Contemporary Adulthood And The Night-time Economy

Unpicking the lives of dedicated drinkers, hedonists and adult consumers, Contemporary Adulthood and the Night-Time Economy examines the emergence of new forms of cultural and aesthetic attachment to alcohol and reconsiders the way we think about and use our city centres. The first generation to experience the new experiential markets of the night-time economy are now in their thirties and forties, but have been largely neglected in research on alcohol consumption and night-time leisure practices.

While the general assumption appears to be that such individuals simply grow up and grow out of excessive alcohol consumption and adopt the identity of a respectable adult, Contemporary Adulthood and the Night-Time Economy highlights how the late night city centre continues to act as a significant draw and as a means of examining the relationship between consumer capitalism and the erosion of traditional adult identity.

For committed consumers the night-time economy represents part of a powerful trend that is destabilising identity, cultivating narcissism and infantilising a generation. Review: Avoiding both cliche-ridden hysteria, and the over-ripe products of redundant theoretical silos, Oliver Smith has produced a beautifully written, carefully nuanced account of post-industrial leisure that normalises and explains the contemporary night-time economy.

Read it before going to the pub. - Dick Hobbs, Professor of Sociology, University of Essex, UK This book is a must read for anyone wanting to make sense of the relationship between 'extended' adolescence, alcohol consumption, and the night-time economy (NTE). Based on a thorough analysis of changes and trends in the NTE, and careful ethnographic observations and interviews with young adults, this book theoretically and empirically redefines the phenomenon of 'going out' in contemporary society. - Robert Hollands, Professor of Sociology, Newcastle University, UK In this superb ethnographic study of Britain's commodified and consumerised night-time economy, Oliver Smith bravely ignores the disciplinary injunction to identify cultural resistance blossoming across post-crash capitalism's arid landscape.

Instead he finds anxiety, half-hearted hedonism and an enduring sense of lack among a community of thirty-somethings unwilling to give up the preoccupations of youth and unable to identify anything more appealing than another weekend trawling the pubs and clubs. Smith makes excellent use of critical theory to address the pressures that bear down upon so many young people today.

He treads carefully around the piles of puke and discarded beer cans to offer a trenchant and rigorous ethnographic analysis of depressive hedonism and ideological incorporation. It is not a happy story, but it is one that everyone interested in the reality of contemporary culture must digest. I can't recommend it more highly. - Simon Winlow, Professor of Criminology, Teesside University, UK