Alcoholic Beverages as Infrastructure of Life and Harm Reduction of Alcohol Drinking
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Abstract
The main objective of this research is to study the social meaning and materiality of alcoholic beverages in the social life world of drinkers. This research is qualitative research, conducting fieldwork at a community in the Northern of Thailand. Data were collected through interviews and both participatory and non-participatory observation. The findings reveal that alcoholic beverages constitute an integral component of daily life in the studied communities. Alcoholic beverages operate as infrastructure in two dimensions: (1) material infrastructure, in terms of their effects in enabling villagers to relax and alleviate physical discomfort after work; and (2) affective infrastructure, in which alcoholic beverages function as a medium for the formation and maintenance of social relationships within the community. As alcoholic beverage is the infrastructure of people’s lives, it is difficult to implement measures to remove alcohol from people’s daily lives. If drinkers decide to reduce, abstain, or quit drinking alcohol, it means that other sub-elements under the infrastructure of their social life will be affected as well. Harm reduction techniques are therefore the strategies of choice for drinkers when they still have to rely on alcohol as the infrastructure of their lives. Expanding the approach to alcoholic beverages as an infrastructure of life broadens the perspective on alcohol beyond its characterization as merely a pathological factor in disease. Moreover, the experiential knowledge of how to reduce harm among drinkers and people in the community also shows that how to apply or combine such knowledge with other professional knowledge in order to further develop measures related to the control and reduction of harm from alcohol consumption.
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บทความที่ได้รับการตีพิมพ์เป็นลิขสิทธิ์ของวารสารมนุษยศาสตร์และสังคมศาสตร์ มหาวิทยาลัยอุบลราชธานี
ข้อความที่ปรากฏในบทความแต่ละเรื่องในวารสารวิชาการเล่มนี้เป็นความคิดเห็นส่วนตัวของผู้เขียนแต่ละท่านไม่เกี่ยวข้องกับมหาวิทยาลัยอุบลราชธานี และคณาจารย์ท่านอื่นๆในมหาวิทยาลัยฯ แต่อย่างใด ความรับผิดชอบองค์ประกอบทั้งหมดของบทความแต่ละเรื่องเป็นของผู้เขียนแต่ละท่าน หากมีความผิดพลาดใดๆ ผู้เขียนแต่ละท่านจะรับผิดชอบบทความของตนเองแต่ผู้เดียว
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