Drink and the city: alcohol and alcohol problems in urban UK, since the 1950s

This book uses Nottingham, a city in the East Midlands of England, as a case study to examine changing attitudes and responses to drinking and alcohol problems in the UK from the 1950s to early 2000s. Based on original research drawnfrom local archives and oral histories, it examines responses to drink and drink problems over time, comparing local developments with those nationally. Inthe 1950s pub going and drinking were viewed by city inhabitants as essentialactivities, just as now. Author Alan Sillitoe in his Nottingham based novel 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' (1958), describing Saturday night as "the best and bingiest glad-time of the week." For the majority of people, drinking and occasional drunkenness were accepted and tolerated aspects of everyday life. However in the 1950s, the idea of the 'alcoholic', a medical as well as moral phenomenon, surfaced in society. The book describes how, as this view took hold in the 1960s, it became associated locally with poverty, and viewed in the extreme terms as a problem of the vagrant alcoholic. The vagrants' ever-presence in the city, coupled with his unsanitary drinking, gave the place an unwholesome look of poverty. In subsequent decades, street drinkers continued to inform the local approach and went through a number of transformations; from the hooligan/ drunken football fan of the 1980s to the young binge drinker of the late 1990s/early 2000s. In the early 2000s Nottingham became a national flashpoint over binge drinking at a time when alcohol licensing reform was being debated in Parliament and for the first time, the local definition and nationalone properly combined. This book suggests local definitions are important, and should be taken account of in the process of policymaking. The book also offers insights into the changing nature of Britain's drinking culture in recent times. ÍNDICE: Drink and the City * Medicine as Part of Social Concern, 1950s & 1960s * Medical Responses to the Vagrant Alcoholic, 1970s * Youth in Public View, 1970s * Combining Drink and Drugs: Alcohol Treatment in the 1980s * DrunkenYobs and Aggressive Beggars': the 1980s * Politicisation and Fragmentation: Alcohol Treatment in the 1990s * 'Liberty's' and Licensing: Responses by the Police in the 1990s * 'Cldt Give a 4xxxx for Lst Ordrs': The National/Local Problem of Binge Drinking * UK Alcohol Policy: National-Local Interaction * Reference Sources.

• ISBN: 978-1-908062-85-7
• Editorial: NOTTINGHAM UNIVERISITY PRESS
• Encuadernacion: Rústica
• Páginas: 282
• Fecha Publicación: 28/02/2012
• Nº Volúmenes: 1
• Idioma: Inglés