Contested Meanings: The Construction of Alcohol Problems

Joseph R. Gusfield has been for decades the most creative, penetrating, and far-sighted sociologist of alcohols ambiguous place in American society. Combining the perspectives and methods of historian, anthopologist, and sociologist, Gusfield brings together in this volume many of his most important articles from a span of twenty years, as well as several fascinating but little-known ethnographic studies of bars in San Diego and a previously unpublished study of court-mandated programs for convicted drinking-drivers. Gusfield begins by offering two new constructionist analyses of social problems, focusing on alcohol. His theme throughout Contested Meanings is the conflicting and changing ways society defines social problems (when does alcohol consumption cross the line from social activity to social problem?) and the social and policy consequences of those definitions. He emerges in the course of the book as a thoughtful and realistic social critic who looks beyond analyses of drinking as pathological behavior to consider the place of alcohol in American popular and leisure culture. Contested Meanings collects important work that will have broad appeal. A consistent theme in Gusfields work is the conceptualization of problems. That theme is continued here, both at a societal level, in his discussions of alternative conceptualizations of drinking, drinking problems, and driving problems, and at a face-to-face level, in his observational studies of tavern behavior and its relation to drinking-driver arrests & processing. There is no equivalent book in this field.Robin Room, Addiction Research Foundation