Taking Stock: Method and Theory in Cross‐National Research on Alcohol a

When cocktail party conversation turns to the subject of alcohol, it is not uncommon to hear boastful comparisons about the drinking prowess of different ethnic, religious, or national groups. The Irish are thought to drink more than the Scandinavians, American Indians more than Japanese-Americans, Catholics more than Methodists. The incidence of alcohol-related problems among such groups is also thought to vary, presumably because of the biological or cultural characteristics shared by their members. The comparison of the drinking habits of different cultural groups has also been a favorite pastime of armchair alcohologists. Greek writers often contrasted the abstemious Spartans with the intemperate Athenians. Fra Salibene of Parma, an incisive thirteenthcentury ethnographer of European drinking customs, noted that the “French and English make it their business to drink full goblets; wherefore the French have bloodshot eyes. . . . We must forgive the English if they are glad to drink good wine when they can, for they have but little wine in their own country” (quoted in Coulton, 1908). With the emergence of the world temperance movement in the nineteenth century, international comparisons of drinking patterns and alcohol problems took on new meaning. The American temperance crusade of the 1830s spread quickly to England and the Continent through the medium of the transatlantic community of evangelical Christians. Their cause was given impetus and justification by the publication of international statistics on production, consumption and problems issues that became common themes in the temperance literature. One use to which these comparative statistics were put was epidemiology, the understanding of how alcohol problems are distributed among different population groups. Another purpose was to monitor trends in alcohol consumption and to evaluate the impact of alcohol-control policies in different countries. For example, at the Fourth International Congress against the Abuse of Alcoholic Beverages, the Rev. L. L. Rochat presented liquor-consumption data from six European countries between 1870 and 1892. He argued that countries with active total abstinence societies (Sweden, Switzerland, England, Norway) had effectively suppressed liquor consumption, while those without temperance organizations (Belgium, France) had witnessed a dramatic increase in the drinking of spirits. Yet another common theme in the early comparative studies of alcohol is suggested in the title of Dr. N. S. Davis’ address to the Seventh International Congress against the Abuse of Alcoholic Beverages (1900): “Is there any Causative or Etiological relation between the extensive use of alcoholic drinks and the continued increase of epilepsy, imbecility and insanity, both mental and moral in all the countries of Europe and