Contested Meanings: The Construction of Alcohol Problems - Hardcover

Gusfield, Joseph R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0299149307 ISBN 13: 9780299149307

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996

Synopsis

Joseph R. Gusfield has been for decades the most creative, penetrating, and far-sighted sociologist of alcohol’s ambiguous place in American society. Combining the perspectives and methods of historian, anthopologist, and sociologist, Gusfield brings together in this volume many of his most important articles from a span of twenty years, as well as several fascinating but little-known ethnographic studies of bars in San Diego and a previously unpublished study of court-mandated programs for convicted drinking-drivers.
    Gusfield begins by offering two new constructionist analyses of social problems, focusing on alcohol. His theme throughout Contested Meanings is the conflicting and changing ways society defines social problems (when does alcohol consumption cross the line from social activity to social problem?) and the social and policy consequences of those definitions. 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.

About this title

From the Back Cover

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.

About the Author

Joseph R. Gusfield is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, San Diego. He has lectured and taught throughout the world and served as a consultant to numerous governmental bodies on issues of alcoholism and drunk driving. The former president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the Pacific Sociological Association, and the Alcohol and Temperance History Group, he is the author and editor of many books, including Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement and The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking-Driving and the Symbolic Order.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0299149307
• ISBN 13: 9780299149307
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 384