Prof. Nahoum-Grappe

Can social sciences help understanding excessive consumption of certain types of alcoholic drinks?

After a long work of gathering different narratives on drunkenness in our modern Western society (novels, TV serials, press and media stories) which were studied according to the ethnographic methodology and not the sociological methodology (and which led to the publication of two books: “La culture de l’ivresse, un essai de phénoménologie historique”, Ed. Quai Voltaire, 1991, Paris and “Vertige de l’ivresse. Alcool et lien social”, Ed. Descartes et Compagnie, 2010, Paris), I think that social sciences can offer reflections with regards to the role played by alcoholic drinks in the game of collective communication. Based on a few examples, my presentation will try to better analyse: firstly, the fact of clinking glasses; secondly, the culture of the round; and thirdly,  the morals of excess. At each stage I will reflect on the differences between beer and wine in a country like France

Short biography Véronique Nahoum-Grappe, anthropologist and researcher at the French « School of High Studies in Social Sciences » studies addictions in modern societies. Her research topics, covering both sociology and anthropology, are inter alia body’s esthetic and excess behaviors. She has written several books on alcohol, the latest one, “Vertige de l’Ivresse” having been published in April 2010.