Drinking Bouts: Motivations, Resistance, and Transgression

The chapter provides in-depth analyses of the different forms of drinking games that young men and women play in contemporary Nigeria, the contexts where gaming occurs, the types of alcoholic beverages used in drinking bouts and the motivations for game playing. It draws on data from adolescents and young adults (students and nonstudents). Young people were found to be highly knowledgeable about different drinking games such as Card, Chance, Competition, and Extreme consumption games, among others, and many shared personal experiences of participating in several games. Fun-seeking, the quest for monetary prizes and free drinks, and the construction of identities motivated young people’s participation in drinking games. Participants described multiple incidents of heavy drinking, intoxication, and loss of control, which transformed their consuming selves into transgressive selves, especially in the light of mainstream norms. Despite these norms, most of them described such incidents of heavy drinking and inebriation in a positive light, noting that they were pleasurable and fun. Young men’s and women’s drinking bouts may constitute a means of resisting social structures that encourage patriarchal dominance and inequalities, particularly norms that would otherwise constrain their drinking. The chapter also analyses how the alcohol industry in Nigeria encourages young people’s transgressive drinking practices by deploying drinking games as a marketing strategy. While promoting and publicising their brands, the alcohol industry organises drinking games on public sites, rewarding game winners with money and free drinks. The chapter argues that this unique and worrisome marketing practice is importing the culture of intoxication into Nigeria and encouraging the transgression of local drinking norms among young people. The chapter concludes by highlighting how drinking bouts and the consumption practices described in the chapter are contributing to the reconfiguration of drinking cultures in Nigeria and the need to urge caution in generalising the decline in youth drinking beyond the contexts where empirical evidence exists.