Abstract

Maria Abrahamson: Mundane reasoning about youth and alcohol

In a Swedish study on mundane reasoning about alcohol use, based on group discussions with people in different occupational categories, the youth question was considered the most serious alcohol problem by the participants. This article analyses the argumentation around the youth question. An analytical aspect is how the interviewees identify themselves with various so-called subject positions, as consumers, as parents, children or young persons or as monitors-social reformists.

The four groups described in this article were people working with music, theatre, art or museums, journalists, social democratic politicians and business people. There were differences between the groups with regard to how they perceived the youth alcohol problem and where they placed the responsibility for its solution. People in the cultural field regarded young people's drinking as a social problem, but placed the responsibility on the individual and private level. The journalists looked upon young people's drinking as a private problem belonging to the family sphere that should be solved on the individual level. The politicans clearly stressed that youth drinking is a social problem. The responsibility for solving it was located with external authorities through mechanisms such as legislation and extensive educational campaigns. The business people moved between different ways of describing the problem and different levels where the solutions could be found. At first they spoke as consumers and emphasised the individual responsibility. In the course of the discussion they gradually stressed more and more that young people's drinking is both a family and a social problem, and they put the responsibility for solutions on external authorities.