Kneale, James; (2022) Expanding intoxication: what can drinking places (c.1850-1950) tell us about other intoxicants and other sites? In: Hunt, Geoffrey and Antin, Tamar and Frank, Vibeke Asmussen, (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Intoxicants and Intoxication. Routledge: Abingdon, UK.

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Abstract

Drinking places like pubs and taverns have received a fair amount of attention from historians over the last 50 years, generating much discussion about their role in societies around the world. This chapter sets out to expand our understandings of drinking places in three ways. First, it considers them as sites for the consumption of other intoxicants besides alcohol. Second, it follows recent calls for a broader understanding of intoxication, drawing connections between intoxicants and some of the social characteristics of drinking places: publicness, sociability, commensality and hospitality. Third, the chapter will suggest expanding our engagement with these sites beyond our usual focus on drink and drinkers, while at the same time extending the limits of drinking places themselves. In considering these possibilities, the chapter engages with recent work in the fields of material culture and ‘new materialisms’, seeing intoxicating sites as places where new things might emerge. The chapter begins by considering those intoxicants that were consumed alongside alcohol in drinking places in this period. The second section considers the relationship between intoxicants and the public sphere, opening up a discussion of the qualities and social character of these sites. The third asks an important question, developing this investigation of the character of drinking places: if pubs, cafes and bookshops can all be ‘good places’, as Ray Oldenburg described them (1989), how important was intoxication? The fourth section of the chapter suggests that examining the material cultures of intoxication might show us how social relations between consumers are actively made, so that cultural values like commensality, hospitality and generosity are materialised or objectified. Concentrating on those practices that involve gifting (Mauss, 1990), it’s clear that this may also be a central part of what made these places ‘good’. Intoxicants, collective social practices of consumption and their associated meanings, and material environments came together to make these sites important for their patrons. The fifth section re-thinks drinking places, intoxicants and intoxication by drawing upon expanded senses of place, materiality and meaning, and the sixth further expands our sense of the limits of drinking places by considering the mobility of objects associated with drink and drinking sites. In conclusion, the chapter demonstrates that drinking places can tell us a good deal about other intoxicants and other sites.

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