This volume is an important contribution to our understanding of culture and alcohol in the United States. Its appearance is also a milestone in the history of alcohol studies in American anthropology. Over the last six years, the volume's editors, initially along with Miriam Rodin, have served as the coorganizers of the Alcohol and Drug Study Group of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). In this capacity, they have organized sessions at the AAA and other meetings, greatly strengthened the research network with a regular and informative newsletter, and painstakingly promoted the publication of anthropological work on al cohol and drugs. Appearing just as the responsibility for the Study Group is passed on to others, this book is a fitting emblem of the care and energy with which its editors have built an institutional nexus for alcohol and drug anthropology in North America. The contents of this volume offer a uniquely wide sampling of the diversity of cultural patterns that make up the American experience with alcohol. The collective portrait the editors have assembled extends in several dimensions: through time and history, across such social differ entiations as gender, age-grade, and social class, and through such major social institutions as the church and the family. Clearly the dominant dimension of variation in the material that follows, however, is ethnicity. The book offers us a sampler of unprecedented richness of the different experiences with alcohol of American ethnoreligious groups.

InhaltsangabeI Theoretical and Historical Framework.- 1 Alcohol Belief Systems in a Culturally Pluralistic Society: An Introduction.- 2 Alcoholism: Illness or Disease?.- 3 American Beliefs about Alcoholism: Historical Perspectives on the Medical-Moral Controversy.- 4 Getting on the Program: A Biocultural Analysis of Alcoholics Anonymous.- II Case Studies: Americans of European Heritage.- 5 Acculturated Italian-American Drinking Behavior.- 6 Polish-American Drinking: Continuity and Change.- 7 Jewish Americans and Alcohol: Processes of Avoidance and Definition.- 8 Historical Meanings of Irish-American Drinking.- 9 Appalachia: The Effects of Cultural Values on the Production and Consumption of Alcohol.- III Case Studies: Black Americans.- 10 Ambiguity in Black Drinking Norms: An Ethnohistorical Interpretation.- 11 Alcohol: Cultural Conceptions and Social Behavior among Urban Blacks.- IV Case Studies: American Indians.- 12 Indians, Ethnicity, and Alcohol: Contrasting Perceptions of the Ethnic Self and Alcohol Use.- 13 Navajo "Alcoholism": Drinking, Alcohol Abuse, and Treatment in a Changing Cultural Environment.- V Case Studies: Spanish-Speaking Populations.- 14 Mexican-Americans in California: Intracultural Variation in Attitudes and Behavior Related to Alcohol.- 15 Mexican-American Experience with Alcohol: South Texas Examples.- 16 Alcohol and Hispanics in the Northeast: A Study of Cultural Variability and Adaptation in Alcohol Use.- 17 Alcohol and Adaptation to Exile in Miami's Cuban Population.- VI Case Studies: Asian Groups.- 18 Japanese-American Drinking Patterns.- 19 Alcohol Consumption among Chinese in the United States.- 20 Hmong Drinking Practices in the United States: The Influence of Migration.- VII Case Studies: Religion and Family.- 21 Irish-American Catholics in a West Coast Metropolitan Area.- 22 Alcohol Writ Accountable: The Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C.- 23 Middle-Class Protestants: Alcohol and the Family.- VIII Synthesis and Application.- 24 American Experiences with Alcohol: Commonalities and Contrasts.