Breaking the Ashes: The Culture of Illicit Liquor in Sri Lanka

3. We Don’t Say No: Drinking and Identity

3 We Don’t Say No: Drinking and Identity Consuming things serves as a major way to display one’s identity. Because people require daily nourishment, the consumption of food and drink provides a superb vehicle for symbolic action. Eating and drinking with others makes manifest not only individual but also group identity. In many societies , consuming alcohol takes on special meaning. Heath suggests, “In some circles, drinking almost serves as emblematic of membership in a social group” (2000, 174). Drinking together creates a sense of community within the drinking group and differentiates that group from others.As Dietler observes ,“Drinking serves to mark social categories, boundaries, and identity” (2006, 235). Social rules govern alcohol use, shaping who can drink how much, of which substance, in whose presence, at what times, and at which locations. Within these general parameters, people indicate who they are (and who they are not) by what they ingest and how they behave thereafter. An anthropological approach to drinking patterns examines the everyday practices through which people imagine, embody, perform, and transform their identities. Most people take cultural categories and classifications for granted. For example, English speakers accept common names for the colors of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, and so on) and recognize common types of mammals (dog, cat, horse, elephant, etc.). Children learn the differences that mark separate categories and use those categories without questioning throughout their lives. Most categories, including classifications of colors and mammals, have few political overtones. But studying categories of people places a scholar squarely in the realm of power and politics. Categorizing requires highlighting the differences by which items are classified. It We Don’t Say No 69 takes only a baby step to turn the recognition of difference into an assertion of hierarchy. Where differences sort items into categories, hierarchy strati- fies categories into ranks. Choosing a favorite color or preferring cats to dogs are harmless types of ranking. But ranking categories of people often confers special rights and privileges. Even a short list of identity categories reveals ample ground for the study of hierarchy and inequality; consider race, class, gender, age, occupation, caste, religion, ethnicity, and nationality to name a few. Where the stakes are high, systems of ranking and classification come under continual challenge.Studying the politics of representation around categories of persons reveals ongoing struggles over meaning. Control over cultural categories, which is tantamount to the construction of reality, forms a major dimension of political power (Bourdieu 1977, 165). Raymond Williams defines hegemony as “our shaping perceptions of ourselves and our world” (1977, 110). He suggests that this “lived system of meanings and values”is also“the lived dominance and subordination of particular classes” (1977, 110). The people in power use their power to keep that power, defending systems of classification that support their dominance. But those people whom the system exploits resist this oppression. For this reason, hegemony “has continually to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified. It is also continually resisted, limited, altered, and challenged” (Williams 1977, 112). Examining classificatory systems dealing with human beings reveals complex histories and ongoing social negotiations (Ortner 2006; Scott 1988). Communities develop strategies to create and maintain group identity and delineate and defend boundaries between categories. In this chapter , I look at gender, age, and occupation in Naeaegama, examining how people enact their identities through the use of alcohol and how issues of hierarchy, power, and dominance play out in these consumption practices. Gender Gender forms one of the most basic dimensions of identity.Although“male” and“female”constitute universal human sexual categories, the cultural elaborations of these biological traits vary from place to place and time to time. I define gender as cultural knowledge about biological difference. People use this knowledge to shape their own behavior and judge the behavior of others. In most segments of Sri Lankan society including the village of Naeaegama , properly “feminine” women do not drink. Conversely, full “masculine ” men can drink, do drink, and often must drink. Alcohol consumption provides a medium through which men form powerful social networks. 70 Breaking the Ashes Cross-culturally, alcohol use is closely tied with gender identity, particularly masculinity. For example, Suggs (2001, 242) argues that in Botswana both older and younger men tie their masculinity to the public use of alcohol despite changes in economic conditions, drinking patterns, and concepts of manliness. Among...