Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs

The focus of the article is on how ideas about alcohol consumption and home-made liquor are constructed by 30 upper secondary school pupils, mainly from two schools: Lars Kagg, which is oriented towards blue-collar occupations, and Stagnelius, which is oriented towards white-collar professions. The Lars Kagg culture is very much focussed on practical matters; it is a do-it-yourself culture, and home-made liquor is not seen as something problematic, but more or less as part of their culture. For the Stagnelius pupils, on the other hand, home-made liquor is seen as a sign of cultural inferiority and very much associated with blue-collar professions. The Stagnelius pupils use these stereotypes about home-made liquor to construct an imaginary hierarchy in which they are part of the upper level and the Kagg pupils part of the lower. Drinking heavily and home-made liquor are thus not seen as something preferable.

These stereotypes should guide Stagnelius pupils towards moderate and sophisticated drinking, but this is not the case. At weekends they drink in about the same manner as the Lars Kagg pupils. This has, for young men, partly to do with their efforts to define themselves as genuine men. Boozing together makes it possible for them to create a form of raw masculinity and an image of themselves as hunters, looking for a girl. This image contradicts the stereotypes they make about themselves and the Kagg pupils. The weekends make it possible for them to be less sophisticated and more like brutal conquerors. Young women don't seem to have these privileges to binge drink. Nor can they do ‘dirty drinking’, i.e., drink directly from the bottle or drink home-made hard liquor. If they do they risk being labelled as obscene. It is, however, not just the desire to construct a tough masculinity that leads the pupils to boozing, but also an effort to escape self-discipline.

The article deals with the use of alcohol in a special ‘rite of passage’, called russefeiring, among youth in Norway. Traditionally, rites of passage transform youths' identity and include them in the community of adults. Nowadays, not having these collective rituals, young people in Norway have invented a new rite of passage in the form of prolonged graduation parties, held by 18-year-olds ending their compulsory higher education. Thus, the russefeiring is a symbolic action that marks the transition from youth to adulthood. In the liminal phase of the ritual the young people wear special clothes, celebrate and drink beer and spirits during a period of 17 days, from the 1st to the 17th of May – the former being a traditional day of intoxication, the latter being the Norwegian national day.

The article argues that the more traditional rites of passage are transformed into a passage to friendship, in which expressive individualism is stressed as a value, making the intoxication and fraternization among youth a ritual of its own. The rite of becoming an adult has thereby turned into a street theatre of novices who play with norms and taboos in public.

The article discusses the use of symbolic anthropology and field methods in research relating to this kind of ritual alcohol use and intoxication. Theoretically, the focus is on studying alcohol use as a ritual practice. Post-structural theory defines ritual action as the communication of meaning and the construction of reality, identity and community. Use of alcohol can be defined as a key symbol in these ritual processes, offering an opportunity to communicate meanings between members in the society and culture.