IMBIBED IDENTITIES DRINKING, PEOPLE AND

PLACE IN SALT RIVER

Tony Grogan

EVAN BLAKE

MSocSci candidate,

Department of Environmental and

Geographical Sciences

University of Cape Town

Supervised by Dr Shari Daya

ESRC and DFID funded, KCL and ACC UCT headed project

Everyday understandings of the reality of alcohol and drinking

Multidisciplinary, citywide project

Master research as one part of this project

Central notion: how people co -create place and social identity

through drinking and drinking spaces

Using Salt River (SR) as a very specific lens to interrogate this

relationship

Presentation: brief outline of drinking literature and its

relation to the social -scape of Salt River

PROJECT INTRO

Drinking as a multidisciplinary approach in geog: new frontier

Social side:

Political-economy perspective: need to critically examine political implications of drinking in context

Social-cultural perspective: very contextual understandings of the relationships between people, space and drinking, avoids generalisation of place – provides the theoretical basis for this research

What is special about drinking and drinking spaces that creates and shapes identity, culture and belonging to a particular place?

WHY DRINKING?

Alcohol and drinking as cultural in of itself

“integral in the manifestation of culture”, forming the bedrock of ethnic, national identity

Drinking as “an act of identification, of dif ferentiation, and integration… of the projections of homogeneity and heterogeneity”

Drinking as a central element of individual and group identification – practice of dif ferentiation – drinking places as where these identifications, meanings are shared, disputed, reproduced. (O‟Carrol 2005)

Intoxicating nature of alcohol – double effect: escaping everyday realities and making, adopting new identities with the loss of personal and social inhibitions – group element to this (Jayne et al 2011)

DRINKING AND IDENTITY

What is a drinking place and space?

Large amount of existing l it on alcohol and drinking – place merely as a backdrop

Call by social geographers to re -center the debate on place

Some existing cultural l it on drinking begins to address this relationship (Wilson 2005) – place is discussed in single, specific case studies.

Set of social urban researchers offering new ways to think about drinking spaces and identity – the motil ities between drinking places and spaces

Notion of the urban as a „machine‟ that generates social -spatial networks – drinking places as nodes (Latham 2004)

Example of binge drinking places in England and the comfort and discomfort felt and how space and place is developed

BRINGING IN PLACE

Location: south of the city bowl, nestled in between Observatory and Woodstock

Interesting and rich social history, connected to slavery, CT‟s growing port industry and industrial growth

SR as quite a unique place: distinct mix

Relationship between the formal and informal sectors – point of intersection

Transient population

Gentrification and urban renewal in juxtaposition to areas of urban poverty

Distinct atmosphere that is invoked by people who have a relationship with the area – “Salt of the earth”

Interesting history of drinking in the area – Junction Hotel and Blue Buildings

DRINKING IN SALT RIVER

Drinking spaces and places in SR parallel the distinct social

mix and the sense of place

How do people understand these places and spaces? Who do

they serve?

Relationship between transiency, drinking and place in SR

What are the notions of place that people living and moving

through SR create and experience through drinking and, also

importantly, not drinking?