. . . oh you should go and do that, thatll be funny. I dont know what, dancing and
social and talking to other people you wouldnt just go up and talk to normally, that
sort of thing.

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Tami admits that she doesnt like how alcohol makes her body feel sometimes
and that sometimes you do things and think: gosh I wish I didnt do that, things like
falling over or embarrassing yourself in some way although she is reluctant to
provide specic examples. She also plays netball and feels that drinking slows her
body down.

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Discussion: Neo-liberalism, its subjects and the problem of pleasure

In this concluding discussion we situate the sorts of responses we have just
introduced, and the health education and promotion discourses that seek to
manage young peoples use and consumption of alcohol, in the broader context
of what have been identied as neo-Liberal governmentalities. This way of
locating our discussion draws on the extensive and diverse governmentality
literature that has emerged over the last two decades, and which draws on the
work of Michel Foucault (see for example, Foucault 1983, 1991, Rose 1996a,
1996b, 1996c, 1999, Kelly and Harrison 2009, pp. 237247). The aim here is to
suggest that within particular neo-Liberal programmes of government (such as
those that seek to govern and regulate the ways in which young people think
about and use alcohol) certain forms of personhood, certain identities and
subjectivities are imagined. These identities are imagined and constructed as being
required to know, understand and regulate the self in the ways that are envisaged
by these programmes. The dilemma of all governmental programmes is that the
subjects of these programmes may not recognise themselves in them; may not
conform to the incitements, directions that frame these programmes; and may
think and act in ways that are contrary to the professed intent of these
programmes.
Many of the young people who participated in our study did not recognise
themselves and their dispositions to drinking, risk, responsibility and pleasure in the
ways imagined by health promotion programmes and authorities. It is apparent that
these young people are heavily invested in the pleasurable aspects of alcohol
consumption. For all of them it provides a sense of condence. Drinking alcohol
makes them happy, enables them to talk to people they would otherwise not talk to,
and helps them make friends. Drinking also enables them to de-stress and allows
them to lose their inhibitions. All of which are clearly powerful motivating factors.
Both Steven and Allison, for example, are concerned with living life in the present.
They all emphasise their capacity to exercise choice and profess to know their own
limits without having these dictated to them by governments and authorities such as
the NHMRC and their health education and promotion campaigns. These young
people also believe in learning from experience, something that for them would be
impossible to do unless they pushed their limits. These young people emphasise
responsibility, meeting your obligations, not being a burden on others, knowing your
limits, being in control and not engaging in public displays of drunkenness of the
type seen in media representations of young people and alcohol. Steven, as was the
case with many of the other participants, sees it as important to test the boundaries:
where you go as far as you can while maintaining some kind of control. Although
Demant and Jarvinen (2010) employ a dierent theoretical framework for
understanding drinking behaviours our participants exhibited remarkably similar
intentions to practice controlled drunkenness identied by these authors in their
study of Danish youth.

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Keith questions the risk discourses he is subject to maintaining that risk eects
are dierent for dierent people and thus questioning the veracity of cascading
health messages. Bergmark (2004, p. 10) has argued that the proliferation of risk
information tends to increase the level of uncertainty: expert judgements are called
into question by counter-experts, various risk discourses cut across one another and
create a world of options. He also argued that the scientic production of risk
information, by its own logic, will continue to expand into a scale of information
that will be impossible to grasp for non-professionals.
In his later work Foucault (1991) imagined government as the conduct of conduct,
as an activity aiming to shape, guide or aect the conduct of some person or
persons (Gordon 1991, p. 2). Foucault (1983, p. 224) argued that the forms of the
government of men by one another in any society are multiple. These power
relations can be superimposed, they cross, impose their own limits, sometimes cancel
one another out, sometimes reinforce one another. However, with regard to the
particular forms of power in the Liberal democracies, the state is not simply one of
the forms or specic situations of the exercise of power even if it the most
important but that in a certain way all other forms of power relation must refer to
it. As Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller (1992) have suggested, Liberal government is
practised through a profusion of shifting alliances between diverse authorities in a
variety of projects which seek to regulate and manage various facets of economic
activity, social life and individual conduct (p. 174).
Rose and Miller (1992) argue that an analysis of the character of Liberal and
neo-Liberal governmentalities can be framed by understanding these arts of
government in terms of the historically contingent interrelationships between
political rationalities and governmental technologies (Foucault 1991). Political
rationalities comprise things such as the following: the changing discursive elds
within which the exercise of power is conceptualised; the moral justications for
particular ways of exercising power by diverse authorities; the means for
determining the appropriate forms, objects and limits of politics; and the
formulations for identifying the proper distribution of such tasks among secular,
spiritual, military and familial sectors (Rose and Miller 1992, p. 175). Governmental
technologies consist of the array of programmes, calculations, techniques,
apparatuses, documents and procedures which are devised by various authorities
in diverse attempts to deliver on governmental ambitions (Rose and Miller 1992, p.
175). For Rose (1996a, p. 42), these various techniques and procedures (the
materials and forces which might come to hand in attempts to regulate the
behaviours and dispositions of young people who use and consume alcohol) are
suggestive, not of the implementation of an idealized schema in the real by an act
of will, but of the complex assemblage of rationalities, techniques, programmes that
promise to deliver on such ambitions. The arts of government aim to structure the
possible eld of action of others. These actions might well be dierent to that
envisaged by these strategies. In turn, the actual ways in which persons act then
incites further measures that seek to regulate future actions. Here freedom is
suggestive of situations in which persons are situated in a eld of possibilities in
which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comportments may be
realised (Foucault 1983, p. 221).
The NHMRC is just one of the many public health and health education and
promotion agencies, centres of expertise, authorities that seek to develop and deploy
a range of rationalities and technologies that promise to inform and educate persons

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about the risks associated with dierent levels of alcohol consumption. Of course,
like all Liberal/neo-Liberal programmes of government the NHMRCs eorts
cannot will risk aware behaviours and dispositions into existence. Such agencies and
authorities are limited in many respects to ongoing attempts to structure the possible
elds of action in which persons and populations develop orientations and practices
related to the use and consumption of alcohol.
In this paper our move to identify and locate current attempts to regulate young
peoples drinking in neo-Liberal arts of government draws on Nikolas Roses
(1996a) suggestion that neo-Liberalism problematises the practices of Liberal welfare
governance. As such neo-Liberalism signals a transformation in the way that
government (of the State, civil society, the economy, and the self) is conceived. For
many governmentality theorists neo-Liberal governmentalities are structured by a
radical inversion of the character of the Subject of Scottish Enlightenment
Liberalism. Liberal rationalities of government took as their object, the natural
private-interest-motivated conduct of free, market exchanging individuals, in so far
as the behaviours and dispositions of such individuals were the foundation which
enabled the market to function optimally in accordance with its nature (Burchell
1996, p. 23, original emphasis). The radical inversion of this principle of Liberal
rationalities of government takes a number of forms. Gordon (1991, pp. 4344), for
example, argues that the subject of Liberalism, originally signied a subject whose
motivation must remain forever untouchable by government. For neo-Liberalism,
however, homo economicus is manipulable man, a subject who should be forever
open to and responsive to signals: from the markets, from risks and dangers, from
opportunities. In this sense economic government joins hands with behaviourism.
The neo-Liberal subject is imagined as an individual producer-consumer who, in
certain quite fundamentally new ways is not just an enterprise, but the entrepreneur
of himself or herself (see also, Brown 2005, Harvey 2007, Read 2009). Within these
changed problematics of government, this form is not so much a given of human
nature as a consciously contrived style of conduct (Burchell 1996, pp. 2324). That
is, this subject has to be engineered via the development and deployment of an array
of techniques, as the active, autonomous, responsible entrepreneur of her or his own
biography. Individual biographical projects are the result, within this rationality, of
the maximization of the chances for a good life through acts of choice. Life is
accorded meaning and value to the extent that it can be rationalized as the outcome
of choices made or choices to be made (Rose 1996a, p. 57).
The NHMRC (through the guidelines, partnerships, collaborations and networks
that it establishes in health education and promotion domains) imagines choices,
rationality and risk in particular ways, and seeks to engineer in young people forms
of personhood that are characterised by similar understandings of the risks they face,
and choices that they should make, in relation to their uses and consumption of
alcohol. Yet, as the free subjects of these programmes many young people, as we
have seen, imagine choice, rationality and risk in very dierent ways. Central to these
behaviours and dispositions are ideas about pleasure
Pat OMalley and Mariana Valverde (2004, pp. 2627; see also Hunt and Evans
2008) have argued that there is a silence about pleasure as a motive for
consumption in health promotion and public health discourses about drugs and
alcohol. These discourses are premised on rational moderation so that once
alcohol consumption is rendered problematic, so too is enjoyment. Moreover,
particular ideas about experimentation, peer group pressure, mood altering

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inuences, family inuences, cultural inuence, availability, advertising and

religion are seen as factors aecting consumption without any mention of
pleasure, enjoyment or excitement (see also Keane 2009). Hunt and Evans (2008,
p. 31), in their study of drug users have also identied pleasure and fun . . . as the
dominant narrative utilized by [their] respondents to explicate their experiences with
ecstasy.
The problematic relationship between risk and pleasure that is so characteristic
of health education and promotion concerns with young peoples use and
consumption of alcohol emerges from a number of spaces. At one level, the
contradictory denitions of youth as being both at risk and risk taker reveals one
of the many contradictions of reexive modernity. While certain understandings of
safety and risk aversion are integral to health promotion, so-called discourses of
extremity become potent and desirable symbols that are used to promote various
forms of consumption (Morrissey 2008, p. 416). Diering perceptions of time and
space, of the present and the future, and the possible connections between these, also
complicate the relationship between risk and pleasure. OMalley (2006, p. 170), for
instance, argues that harms that exist only in the possible future must increasingly be
governed as if they are actually occurring problems or objective risks in the here
and now. In some senses the young people in our study recognise and embody the
injunctions and encouragements to be responsible, rational, reasonable and
independent. For example, they talk of control, behaving in public, knowing
themselves and their limits and being able to make decisions about alcohol within
these limits. They engage in what Measham and Brain (2005, cited Keane 2009, p.
141) have described as a controlled loss of control. Yet they do this in ways that do
not much resemble the proper pleasure that frames those neo-Liberal health
promotion programmes that cast pleasure in terms of the pursuit and practise of
moderation. Instead, the pleasure they pursue is immediate, enjoyable and exciting.
Our research indicates that the pleasure derived from intoxication is both carnal and
disciplined (Keane 2009, p. 141), and that young peoples drinking patterns and
behaviours are complex, situational and negotiated (see Mancini-Pena and Tyson
2007). Indeed, we might agree that: In a world in which self-containment and selfregulation are highly valued and encouraged, participation in activities that are
culturally coded as risky allows the contemporary body/self to revel, at least for a
time, in the pleasures of the grotesque or uncivilized body (Lupton 1999, p.
171).
Given these dilemmas, what is able to be imagined/not imagined within the
political rationalities and governmental technologies that frame public health, and
health education and promotion programmes? Is it possible to incorporate
understandings of pleasure, choice and responsibility in ways that are recognisable
and engaging for young people? Is it possible to structure the elds of possibility in
which young people use and consume alcohol in ways that address concerns about
some of the risks associated with diering forms and levels of alcohol use and
consumption, at the same time as acknowledging and foregrounding the roles that
pleasure, time and space play in the ways that young people imagine their use and
consumption of alcohol? Or, is it not possible for authorities, agencies and centres of
expertise such as the NHMRC to imagine regulation, management and education in
these ways? The challenges posed by such questions are beyond the scope of this
paper. Hunt and Evans (2008, p. 333) point to the intransigent paradigm dierences
between epidemiological research, which portrays youthful drug use as particularly

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dangerous, and young people as especially vulnerable and in need of protection, and
a cultural studies approach which starts from the position that young people are
active and creative negotiators of the relationship between structure and agency. Wyn
(2009, p. 9) has argued that promoting the wellbeing of young people is a complex task
replete with contradictions that invite a consideration of the context of young peoples
lives, and of the need to connect with their priorities and perspectives in the
development of programmes intended to help them live well. Hunt and Evans (2008,
p. 345) have pointed out in relation to drug users, which we feel is apposite to this
discussion, that . . . public health messages that fail to acknowledge the enjoyable and
benecial aspects of ecstasy [read alcohol] use will be viewed with doubt and suspicion
by many young users. What remains to be seen is whether such challenges are beyond
the neo-Liberal governmentalities that set themselves the task of managing young
peoples orientations and dispositions to the use and consumption of alcohol with the
aim of promoting young peoples health and well-being.
Acknowledgments
The research was funded and supported by Drinkwise Australia, and the Commonwealth
Department of Health and Ageing. We also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers of this
paper whose suggestions on revisions were very useful.

Note
1.

These guidelines were revoked on 25 February 2009 and replaced by the Australian
Guidelines to Reduce Health Risks from Drinking Alcohol (2009). The recommendation
of drinking no more than two standard drinks a day (NHMRC 2009, p. 8) is still included.
The draft guidelines are used in this paper because they were extant at the time interviews
were conducted.

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