Drinking alcohol at home and in public places and the time framing of risks

The United Kingdom has witnessed a steady rise in per capita consumption of alcohol in the three decades leading up to 2004 since when there has been a decline. Much of this increase can be accounted for by increased drinking away from licensed premises. In this article, we analyse the ways in which people who drink in such settings think about the temporal dimension of risks which they associate with alcohol consumption. We present findings from a qualitative study which explored accounts of drinking away from licensed premises, either at home or in public places such as parks, given by adults and young people of age 13 and over. We found that research participants associated drinking away from licensed premises with immediate risks. Those risks they identified included fights breaking out at home or in a public place, drinking to excess, falling over and becoming ill when intoxicated. Respondents mostly did not express concerns about longer-term health risks. However, some research participants did bring in a more extended time frame in relation to ‘setting boundaries’ so as to prevent gradual escalation of consumption, and avoiding ways in which ‘alcohol can change one’s life’ for the worse. We will argue that the predominance of mostly short-term thinking about alcohol consumption in the face of public health messages about the accumulation of health risks may be accounted for by the contradictory nature of such advice, and/or by the positive cultural and personal value placed on drinking

Risk, resistance and the neoliberal agenda: young people, health and well-being in the UK, Canada and Australia

In this article we describe how concepts of risk are both generated by and used to reinforce a neoliberal agenda in relation to the health and well-being of young people. We examine how risk may be used as a tool to advance ideals such as rational choice and individual responsibility, and how this can further disadvantage young people living within the contexts of structural disadvantage (such as geographic areas of long-term unemployment; communities that experience racial discrimination). We also identify the ways in which risk is applied in uneven ways within structurally disadvantaged contexts. To suggest a way forward, we articulate a set of principles and strategies that offer up a means of resisting neoliberal imperatives and suggest how these might play out at the micro-, meso- and macro-levels. To do this, we discuss examples from the UK, Canadian and Australian contexts to illustrate how young people resist being labelled as risky, and how it is possible to engage in health equity-enhancing actions, despite seemingly deterministic forces. The cases we describe reveal some of the vulnerabilities (and hence opportunities) within the seemingly impenetrable world view and powers of neoliberals, and point towards the potential to formulate an agenda of resistance and new directions for young people's health promotion