Rights statement: The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Sociology, 53 (4), 2018, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2018 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Sociology page: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/SOC on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/
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Final published version
Licence: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Identity refusal
T2 - Distancing from non-drinking in a drinking culture
AU - Banister, Emma
AU - Piacentini, Maria Grazia
AU - Grimes, Anthony
N1 - The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Sociology, 53 (4), 2018, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2018 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Sociology page: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/SOC on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/
PY - 2019/8/1
Y1 - 2019/8/1
N2 - Following Scott’s recent sociology of nothing, we focus on the process of non-identification, wherein young adults seek to manage the risk of being marked by their non-participation in an important cultural practice. Drawing on qualitative interviews with undergraduate students we develop two overall identity refusal positions (resistance and othering), through which informants seek to disengage with the collective identity of the non-drinker. These positions are underlined by four categories of identity talk: denial and temporal talk (distancing through resistance), and disconnect and concealment talk (distancing through othering), which are used to repudiate non-drinking as culturally and personally meaningful respectively. We contribute understandings of how identities can be performed through active omission, developing Scott’s conceptualization and demonstrating how this can be a potentially planful process, depending on the extent to which individuals credit a particular object or activity with being a ‘something’.
AB - Following Scott’s recent sociology of nothing, we focus on the process of non-identification, wherein young adults seek to manage the risk of being marked by their non-participation in an important cultural practice. Drawing on qualitative interviews with undergraduate students we develop two overall identity refusal positions (resistance and othering), through which informants seek to disengage with the collective identity of the non-drinker. These positions are underlined by four categories of identity talk: denial and temporal talk (distancing through resistance), and disconnect and concealment talk (distancing through othering), which are used to repudiate non-drinking as culturally and personally meaningful respectively. We contribute understandings of how identities can be performed through active omission, developing Scott’s conceptualization and demonstrating how this can be a potentially planful process, depending on the extent to which individuals credit a particular object or activity with being a ‘something’.
KW - Abstention
KW - Alcohol
KW - Consumption
KW - Identity
KW - Non-drinkers
KW - Nothing
KW - Omission
U2 - 10.1177/0038038518818761
DO - 10.1177/0038038518818761
M3 - Journal article
VL - 53
SP - 744
EP - 761
JO - Sociology
JF - Sociology
SN - 0038-0385
IS - 4
ER -