Leisure Time and 'Alcoholic Interactions': Rites, Norms and Action Strategies among Young Drinkers

This chapter examines the cultural patterns related to the consumption of alcohol by young people, through reconstruction and analysis of sociological drinking rituals practised by them. The central hypothesis of the work is that the drinking ritual is one of the privileged forms of "togetherness" of young people, having important functions of social integration and differentiation on the basis of specific norms and values. The data had been collected by a qualitative research (January 2005-January 2007) conducted in a town in the northeast of Italy, Trento. Drinking alcoholics in group manifests itself as a rite of passage (Arnold Van Gennep) and rites of institution (Pierre Bourdieu). In this way, the rituals of drinking become a symbolic border that separates the elect ones from those that are not, producing processes of stratification and social differentiation (status, gender, etc.) that find specific norms and values of reference in the practices of “togetherness drinking”.