The basic research relevance in practices of youthful binge-drinking - Ways within and without youthful binge-drinking - biographical developments and peer-contexts

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Barbara Stauber
• Subject Area: Education Systems and Educational Institutions
• Term: from 2010 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 190106858

The proposal >The basic research relevance in practices of youthful binge-drinking< is meant as a follow-up of the DFG-project >Ways within and without youthful binge-drinking<, which has explored how individual drinking biographies and constellations of informal peer-groups did develop in the context of youthful binge-drinking. The study with its 3 waves of interviews had a horizontal and a longitudinal perspective in which the material has been analysed. New, up to then scarcely discussed aspects in the context of alcohol consumption could be found, with regard to biographical context, peer context, gender aspects and salutogentic relevance. During data analysis, by using the Documentary Method, it became clear, that the up to then found practices are not situated on the same level but have to be distinguished: there is one group of presented practices, and another group of practices of presentation. Whereas the first group gives us interesting insights into practices of youthful drinking and their relationship to other aspects of youth transitions, the second group raises general questions with regard to coping with new demands in youthlife, and therefore is of basic research concern. The aim of the follow-up project thus is progressing from topic-related-knowledge (on practices of binge-drinking) to basic research knowledge (on contextualizing these practices and their representations, biographically as well as on the level of current societal conditions of growing up). For achieving this main target we regard the second group (typologies on self-presentation with regard to alcohol consumption) as highly promising. The theoretical potential of this second group of typologies will be explored by using a new methodological approach of Nohl (2013), which implies relational typologies and multilevel comparison. In this sense, we expect potentials for systematically generalizing some of these practices with regard to late modern transitions from youth to adulthood (Stauber/Walther 2013) and beyond: the way alcohol consumption is functionalized in selected youth biographies probably indicates how the highly ambivalent demands in youth life are coped with. To make visible the need for supporting youth transitions is pointing the more general social relevance of the project.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants