The Political Ecology of Alcohol as “Disaster” in South Africa’s Western Cape

1. The Political Ecology of Alcohol as “Disaster” in South Africa’s Western Cape Clare Herrick Department of Geography King’s College London

2. Overview • Why a political ecology of alcohol? • Why alcohol as “disaster”? • Why SA? • The Pressure and Release Model • Policy significance of alcohol as disaster and its mitigation

3. 1. Why Political Ecological approach to alcohol? • Social-ecological analyses of health, interest in role of political economy and environmental factors, yet under-developed engagement with PE • Charts the progression and development of vulnerability • Contextualises problems in social, economic and political sense. • Ensures attention to the role and effect of scale • Post-structuralist attention to the production of health (meanings etc) • Linkage to urban political ecology

4. What kind of punitive ecologies might alcohol reveal and in what ways can political ecology’s concern with ‘political economy and power’ add to our understandings of alcohol-related harm in SA (King 2010, 42)?

5. 2. Why alcohol as “disaster”? • a sudden accident or a natural catastrophe that causes great damage or loss of life • an event or fact that has unfortunate consequences Synonyms: tragedy, ruin, blow, calamity, adversity, catastrophe, failure, debacle. Temporal and spatial parameters.

6. Reducing the harmful use of alcohol... is much more than a public health issue. Indeed, it is a development issue, since the level of risk associated with the harmful use of alcohol in developing countries is much greater than in high income countries where people are increasingly protected by comprehensive laws and interventions (WHO 2010, 3)

7. 3. Why SA? • Distinct and speaks to other low and middle income countries. • Fine line between ‘sociable and unsociable drinking’ (Mager 2010, 3) • Exception in region for its reasonably and relatively well-developed alcohol regulations and a vocal public health lobby (Parry 2010) • High prevalence and incidence of alcohol-related harms layered over both poverty and wealth. • Good case study to explore the ‘social production of vulnerability’ (Blaikie et al, 1994: 21) • Place inextricably linked to unsafe conditions • Vulnerability of non drinkers to actions of drinkers

8. 4. The Pressure and Release Model PAR model serves as a valuable tool for identifying those upstream causes of vulnerability that so often make drinking a rational response to a seemingly irrational or hazardous environment

10. 5. Policy significance of alcohol as disaster? • Identify and bring to the fore the upstream systemic causes of disaster. • Legitimise a move away from focusing on the downstream effects • Draw attention to how model can be “released”

11. 4. Encourage health research to theorise the role of socioeconomic and political inequality 5. Politicise health and risk behaviours “Avoid researchers having to deal with the implications of a critique of the power relations that lie at the heart of contemporary liberal-democratic states” (Labonteet al, 2005, 13) 6. Visualise interconnectedness to counter compartmentalisationof governance 7. Set individual behaviours in context

12. Disaster mitigation? • Improve access to education and increase school retention rates • Women’s drinking increases with education, while men’s drinking decreases with education

13. Encourage more equitable and sustainable paths to development • “Progress” produces complex new vulnerabilities, affluence can spur consumption. • Does development policy itself make room for risk behaviours?

14. 6. Concluding thoughts • Essential to challenge the ways in which we conceptualise alcohol as a "problem“. • How can we bridge impasse between: • Constructivist/ Foucauldianaccounts of problematic nature of drink, drinking and drinkers (i.e. not a real problem) • Individual risk/ risk group profiling of public health (i.e. very real problem of great magnitude and immanence)