Contested Meanings: The Construction of Alcohol Problems - Paperback

by Joseph R. Gusfield (Author)

This work brings together a selection of the author's articles, written over a period of 20 years, observing the place of alcohol in American culture. The text also contains several ethnographic studies of bars in San Diego and a study of court-mandated programmes for drink drivers.

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The theme throughout Contested Meanings is the conflicting and changing ways society defines social problems. 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.