Linked Life Data

15177831

Source:http://linkedlifedata.com/resource/pubmed/id/15177831

Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
4
pubmed:dateCreated
2004-6-4
pubmed:abstractText
Four years into South Africa's first democracy, the African National Congress Youth League, with the help of the liquor industry's Social Aspects of Alcohol Committee drafted a policy to prevent substance abuse in black communities. They declared that alcohol was 'often not used in a socially acceptable way'. Concerned not so much with post-apartheid policy as with making sense of what socially acceptable alcohol usage might mean, this article explores narratives of alcohol use and abuse in South Africa in the second half of the twentieth century. It demonstrates that while multiple understandings of excess in alcohol consumption were articulated, those notions tied to particular constructions of racial difference prevailed. Ideas pairing drinking habits with race were given effect by state institutions. By tying drinking habits to 'race' and by locating 'race' in a social hierarchy, state institutions determined access to liquor and welfare services. By naturalising Africans as heavy drinkers, the state justified its sale of liquor to African men while denying the need for rehabilitation in the event of alcoholic dependence. By placing 'coloured' closer to 'white' in its racial order, the apartheid state found cause to extend limited rehabilitation services to those designated 'coloured'. By tying liquor revenues to apartheid administration, the ruling regime exonerated its policy of excluding blacks from the retail liquor trade even after lifting prohibition in 1962. This policy encouraged rampant illicit liquor dealing, created a social environment in which alcoholic excess, particularly after 1976, reached new proportions and generated new and dangerous meanings of socially acceptable drinking. Against the grain of these dominant discourses of racially designated meanings of drinking, African people forged a more complex set of practices and meanings not rendered any clearer by the ANC Youth League's discourse of acceptable and unacceptable usage.
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Aug
pubmed:issn
0277-9536
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:volume
59
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
735-51
pubmed:dateRevised
2004-11-17
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2004
pubmed:articleTitle
'White liquor hits black livers': meanings of excessive liquor consumption in South Africa in the second half of the twentieth century.
pubmed:affiliation
Historical Studies Department, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, Cape Town 7700, South Africa. mager@humanities.uct.ac.za
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Review