Social History of Alcohol in East Africa, 1850-1998

The main aims of this project were:<br> To re-examine the historical patterns of change in the making and drinking of alcohol in East Africa, and to use this history of change as a tool for studying wider debates concerning control of resources within the household, and for exploring ideas of what constitutes proper 'moral' behaviour.<br> To improve the current understanding of economic change in East Africa, with particular regard to conflicts over resources, along lines of gender and age.<br> To explore changing notions of obligation and morality, and of the family.<br> To produce new data on current patterns of domestic alcohol production and consumption in East Africa.<br> The study was undertaken within the context that newspapers, officials and religious leaders in East Africa often talked of how the consumption of alcohol had increased, and changed in the last 150 years. They described a past of 'integrated' alcohol consumption in which liquor was given and consumed in limited, culturally-defined settings and in which drinking was not problematic. They compared this with a present which they characterised as one of widespread excess and moral breakdown, in which alcohol had become a commodity and social relationships had been fractured. This image of change has been taken up by several academic writers. This 'crisis' model has developed alongside a quite different school of academic literature on alcohol in Africa as a whole, which has been largely the work of historians and which has, for the colonial period in particular, been built around a simple control-resistance model which celebrates the sale of locally-made alcohol as a field for economic and social challenges to state and capital.<br> <br>

本项目的主要目标如下：<br>重新审视东非酒精酿造与饮用的历史变迁模式，并以这一变迁史为工具，研究关于家庭内部资源控制的更广泛争论，以及探索构成恰当"道德"行为的观念。<br>深化对东非经济变迁的现有认知，尤其关注基于性别与年龄维度的资源冲突问题。<br>探究义务、道德及家庭观念的演变。<br>生成关于东非当前家庭酒精生产与消费模式的新数据。<br>本研究的开展背景是：东非的报纸、官员及宗教领袖常谈及过去150年间酒精消费的增长与变迁。他们将过去描述为"整合式"酒精消费时期——酒类在有限的、文化界定的场景中被赠予和饮用，且饮酒并无问题；并将其与当下对比，称当前是普遍过量与道德崩溃的时代，酒精已沦为商品，社会关系亦遭割裂。这一变迁图景已被若干学术作者采纳。这种"危机"模型的形成，与非洲酒精研究领域中另一截然不同的学术流派并行——后者主要由历史学家构建，尤其针对殖民时期，其核心是一种简单的"控制-抵抗"模型，该模型将本地酿造酒精的销售视为对国家与资本发起经济及社会挑战的场域。