2014 Addiction Research and Theory, April 2014; 22(2): 126–136 Copyright ß 2014 Informa UK Ltd. ISSN: 1606-6359 print/1476-7392 online DOI: 10.3109/16066359.2013.785533 Masculinities of drinking as described by Swedish and Finnish age-based focus groups Jukka To ¨ rro ¨ nen & Filip Roumeliotis Centre for Social Research on Alcohol and Drugs (SoRAD), Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden (Received 8 November 2012; revised 27 February 2013; accepted 28 February 2013) This article deals with masculinities in drinking by analysing how focus groups from Sweden and Finland discuss male and female drinking in diverse drinking situations. It argues that women’s strengthened independency in working life, their increased drinking in domestic and public settings, and their entrance into drinking situations that used to be male dominated have challenged the cultural domination of traditional masculinity in drinking and made drinking styles a more diverse and heterogeneous phenomenon within and across gender groups. The analysis shows that the focus groups construct masculinities in which manhood is associated with creativity, depression, violence, virility, fla ˆ neurism, nurture, homosociability, busi- ness masculinity and weakness. These masculinities oppose, interlace or intermingle with femininities and change the shape depending on the situation, drinking company and the perspective of the viewer. Their broad spectrum shows that, in Finland and Sweden, there are multiple independent and strong drinking masculinities and femininities, none of which is given a self-evident hegemony over the others. Thus, the study points out that the mascu- linities and femininities of today are not reducible to any single hierarchy of dominant and subordinate masculinities. For the current hegemonic masculi- nities, it seems to be typical that they vary locally, regionally and globally, intersect in specific ways with class, age and generation, and form multidi- mensional, paradoxical and tension-driven relation- ships with each other and with femininities. Keywords: Drinking, masculinities, focus groups INTRODUCTION The ability to hold one’s drink has traditionally been an important element of masculinity. In many cultures, heavy drinking has symbolized three key aspects of traditional manhood: unconventionality, risk taking and aggressiveness (Lemle & Mishkind, 1989, p. 216). Since the 1960s, Swedish and Finnish women have become involved in heavy drinking situations with increasing frequency. This tendency towards increased female heavy drinking has commonly been portrayed in the media and interpreted by the research as a masculinization of women’s drinking behavior (see Holmila & Raitasalo, 2005; Roumeliotis & To ¨rro ¨nen, 2012). In this article, we do not subscribe to this explan- ation. Rather than assuming that heavy drinking refers naturally to male behavior, we postulate that it is a cultural model that may develop into a feminine, class-based, generational or ethnic habit (Tigerstedt & To ¨rro ¨nen, 2007). Intoxication-oriented drinking becomes masculine or feminine, upper class or working class, old-fashioned or modern depending on how it is articulated and embedded as part of the texture of specific sociocultural situations, their social relations, styles of drinking and gendered dynamics. When we question the masculinization of women’s drinking habits in Finland and Sweden, we also, by extension, question the hegemonic dominance of a masculine heavy drinking style in these countries. Instead of assuming that there exists one form of masculinity of drinking that dominates over all others (Connell, 1995), we assume that women’s strengthened independency in working life, their increased drinking in domestic and public settings, and their entrance into drinking situations that used to be male dominated have challenged the cultural domination of traditional masculinity in drinking and made drinking styles a Correspondence: Jukka To ¨rro ¨nen, Centre for Social Research on Alcohol and Drugs (SoRAD), Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden. Tel: +46 73 707 87 50. Fax: +46 8 674 76 86. E-mail: jukka.torronen@sorad.su.se 126 Addict Res Theory Downloaded from informahealthcare.com by University of Stockholm on 01/13/15 For personal use only.