Alcohol and humans : a long and social affair
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Bibliographic Information
Alcohol and humans : a long and social affair
Oxford University Press, 2020
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Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Alcohol use has a long and ubiquitous history. The prevailing tendency to view alcohol merely as a 'social problem' or the popular notion that alcohol only serves to provide us with a 'hedonic' high, masks its importance in the social fabric of many human societies both past and present. To understand alcohol use, as a complex social practice that has been exploited by humans for thousands of years, requires cross-disciplinary insight from social/cultural
anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, psychologists, primatologists, and biologists.
This multi-disciplinary volume examines the broad use of alcohol in the human lineage and its wider relationship to social contexts such as feasting, sacred rituals, and social bonding. Alcohol abuse is a small part of a much more complex and social pattern of widespread alcohol use by humans. This alone should prompt us to explore the evolutionary origins of this ancient practice and the socially functional reasons for its continued popularity. The objectives of this volume are: (1) to
understand how and why nonhuman primates and other animals use alcohol in the wild, and its relevance to understanding the social consumption of alcohol in humans; (2) to understand the social function of alcohol in human prehistory; (3) to understand the sociocultural significance of alcohol across human
societies; and (4) to explore the social functions of alcohol consumption in contemporary society.
'Alcohol in Humans' will be fascinating reading for those in the fields of biology, psychology, anthropology, archaeology, as well as those with a broader interest in addiction.
Table of Contents
1: Robin Dunbar and Kimberley Hockings: The puzzle of alcohol consumption
2: Robert Dudley: The natural biology of dietary ethanol, and its implications for primate evolution
3: Matthew Carrigan: Hominoid Ancestry and the Adaptation to Dietary Ethanol
4: Kimberley Hockings, Miho Ito and Gen Yamakoshi: The Importance of Raffia Palm Wine to Coexisting Humans and Chimpanzees
5: Elisa Guerra-Doce: The earliest toasts: archaeological evidence of the social and cultural construction of alcohol in prehistoric Europe
6: Patrick McGovern: Uncorking the past: alcoholic fermentation as humankind's first biotechnology
7: Oliver Dietrich and Laura Dietrich: Rituals and feasting as incentives for cooperative action at early Neolithic Goebekli Tepe
8: Michael Dietler: Alcohol as embodied material culture: anthropological reflections on the deep entanglement of humans and alcohol
9: Lewis Daly: The nature of sweetness: an indigenous fermentation complex in Amazonian Guyana
10: Asher Rosinger and Hilary Bethancourt: Chicha as Water: Traditional Fermented Beer Consumption Among Forager Horticulturalists in the Bolivian Amazon
11: Robin Dunbar: Feasting and its Role in Human Community Formation
12: Angela McShane: Through the drinking glass: a long history of pints and performative materialities in England
13: Kimberley Hockings and Robin Dunbar: Alcohol and humans: reflections and prospects
by "Nielsen BookData"
