Addiction Research and Theory

December 2009; 17(6): 583–585

Commentary

Sociolgy of consumption about alcohol

PEKKA SULKUNEN

Department of Sociology, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 54 (Unioninkatu 35), Helsinki,

FIN-00014 Finland

(Received and accepted 8 June 2009)

Robin Room et al. (2009) start their article from the unexpected observation that lowering

alcohol price by 25% in Denmark in 2003 led to no increase in consumption in the region.

They go on to discuss various possibilities to explain this by saturation of the market. They

conclude that ‘saturation is not an explanation – it is simply a metaphoric description’.

Then they go on to assess research evidence on factors tending to change consumption

levels, including taxation and prices, consumer purchasing power, availability controls,

advertising, population structure, norms and responses to problems. They develop a model,

starting with Harold Holder’s systems theory, to sum up factors that either push for change

or tend to stabilize the level of alcohol consumption.

Saturation was a term often used when it was observed that Western countries

experienced a continuous post-war boom of alcohol consumption with converging effects,

so that both consumption levels and structures tended towards an international average

(Sulkunen 1976). High level consumers (Italy, France, Portugal) increased less or even

decreased while low consumers increased their per capita consumption. Wine drinkers

increased their consumption of beer and spirits, beer drinkers became wine drinkers and

even more, spirits drinkers became beer drinkers (taking on wine as well). Since then,

the trend has continued but differences still remain, although at a much higher level,

around 9 litres per capita in developed countries. This phenomenon suggests that there

might be a ‘natural’, biologically determined level at which consumption increase stops

in a population with relatively affordable availability of food and beverages.

Correspondence: Professor Pekka Sulkunen, Department of Sociology, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 54 (Unioninkatu 35),

Helsinki, FIN-00014 Finland. Tel: þ358 9191 23975. Fax: þ35 892 3967. E-mail: Pekka.Sulkunen@helsinki.fi

ISSN 1606-6359 print/ISSN 1476-7392 online � 2009 Informa UK Ltd.

DOI: 10.3109/16066350903145098

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Such an explanation is sour apples for social scientists, and still is for the authors.

It marginalizes the role of policy and brackets out even other social factors that have an

impact on consumption. How much does the proposed model help? The authors turn the

focus of the Holder model to consumption itself. As Makela et al. (1981, p. 5) put it: ‘‘to the

classical causal-explanation mode of thinking, this is to begin with the middle. ‘The degree

of control affects the level of consumption which, in turn, affects the rate of problems’,

would be a formulation attractive to many alcohol and drug policy analysts’’. For

understanding changes in and variations between populations, such a shift is necessary,

but it also changes the alcohol research paradigm from policy analysis to the sociology

of consumption.

From the point of view of the sociology of consumption the proposed model covers

essential elements that from a strictly policy oriented approach tend to be neglected:

structural characteristics of the population (urbanization, education, living conditions at

large) are not simply ‘exogenous factors’ for the relationship between consumption,

problems and policy but an essential context of the whole. Marketing and the whole supply

side of it is not only a regulatory factor of acceptability of drinking; it essentially determines

the kinds of uses of alcoholic beverages. Particularly interesting is the idea that the ‘‘norm

system’’ is thought of as customs and forces for continuity as well as arenas of change

and supports for controls. These elements are occasionally referred to as ‘the cultural

position of alcohol’.

Unfortunately, the model is not used to interpret the Danish case. Instead, the authors

offer us a number of interesting suggestions on how to use the model and how it might

explain the long waves of alcohol consumption. A very traditional limitation still remains

in the model, however. It is based on what I call the standard view of social action,

assuming that (a) people have a (constant) propensity to do X, (b) there are conditions

(availability, etc.) that regulate the activity and (3) there are norms that define the limits of its

acceptability (Sulkunen 2009, 27–34). The shortcoming of this view is that it takes the

activity itself as a ‘dependent variable’, taking its one-dimensionality for granted, as if

drinking a whisky in a five-star hotel bar in Tokyo were half of the same thing as having a

double in a street-corner cafe in a working-class suburb in Paris. All the factors discussed in

the article: supply, control, structural changes and other demand factors alike, have an

impact on what kinds of uses, or to use classical political economy language – use values –

alcohol has. This brings us to the heart of the sociology of consumption.

The study of use values is complicated by the fact that they cannot be determined by the

properties of the commodity, or by the properties of the human body (and mind), or even by

the interaction of these. Uses of things have symbolic functions. Why do women in many

cultures prefer white wine to red? Because white is associated with lightness, and lightness

is considered to be feminine. Why do many people celebrate with sparkling wine, not still?

Because sparkling is associated with luxury (‘waste’ as anthropologists would say),

something extra-ordinary that highlights the ritual character of the occasion. Why do

middle-class people hate alcohol control? Because they feel offended if someone interferes

with their autonomy and self-control (Sulkunen 1994). Examples like this could be

continued and diversified quite extensively, but two things are already apparent from these

few. First, the symbolic use-values often have little to do with the beverage itself; they are

more strongly related to conventional images that we have of them. Second, these images are

related to valued social relationships in general (feminine lightness, luxury as a marker of a

celebration, self-control as a middle-class value).

Images, representations, signs or symbols – many theoretical languages exist in the

sociology of consumption for almost the same thing – are problematic for causal

584 P. Sulkunen

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explanations, because they are difficult to measure. To grasp them, quantitative approaches

proposed by the authors probably need to be complemented with semiotic studies of the

media and of ordinary users. But they may be relevant for understanding historical changes

and cultural variations in the complex combination of control, availability, norms, use and

problems. There is no question that alcoholic beverages became a symbol of modern lifestyle

in many Western countries when the post-war consumer society was emergent, much like

cigarettes are today in many developing countries. It is also obvious that drinking ordinary

wine was bestowed with the opposite image of rural traditionalism in France when the new

urban middle class was gaining symbolic power from the 1960s onwards.

This brings us back to the subject of saturation. I agree that the expression is metaphoric,

and its suggestion of a population biology may be misleading rather than helpful. But when

we are interested in understanding major historical changes it might be useful to think that

some images governing the uses of alcohol do get transformed, or ‘saturated’. Saturation

does not only mean fully satisfied. It also refers to the transformation that occurs when,

for example, a solution of salt in water gets richer and the salt regains its crystal form.

To know more about this requires more theory and methods on how to study images and

their relationship with actual behaviour, rather than just – to paraphrase the authors – to

mutter ‘cultural position of alcohol’.

Declaration of interest: The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone

is responsible for the content and writing the paper.

References

Makela K, Room R, Single E, Sulkunen P, Walsh B. 1981. Alcohol, society, and the state 1. Toronto: Addiction

Research Foundation of Ontario.

Room R, Osterberg E, Ramstedt M, Rehm J. 2009. Explaining change and stasis in alcohol consumption.

Addiction Research and Theory 17(6):562–576.

Sulkunen P. 1994. The conservative mind. Why does the new middle class hate alcohol control. Addiction

Research 1:295–308.

Sulkunen P. 1976. Drinking patterns and the level of alcohol consumption: An international overview. In: Gibbins,

Robert J, Israel Yedy, Kalant Harold, Popham Robert E, Schmidt Wolfgang, Smart Reginald, editors. Research

advances in alcohol and drug problems. Vol. 3. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Sulkunen P. 2009. The saturated society. Governing risk and lifestyles in consumer culture. London: Sage.

Sociolgy of consumption about alcohol 585

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