I have not posted on the blog in the past several days because I was attending the annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology. I presented a paper titled, “Thinking Problem: Rethinking Ethnographic Methods in Relation to a Study of Students' Cultural Models of Drinking,” a draft of which I previously posted as a blog entry on March 23.
My paper was part of a panel of presentations by applied anthropologists reflecting on their use of research methods after we attended together a National Science Foundation supported summer seminar on mixed qualitative-quantitative research methods for anthropology taught by William Dressler and Kathryn Oths (both of the University of Alabama).
I’d like here to thank Dianna Shandy (Macalester College) for her work in organizing the session and my fellow participants for their insightful papers: Elizabeth S. England Kennedy (BHRCS), Paul Managhan (University of South Florida), Katherine Metzo (UNC-Charlotte), Amy Mountcastle (SUNY-Plattsburgh), Jon Poehlman (RTI International), Dianna Shandy (Macalester College), and Emily Stovel (Ripon College). I’d also again like to give great thanks to Dressler and Oths for the quality of their seminar last summer and for their insightful comments as discussants (a true rarity) this past weekend.
Showing posts with label applied anthropology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label applied anthropology. Show all posts
Monday, April 2, 2007
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Culture, Culture Change, and the Ethics of Cultural Intervention
In an article from 1958, “The Fox Project” (Human Organization, V. 17, pp. 17-19), Sol Tax both described an applied anthropological project with the Fox Indians of Iowa and laid out the basis for anthropologists’ engaging in processes of culture change in what he called “action anthropology.” Why revisit this almost 50 year old article? Primarily because it lucidly gets at the crux of what applied or action anthropology is about, as well as some of the ethical and value considerations associated with it.
Culture and Culture Change
Tax was clearly aware that in attempting to aid the Fox Indians in the economic development of their community, he and his students were engaging in an intervention into culture and engaging directly in a process of culture change. Recognizing this, he also recognized a need for basic ground rules for such intervention into culture. He writes of the potentials for culture change in the Fox community:
“The two irreducible conditions of community-wide changes are that the new behavior does not require either (1) a loss of Fox identity, or (2) violation of Fox moral beliefs. One takes for granted also that the change is practicably possible – that the new behavior required is understandable and feasible, and that there is some reason, from the point of view of the Indians to make it. Given these two general limitations, we suppose any change is possible.”
Implicitly, a particular sense of “culture” is being used here. Anthropologists and others typically recognize two senses of the word “culture” – one the ethos, manners, mores, and patterns of high culture, the other the sense more typically employed by anthropologists focusing on a total patterned lifeway of a people or population. In an important article, “Culture – Genuine and Spurious,” Edward Sapir noted that there are three important senses in which “culture” is used. He recognized that “culture” in the sense of high culture represented a restricted subset of the sense of culture as a total lifeway in that it represented the lifeway of a particular class context. He also noted, though, that there is another important way in which we used “culture.” As with “high culture,” we often use “culture” in a way more restricted than to refer to all aspects of the total patterned lifeway of a population. In this third sense, we mean the core premises of identity, values, ethos, and worldview and a restricted set of practices taken as “typical” or “essential.” It is typically these elements of the lifeway which are most durable, most valued, or that are the intended reference when people speak of their culture. So, for example, maquiladora factories and Coca-Cola are part of the total lifeway of Mexico today, and thus are part of Mexican culture in one sense of the word, but are not the sorts of things people (Mexican or otherwise) typically intend when speaking of “Mexican culture.”
For Tax or the Fox, behaviors or ideas that were simply part of the total lifeway’s set of practices were readily subject to change without controversy. It was those behaviors and ideas seen as essential to identity and moral beliefs (and I would venture to guess also those seen as essential to ethos and worldview) that were highly cherished and not changeable without controversy. Likewise, in contemporary controversies surrounding cultural description, critique, or intervention and cultural relativism, it is change with regard to those elements of the total patterned lifeway that are locally constructed (on whatever basis – in some cases ethos may be most highly touted, in others certain behaviors, in others elements of the worldview) as “the culture” in this third sense that generate controversy. No one (at least no one I can think of or imagine) is likely to criticize a critique by a non-Mexican of maquiladora factory production in Mexico City or Juarez as an example of cultural imperialism (if anything, such industrial production might be seen as cultural imperialism). A critique of “Mexican Machismo” very well might generate controversy, though.
The ethics of cultural intervention
Tax’s article is also useful in laying out provisional value orientations for engaging in applied anthropology and intervening in a particular cultural context. He lays out three values ideally involved when engaging in cultural intervention (or as he even says, “interference”).
His first value is that of truth. While ascertaining truth is an often formidable task, to value truth as a principle seems to me straightforward and non-controversial (except, perhaps, when it’s not – for example in cases where an anthropologist’s view of truth might stand in opposition to that of those being aided via applied anthropological work).
Tax continues:
“Second, we feel most strongly the value of freedom, as it is classically expressed and limited. Freedom in our context usually means freedom for individuals to choose the group with which to identify and freedom for a community to choose its way of life. We would also be embarrassed if it were shown that we are, for example, encouraging Indians to remain Indians, rather than to become something else, or trying to preserve Indian cultures, when the Indians involved would choose otherwise. All we want in our action programs is to provide, if we can, genuine alternatives from which the people involved can freely choose…”
In other words, Tax held (and I hold) the autonomy of the individual as a fundamental value.
Tax’s third value is what he called a “kind of Law of Parsimony which tells us not to settle questions of values unless they concern us.” This is an important pragmatic principle for operation, where, for example, even though some anthropologists involved in the Fox project felt that assimilation was in the interest of the Fox and others did not, Tax felt that it was inessential for them to decide, and in any case, given the higher valuation placed on the autonomy of Fox individuals, this was not the anthropologists’ decision in any case.
He discusses further the possibility of additional operating principles or premises, but decides against this. He uses the following example:
“People are always asking whether we think cannibals have a right to self-determination. With respect to cannibalism, would we not have to impose some value of our own? Now, I neither eat human flesh, nor like the thought of being eaten; I am revolted as others in our culture by the whole idea. I have no notion what I would do if I found myself involved in an action program on a cannibal isle; I can only think of jokes to say. If I attempt to answer seriously I am beset with all the value contradictions involved in so-called cultural relativism. But whatever my personal position on this, it has no significant bearing on what we should do tomorrow to help the Fox Indians develop more constructive relationships within their community, or with other Iowans.”
Frankly, I’m not sure why this example creates a conundrum, insofar as if one take the valuation of the autonomy of each individual at all seriously, then the autonomy of one person to develop themselves and determine their life to the extent possible (which obviously entails continuing to live) clearly outweighs the autonomy of another to eat them. (If you had a cannibal isle where some really autonomously consented to be eaten, then you’d have a real conundrum.) Still, Tax is right that the ethics of one case don’t really impinge on the ethics of another, so such hypothetical cases are pragmatically beside the point. Recognizing that it is pragmatically and ethically efficacious to avoid making decisions or judgment calls when not necessary, though, doesn’t help in knowing what to do when such decisions cannot be avoided. While anthropologists today are unlikely to have to grapple with the autonomy of cannibals, there are cases in virtually every cultural context where different individuals’ effective autonomy stand at odds and impinge upon one another.
While I find Tax’s article wanting in essentially evading this sort of all too common dilemma, at the same time I find that his three basic values (which are essentially the values of the Enlightenment project) serve us well. On the one hand, the combination of ethical parsimony, cultural relativism, and the valuation of individuals’ autonomy in many situations leads us anthropologically to simply attempt to describe and understand the context at hand. On the other, when the effective autonomy of individuals is at odds or is compromised (e.g. Philippe Bourgois’ example of Costa Rican plantation workers’ lives being largely shaped by decisions of landowners and managers – an example of individuals having opposed interests, or many examples of imposed female genital modification – an example where one individual’s autonomy is compromised by others for reasons typically seen as being in that person’s interest), then we must either be willing to critique such practices or realize that our lack of critique passively and tacitly accepts the imposition of power on the weaker.
Culture and Culture Change
Tax was clearly aware that in attempting to aid the Fox Indians in the economic development of their community, he and his students were engaging in an intervention into culture and engaging directly in a process of culture change. Recognizing this, he also recognized a need for basic ground rules for such intervention into culture. He writes of the potentials for culture change in the Fox community:
“The two irreducible conditions of community-wide changes are that the new behavior does not require either (1) a loss of Fox identity, or (2) violation of Fox moral beliefs. One takes for granted also that the change is practicably possible – that the new behavior required is understandable and feasible, and that there is some reason, from the point of view of the Indians to make it. Given these two general limitations, we suppose any change is possible.”
Implicitly, a particular sense of “culture” is being used here. Anthropologists and others typically recognize two senses of the word “culture” – one the ethos, manners, mores, and patterns of high culture, the other the sense more typically employed by anthropologists focusing on a total patterned lifeway of a people or population. In an important article, “Culture – Genuine and Spurious,” Edward Sapir noted that there are three important senses in which “culture” is used. He recognized that “culture” in the sense of high culture represented a restricted subset of the sense of culture as a total lifeway in that it represented the lifeway of a particular class context. He also noted, though, that there is another important way in which we used “culture.” As with “high culture,” we often use “culture” in a way more restricted than to refer to all aspects of the total patterned lifeway of a population. In this third sense, we mean the core premises of identity, values, ethos, and worldview and a restricted set of practices taken as “typical” or “essential.” It is typically these elements of the lifeway which are most durable, most valued, or that are the intended reference when people speak of their culture. So, for example, maquiladora factories and Coca-Cola are part of the total lifeway of Mexico today, and thus are part of Mexican culture in one sense of the word, but are not the sorts of things people (Mexican or otherwise) typically intend when speaking of “Mexican culture.”
For Tax or the Fox, behaviors or ideas that were simply part of the total lifeway’s set of practices were readily subject to change without controversy. It was those behaviors and ideas seen as essential to identity and moral beliefs (and I would venture to guess also those seen as essential to ethos and worldview) that were highly cherished and not changeable without controversy. Likewise, in contemporary controversies surrounding cultural description, critique, or intervention and cultural relativism, it is change with regard to those elements of the total patterned lifeway that are locally constructed (on whatever basis – in some cases ethos may be most highly touted, in others certain behaviors, in others elements of the worldview) as “the culture” in this third sense that generate controversy. No one (at least no one I can think of or imagine) is likely to criticize a critique by a non-Mexican of maquiladora factory production in Mexico City or Juarez as an example of cultural imperialism (if anything, such industrial production might be seen as cultural imperialism). A critique of “Mexican Machismo” very well might generate controversy, though.
The ethics of cultural intervention
Tax’s article is also useful in laying out provisional value orientations for engaging in applied anthropology and intervening in a particular cultural context. He lays out three values ideally involved when engaging in cultural intervention (or as he even says, “interference”).
His first value is that of truth. While ascertaining truth is an often formidable task, to value truth as a principle seems to me straightforward and non-controversial (except, perhaps, when it’s not – for example in cases where an anthropologist’s view of truth might stand in opposition to that of those being aided via applied anthropological work).
Tax continues:
“Second, we feel most strongly the value of freedom, as it is classically expressed and limited. Freedom in our context usually means freedom for individuals to choose the group with which to identify and freedom for a community to choose its way of life. We would also be embarrassed if it were shown that we are, for example, encouraging Indians to remain Indians, rather than to become something else, or trying to preserve Indian cultures, when the Indians involved would choose otherwise. All we want in our action programs is to provide, if we can, genuine alternatives from which the people involved can freely choose…”
In other words, Tax held (and I hold) the autonomy of the individual as a fundamental value.
Tax’s third value is what he called a “kind of Law of Parsimony which tells us not to settle questions of values unless they concern us.” This is an important pragmatic principle for operation, where, for example, even though some anthropologists involved in the Fox project felt that assimilation was in the interest of the Fox and others did not, Tax felt that it was inessential for them to decide, and in any case, given the higher valuation placed on the autonomy of Fox individuals, this was not the anthropologists’ decision in any case.
He discusses further the possibility of additional operating principles or premises, but decides against this. He uses the following example:
“People are always asking whether we think cannibals have a right to self-determination. With respect to cannibalism, would we not have to impose some value of our own? Now, I neither eat human flesh, nor like the thought of being eaten; I am revolted as others in our culture by the whole idea. I have no notion what I would do if I found myself involved in an action program on a cannibal isle; I can only think of jokes to say. If I attempt to answer seriously I am beset with all the value contradictions involved in so-called cultural relativism. But whatever my personal position on this, it has no significant bearing on what we should do tomorrow to help the Fox Indians develop more constructive relationships within their community, or with other Iowans.”
Frankly, I’m not sure why this example creates a conundrum, insofar as if one take the valuation of the autonomy of each individual at all seriously, then the autonomy of one person to develop themselves and determine their life to the extent possible (which obviously entails continuing to live) clearly outweighs the autonomy of another to eat them. (If you had a cannibal isle where some really autonomously consented to be eaten, then you’d have a real conundrum.) Still, Tax is right that the ethics of one case don’t really impinge on the ethics of another, so such hypothetical cases are pragmatically beside the point. Recognizing that it is pragmatically and ethically efficacious to avoid making decisions or judgment calls when not necessary, though, doesn’t help in knowing what to do when such decisions cannot be avoided. While anthropologists today are unlikely to have to grapple with the autonomy of cannibals, there are cases in virtually every cultural context where different individuals’ effective autonomy stand at odds and impinge upon one another.
While I find Tax’s article wanting in essentially evading this sort of all too common dilemma, at the same time I find that his three basic values (which are essentially the values of the Enlightenment project) serve us well. On the one hand, the combination of ethical parsimony, cultural relativism, and the valuation of individuals’ autonomy in many situations leads us anthropologically to simply attempt to describe and understand the context at hand. On the other, when the effective autonomy of individuals is at odds or is compromised (e.g. Philippe Bourgois’ example of Costa Rican plantation workers’ lives being largely shaped by decisions of landowners and managers – an example of individuals having opposed interests, or many examples of imposed female genital modification – an example where one individual’s autonomy is compromised by others for reasons typically seen as being in that person’s interest), then we must either be willing to critique such practices or realize that our lack of critique passively and tacitly accepts the imposition of power on the weaker.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Southern Drinkways: Cultural Models of Drinking and Drinking Behavior at a Southern University Campus
This post is a draft of a presentation delivered this past weekend at the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society.
This represents the first presentation of data from an ongoing research project conducted by myself and my colleague in the Department of Health Education at the University of West Florida, Dr. Debra Vinci. In this project we are interested in students’ cultural models of drinking and related activities, contexts, and concepts, and we are interested in this as a topic of interest in and of itself and as an applied anthropological subject, where we hope that our research will contribute to a safer campus for students and contribute to efforts to reduce risks of dangerous drinking patterns among students.
I should first address two issues before proceeding to what we have found so far: First, what do I mean by cultural models? And Second, what do I mean by drinking and related activities, contexts, and concepts?
By cultural model I mean something akin to what Sherry Ortner discusses as cultural schemas. In her discussion, she argues that culturally significant schemas are built up out of important cultural symbols, and certainly anthropologists have long focused on symbols as something that makes humans unique and as the basic building block of culture, though this alone doesn’t explain how culturally important symbols are related to one another nor to practice. C.S. Peirce’s discussion of the argument as one particularly complex type of symbol built up out of more basic symbols is useful here. The argument, as Peirce defines it, “is a sign whose interpretant represents its object as being an ulterior sign through a law, namely, the law that the passage from all such premises to such conclusions tends to the truth.” Or, as he puts it elsewhere, the argument is a sign of reason, building upon propositions to enact overarching logical systems (which is to say that argument involves theorization broadly understood) and is always composed of simpler symbols (specifically rhematic and dicent symbols). Culture, I would argue, is not just the learned and shared lifeways of minimalist definitions of culture, but also an all encompassing mesh of symbols, premises, and arguments. The argument, for human culture, is akin to what Ortner calls key scenarios or cultural schemas. She defines these “as preorganized schemes of action, symbolic programs for the staging and playing out of standard interactions in a particular culture. In her own analysis of Sherpa Buddhism in Nepal, she identifies such a cultural schema (Rivalry, Acquisition of a Protector, Defeat of the Enemy, Departure of the Loser) which recurs in Sherpa myth and ritual and which provides a prototype for culturally typical interaction situations – which is to say that (using Clifford Geertz’s terminology) cultural schemas or arguments provide both “models of” and “models for” cultural action, and further that culturally significant arguments or cultural models are grounded in practice and simultaneously function to ground practice.
What do I mean by cultural models of drinking and related activities, contexts, and concepts? Essentially, we are interested in ascertaining the basic assumptions and premises of students’ conceptualization of drinking, places associated with drinking, behaviors typically associated with drinking, and notions of responsibility or irresponsibility with relation to drinking. Further, we are interested in how such basic premises are related and combined to form larger arguments or cultural models. We are also interested in how the models represented in our data collected from a particular setting (A Southern setting, a student sample, a medium size university setting [with large proportions of commuter and “non-traditional” students], a small to medium size city [and a military and tourist town – and not so much a college town]) relate to other, potentially overlapping contexts.
The first stage of this project (and the one which I will report on here) involved the collection of free lists from 101 students from three classes at the University of West Florida, two sections of Introduction to Anthropology (46 and 33 students – chosen for convenience, but also because of the representation of many different student major interests in the classes) and one section of an upper level nutrition and health course (22 students – chosen again for convenience, but also for contrast – this was a course with mainly upper division students with an interest in nutrition and health, and who had already been asked in a variety of ways to think critically about health and nutrition, including alcohol related issues, in class). Students were asked to generate five free lists: 1.Types of alcoholic drinks or beverages; 2. Types of places or settings in which people drink; 3. Activities people engage in when drinking; 4. The characteristics of someone with a drinking problem; and 5. The characteristics of someone who drinks responsibly.
Basic Description of Results of Initial Research
For the first free list, students were asked to list “types of alcoholic drinks or beverages.” With this and other lists, I used class discussion with my applied anthropology course as a focus group like setting to help determine wording of the request. In this case, I felt, and my students concurred, that asking only for “beverages” might tend to focus the students’ listing on packaged alcohol, such as beer, wine, liquor, etc., while “drink” might focus attention more on mixed drinks. Since we were interested in both, we used the “drinks or beverages” formulation.
The results of the freelisting when taken in aggregate are perhaps not surprising (they didn’t surprise me). Most students’ lists consisted primarily of general categories or types of alcohol. For example, the items listed by at least 20 different students were: beer (90), wine (67), vodka (59), rum (41), whiskey (35), liquor (34), mixed drink (26), tequila (26), gin (21), margarita (21). Of these, two are even more general or overarching types than the others (liquor and mixed drink), and only one is a specific mixed drink.
Specific brand names and mixed drinks were listed by students, though in most cases not frequently. Of those that were mentioned by at least five students, specific brand names included Jack Daniels (12), Smirnoff (11), Crown Royal (8), Jaegermeister (8), Bailey’s Irish Cream (6), Bacardi (5), Captain Morgan’s (5), and Corona (5). Specific mixed drinks included Margarita (21), Martini (14), Daiquiri (12 – an additional 4 mentioned Strawberry Daiquiri), Long Island Iced Tea (12), Sex on the Beach (11), Piña Colada (8), Rum and Coke (8), Bloody Mary (6), White Russian (6), and Mojito (5). In each case, these are widely distributed brand and drinks, and almost all have a long history (certainly older than the students doing the listing) in North American culture generally (I’m pretty sure I would have been familiar with all or most of these names when 10 years old).
To be sure, many more unusual, esoteric, more recently introduced, or idiosyncractic drink categories were named as well, such as Mike’s Hard Lemonade (4), Mead (2), Chocolate Chip Cookie (1), Crab Trap (1), girlie drinks (1), Irish Car Bomb (1), Robitussin (1), Pink Panties (1), or Sex with an alligator (1). In aggregate, a very high number of items were listed – far more than for any other list – with a total of 211 items listed, but the vast majority (147) listed by only one or two different students.
As more of an aside, one result I was somewhat surprised by, and for which I currently have no explanation, was the very low frequency of beer brand names listed. Only Corona was mentioned by at least five students, followed by Bud Light (4), Budweiser (3), and Heineken (3).
When asked to list types of places or settings in which people drink, the total variety of contexts listed was quite a bit smaller than the first list (not surprising), with just a handful of contexts being listed by large numbers of students: at a bar (90), at home or at the house (63), at a club (46), at a party (42), and at a restaurant (25). Two other settings were listed at least 10 times: at the beach (19), and at diner (11).
When asked to list activities people engage in while drinking, total variety of items listed was considerably more extensive than for the previous list, though less so than for the first. As with other lists, a handful of items were mentioned by large numbers of students: Dancing (45), Sex (38), Fights or Fighting (25), and Socializing (21). In addition, mentioned by at least 10 students were: Talking (18), Beer Pong (16), Drinking Games (16), Games (15), and Eating (14). (In items related to these, dinner was also mentioned by 3 students, and a variety of other games or game-like activities were listed: card games [7], karaoke [6], video games [6], flip cup [4], etc.)
For the fourth and fifth lists which asked for characteristics of irresponsible and responsible drinkers, a level of initial analysis was necessary in order to tabulate the lists. Most students gave lists of phrases, rather than single words, in response to these two list requests, and so it was necessary to delineate basic categories in order to classify similar, but not completely identical responses. I did this by again using my applied anthropology students as a sort of focus group to delineate the basic categories of responses. (My idea was that while those students taking an upper level applied anthropology course are not necessarily typical students, they are at least part of the population being studied – students in general – and so their predilections would be more likely to reflect “emic” categories.)
As characteristics of irresponsible drinkers, the following were listed frequently: always drinking / drinks too often (28), drinks everyday (23), drinks too much (23), drinking affects other aspects of life (22), needs to drink to function (21). Responses with at least 10 mentions included: drinks alone (17), rarely sober or often drunk (15), angry (14), denial of problem (13), obsessed with drinking (13), depression or sadness (11), can’t stop drinking (10), and drinks to escape problems (10).
Knows their limit or knows when to quit (42), doesn’t drink and drive (36), drinks in moderation (27), and chooses a designated driver beforehand (24) topped the aggregate list of traits of those who drink responsibly. This was followed by drinks occasionally (19), only drinks socially (16), rarely drunk or doesn’t get drunk (15), and drinking doesn’t affect relationships (13).
Interesting Trends and Reactions
Drinking Discourse and Drinking Behavior
Overall, the results of the first list are consistent with the findings of two other surveys that have been conducted on the University of West Florida campus that indicate that the vast majority of UWF students either do not drink or drink infrequently and in low quantities. To be more accurate, the surveys find that students claim to not drink or not drink in high frequency or quantity. The relationship between students’ discourse about their drinking and their drinking behavior (or lack thereof) is clearly something difficult to ascertain, though this freelisting exercise offers at least a slightly different window on the situation. A small handful of students provided us with frighteningly comprehensive lists of drink types (so, in fact much of the variety of items listed came from just a few students), but the rest provided much shorter lists (generally 10 – 15 items at most) with mostly general categories of drink that many non-drinking children would probably be familiar with from simply having grown up in the culture. This, of course, is still another example of drinking discourse and doesn’t prove that most UWF students in fact do not drink or do not drink much (i.e. the lists don’t indicate clear lack of familiarity with drinking, but they also don’t indicate clear familiarity with drinking), but it also is consistent with those other findings and doesn’t give any contradiction to students when they respond to surveys indicating low frequency and quantity of drinking.
Drinking and Food
This and the following examples address the relationship between public health discourse and students’ discourse in the ways in which students’ conceptions and expressions of thought on drinking correspond (or do not) to institutional messages.
In some ways, many students clearly associated drinking with eating. Fourteen students mention eating as an activity associated with drinking (with three more mentioning dinner), and “eating contexts” were even more associated with drinking – with restaurants mentioned by 25 students as a setting associated with drinking (and 11 more mentioning “at dinner” or “at a dinner” as settings). At the same time, “eating before drinking” was listed by only two students as an attribute of responsible drinkers (with both in the upper level nutrition and health course). This is not so surprising given the (understandable) greater emphasis in public health campaigns on not drinking and driving, though at the same time, eating before and during drinking is often mentioned in public health campaigns, brochures, etc., as one strategy to reduce potential dangers of overconsumption of alcohol. This pattern of associating eating with drinking in one set of domains, but not within the context of thinking of responsible or appropriate behavior, is possibly the result of one message being swamped by another (and in this case more important) one.
Drinking and Sex
In one way, students clearly associate sex and drinking. Aside from dancing, sex was mentioned by the largest number of students as an activity associated with drinking. At the same time that sex is clearly part of the model of drinking generally, responsible sexuality does not seem to be a significant part of students’ model of responsible drinking. “Promiscuity” was mentioned by one student as a trait of those who drink irresponsibly, and one student mentioned “Has condoms” as a characteristic of someone who drinks responsibly. This, and the previous example to a lesser extent, is indicative of the fact that as we engage in further research to fine tune our understanding of students’ cultural models of drinking, we will almost certainly be dealing not with a single or unitary model, but multiple overlapping models.
Irresponsibility and Responsibility
Possibly the most interesting example of the existence of overlapping but not identical models concerns the freelists of traits of irresponsibility and responsibility. For the most part, these appear as opposing domains – which is what I expected – in the sense that items frequently listed in one domain tend to show up in similar frequency in opposite form in the opposite domain. The major exception to this has to do with drinking and driving. Students have clearly absorbed the message that not driving drunk and/or having a designated driver are responsible thinks to do when drinking: Doesn’t drink and drive (36), chooses a designated driver beforehand (24) were common responses. When it comes to what makes a person irresponsible, though, drunk driving seems to have fallen out of consideration - only five students mentioned anything to do with drunk driving or not having a designated driver as being a characteristic of someone drinking irresponsibly.
Ongoing Research
The goal of this first stage of research was to elucidate the common terms of students’ models of drinking, which it has done. A second stage of research will ascertain relationships between the terms to understand the shape of the larger model(s). Those items commonly listed in the free lists were used to produce cards (with one item listed on each card) to be sorted by another sample of 30 students, with students in my Applied Anthropology course conducting this research. The results from this stage of research are still being tabulated and will be analyzed using non-metrical multi-dimensional scaling techniques to provide a “map” of the relationships between sorted terms. This in turn, along with the results of another ongoing survey, will be used to develop a fine tuned survey to ascertain degree of cultural consensus on various elements of the model.
This represents the first presentation of data from an ongoing research project conducted by myself and my colleague in the Department of Health Education at the University of West Florida, Dr. Debra Vinci. In this project we are interested in students’ cultural models of drinking and related activities, contexts, and concepts, and we are interested in this as a topic of interest in and of itself and as an applied anthropological subject, where we hope that our research will contribute to a safer campus for students and contribute to efforts to reduce risks of dangerous drinking patterns among students.
I should first address two issues before proceeding to what we have found so far: First, what do I mean by cultural models? And Second, what do I mean by drinking and related activities, contexts, and concepts?
By cultural model I mean something akin to what Sherry Ortner discusses as cultural schemas. In her discussion, she argues that culturally significant schemas are built up out of important cultural symbols, and certainly anthropologists have long focused on symbols as something that makes humans unique and as the basic building block of culture, though this alone doesn’t explain how culturally important symbols are related to one another nor to practice. C.S. Peirce’s discussion of the argument as one particularly complex type of symbol built up out of more basic symbols is useful here. The argument, as Peirce defines it, “is a sign whose interpretant represents its object as being an ulterior sign through a law, namely, the law that the passage from all such premises to such conclusions tends to the truth.” Or, as he puts it elsewhere, the argument is a sign of reason, building upon propositions to enact overarching logical systems (which is to say that argument involves theorization broadly understood) and is always composed of simpler symbols (specifically rhematic and dicent symbols). Culture, I would argue, is not just the learned and shared lifeways of minimalist definitions of culture, but also an all encompassing mesh of symbols, premises, and arguments. The argument, for human culture, is akin to what Ortner calls key scenarios or cultural schemas. She defines these “as preorganized schemes of action, symbolic programs for the staging and playing out of standard interactions in a particular culture. In her own analysis of Sherpa Buddhism in Nepal, she identifies such a cultural schema (Rivalry, Acquisition of a Protector, Defeat of the Enemy, Departure of the Loser) which recurs in Sherpa myth and ritual and which provides a prototype for culturally typical interaction situations – which is to say that (using Clifford Geertz’s terminology) cultural schemas or arguments provide both “models of” and “models for” cultural action, and further that culturally significant arguments or cultural models are grounded in practice and simultaneously function to ground practice.
What do I mean by cultural models of drinking and related activities, contexts, and concepts? Essentially, we are interested in ascertaining the basic assumptions and premises of students’ conceptualization of drinking, places associated with drinking, behaviors typically associated with drinking, and notions of responsibility or irresponsibility with relation to drinking. Further, we are interested in how such basic premises are related and combined to form larger arguments or cultural models. We are also interested in how the models represented in our data collected from a particular setting (A Southern setting, a student sample, a medium size university setting [with large proportions of commuter and “non-traditional” students], a small to medium size city [and a military and tourist town – and not so much a college town]) relate to other, potentially overlapping contexts.
The first stage of this project (and the one which I will report on here) involved the collection of free lists from 101 students from three classes at the University of West Florida, two sections of Introduction to Anthropology (46 and 33 students – chosen for convenience, but also because of the representation of many different student major interests in the classes) and one section of an upper level nutrition and health course (22 students – chosen again for convenience, but also for contrast – this was a course with mainly upper division students with an interest in nutrition and health, and who had already been asked in a variety of ways to think critically about health and nutrition, including alcohol related issues, in class). Students were asked to generate five free lists: 1.Types of alcoholic drinks or beverages; 2. Types of places or settings in which people drink; 3. Activities people engage in when drinking; 4. The characteristics of someone with a drinking problem; and 5. The characteristics of someone who drinks responsibly.
Basic Description of Results of Initial Research
For the first free list, students were asked to list “types of alcoholic drinks or beverages.” With this and other lists, I used class discussion with my applied anthropology course as a focus group like setting to help determine wording of the request. In this case, I felt, and my students concurred, that asking only for “beverages” might tend to focus the students’ listing on packaged alcohol, such as beer, wine, liquor, etc., while “drink” might focus attention more on mixed drinks. Since we were interested in both, we used the “drinks or beverages” formulation.
The results of the freelisting when taken in aggregate are perhaps not surprising (they didn’t surprise me). Most students’ lists consisted primarily of general categories or types of alcohol. For example, the items listed by at least 20 different students were: beer (90), wine (67), vodka (59), rum (41), whiskey (35), liquor (34), mixed drink (26), tequila (26), gin (21), margarita (21). Of these, two are even more general or overarching types than the others (liquor and mixed drink), and only one is a specific mixed drink.
Specific brand names and mixed drinks were listed by students, though in most cases not frequently. Of those that were mentioned by at least five students, specific brand names included Jack Daniels (12), Smirnoff (11), Crown Royal (8), Jaegermeister (8), Bailey’s Irish Cream (6), Bacardi (5), Captain Morgan’s (5), and Corona (5). Specific mixed drinks included Margarita (21), Martini (14), Daiquiri (12 – an additional 4 mentioned Strawberry Daiquiri), Long Island Iced Tea (12), Sex on the Beach (11), Piña Colada (8), Rum and Coke (8), Bloody Mary (6), White Russian (6), and Mojito (5). In each case, these are widely distributed brand and drinks, and almost all have a long history (certainly older than the students doing the listing) in North American culture generally (I’m pretty sure I would have been familiar with all or most of these names when 10 years old).
To be sure, many more unusual, esoteric, more recently introduced, or idiosyncractic drink categories were named as well, such as Mike’s Hard Lemonade (4), Mead (2), Chocolate Chip Cookie (1), Crab Trap (1), girlie drinks (1), Irish Car Bomb (1), Robitussin (1), Pink Panties (1), or Sex with an alligator (1). In aggregate, a very high number of items were listed – far more than for any other list – with a total of 211 items listed, but the vast majority (147) listed by only one or two different students.
As more of an aside, one result I was somewhat surprised by, and for which I currently have no explanation, was the very low frequency of beer brand names listed. Only Corona was mentioned by at least five students, followed by Bud Light (4), Budweiser (3), and Heineken (3).
When asked to list types of places or settings in which people drink, the total variety of contexts listed was quite a bit smaller than the first list (not surprising), with just a handful of contexts being listed by large numbers of students: at a bar (90), at home or at the house (63), at a club (46), at a party (42), and at a restaurant (25). Two other settings were listed at least 10 times: at the beach (19), and at diner (11).
When asked to list activities people engage in while drinking, total variety of items listed was considerably more extensive than for the previous list, though less so than for the first. As with other lists, a handful of items were mentioned by large numbers of students: Dancing (45), Sex (38), Fights or Fighting (25), and Socializing (21). In addition, mentioned by at least 10 students were: Talking (18), Beer Pong (16), Drinking Games (16), Games (15), and Eating (14). (In items related to these, dinner was also mentioned by 3 students, and a variety of other games or game-like activities were listed: card games [7], karaoke [6], video games [6], flip cup [4], etc.)
For the fourth and fifth lists which asked for characteristics of irresponsible and responsible drinkers, a level of initial analysis was necessary in order to tabulate the lists. Most students gave lists of phrases, rather than single words, in response to these two list requests, and so it was necessary to delineate basic categories in order to classify similar, but not completely identical responses. I did this by again using my applied anthropology students as a sort of focus group to delineate the basic categories of responses. (My idea was that while those students taking an upper level applied anthropology course are not necessarily typical students, they are at least part of the population being studied – students in general – and so their predilections would be more likely to reflect “emic” categories.)
As characteristics of irresponsible drinkers, the following were listed frequently: always drinking / drinks too often (28), drinks everyday (23), drinks too much (23), drinking affects other aspects of life (22), needs to drink to function (21). Responses with at least 10 mentions included: drinks alone (17), rarely sober or often drunk (15), angry (14), denial of problem (13), obsessed with drinking (13), depression or sadness (11), can’t stop drinking (10), and drinks to escape problems (10).
Knows their limit or knows when to quit (42), doesn’t drink and drive (36), drinks in moderation (27), and chooses a designated driver beforehand (24) topped the aggregate list of traits of those who drink responsibly. This was followed by drinks occasionally (19), only drinks socially (16), rarely drunk or doesn’t get drunk (15), and drinking doesn’t affect relationships (13).
Interesting Trends and Reactions
Drinking Discourse and Drinking Behavior
Overall, the results of the first list are consistent with the findings of two other surveys that have been conducted on the University of West Florida campus that indicate that the vast majority of UWF students either do not drink or drink infrequently and in low quantities. To be more accurate, the surveys find that students claim to not drink or not drink in high frequency or quantity. The relationship between students’ discourse about their drinking and their drinking behavior (or lack thereof) is clearly something difficult to ascertain, though this freelisting exercise offers at least a slightly different window on the situation. A small handful of students provided us with frighteningly comprehensive lists of drink types (so, in fact much of the variety of items listed came from just a few students), but the rest provided much shorter lists (generally 10 – 15 items at most) with mostly general categories of drink that many non-drinking children would probably be familiar with from simply having grown up in the culture. This, of course, is still another example of drinking discourse and doesn’t prove that most UWF students in fact do not drink or do not drink much (i.e. the lists don’t indicate clear lack of familiarity with drinking, but they also don’t indicate clear familiarity with drinking), but it also is consistent with those other findings and doesn’t give any contradiction to students when they respond to surveys indicating low frequency and quantity of drinking.
Drinking and Food
This and the following examples address the relationship between public health discourse and students’ discourse in the ways in which students’ conceptions and expressions of thought on drinking correspond (or do not) to institutional messages.
In some ways, many students clearly associated drinking with eating. Fourteen students mention eating as an activity associated with drinking (with three more mentioning dinner), and “eating contexts” were even more associated with drinking – with restaurants mentioned by 25 students as a setting associated with drinking (and 11 more mentioning “at dinner” or “at a dinner” as settings). At the same time, “eating before drinking” was listed by only two students as an attribute of responsible drinkers (with both in the upper level nutrition and health course). This is not so surprising given the (understandable) greater emphasis in public health campaigns on not drinking and driving, though at the same time, eating before and during drinking is often mentioned in public health campaigns, brochures, etc., as one strategy to reduce potential dangers of overconsumption of alcohol. This pattern of associating eating with drinking in one set of domains, but not within the context of thinking of responsible or appropriate behavior, is possibly the result of one message being swamped by another (and in this case more important) one.
Drinking and Sex
In one way, students clearly associate sex and drinking. Aside from dancing, sex was mentioned by the largest number of students as an activity associated with drinking. At the same time that sex is clearly part of the model of drinking generally, responsible sexuality does not seem to be a significant part of students’ model of responsible drinking. “Promiscuity” was mentioned by one student as a trait of those who drink irresponsibly, and one student mentioned “Has condoms” as a characteristic of someone who drinks responsibly. This, and the previous example to a lesser extent, is indicative of the fact that as we engage in further research to fine tune our understanding of students’ cultural models of drinking, we will almost certainly be dealing not with a single or unitary model, but multiple overlapping models.
Irresponsibility and Responsibility
Possibly the most interesting example of the existence of overlapping but not identical models concerns the freelists of traits of irresponsibility and responsibility. For the most part, these appear as opposing domains – which is what I expected – in the sense that items frequently listed in one domain tend to show up in similar frequency in opposite form in the opposite domain. The major exception to this has to do with drinking and driving. Students have clearly absorbed the message that not driving drunk and/or having a designated driver are responsible thinks to do when drinking: Doesn’t drink and drive (36), chooses a designated driver beforehand (24) were common responses. When it comes to what makes a person irresponsible, though, drunk driving seems to have fallen out of consideration - only five students mentioned anything to do with drunk driving or not having a designated driver as being a characteristic of someone drinking irresponsibly.
Ongoing Research
The goal of this first stage of research was to elucidate the common terms of students’ models of drinking, which it has done. A second stage of research will ascertain relationships between the terms to understand the shape of the larger model(s). Those items commonly listed in the free lists were used to produce cards (with one item listed on each card) to be sorted by another sample of 30 students, with students in my Applied Anthropology course conducting this research. The results from this stage of research are still being tabulated and will be analyzed using non-metrical multi-dimensional scaling techniques to provide a “map” of the relationships between sorted terms. This in turn, along with the results of another ongoing survey, will be used to develop a fine tuned survey to ascertain degree of cultural consensus on various elements of the model.
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