Breaking the Ashes: The Culture of Illicit Liquor in Sri Lanka

by Michele Ruth Gamburd

Overview

"I'm going to break the ashes," yelled one daily drinker to another as their paths crossed early in the morning in the Sri Lankan village Michele Ruth Gamburd calls Naeaegama. The drinker's cryptic comment compared the warming power of alcohol—in the form of his first shot of kasippu, the local moonshine—with the rekindled heat of a kitchen fire. As the adverse effects of globalization have brought poverty to many areas of the world, more people, particularly men, have increased their use and abuse of alcohol. Despite Buddhist prohibitions against the consumption of mind-altering substances, men in Naeaegama are drinking more, at a younger age, and the number of problem drinkers has begun to grow.In Breaking the Ashes, Gamburd explores the changing role of alcohol. Her account is populated with lively characters, many of whom Gamburd has known since visiting the village for the first time as a child. In wonderfully clear prose Gamburd offers readers an understanding of the cultural context for social and antisocial alcohol consumption, insight into everyday and ceremonial drinking in Naeaegama, and an overview of the production of illicit alcohol. Breaking the Ashes includes a discussion of the key economic aspects that fuel conflicts between husbands and wives, moonshine-makers and police. Addressing Western and indigenous ways to conceptualize and treat alcohol dependence, Gamburd explores the repercussions—at the family as well as the community level—of alcohol's abuse.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801474323
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	10/13/2008
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Michele Ruth Gamburd is Professor of Anthropology at Portland State University. She is the author of The Kitchen Spoon's Handle, also from Cornell.

What People are Saying About This

Dwight Heath

An incredible illustration of the many strengths of qualitative social research, this volume explores holistically a topic that, in theory, shouldn't exist—moonshine, its uses, meanings, and outcomes in a Buddhist village. And it does so in great descriptive detail, making real people and events come alive with humanistic sensitivity and even some salient cross-cultural comparisons. Breaking the Ashes is both outstanding ethnography and a novel and significant contribution to alcohol studies.

Carla Risseeuw

In her original and sometimes playful ethnography of drinking, Michele Ruth Gamburd analyzes male cameraderie, the shaping of social networks, and the specific social space created by the drunkard. Gamburd both reflects on the Euro-American notion of personhood and Sinhalese cultural values regarding the loss of control.

David Suggs

Breaking the Ashes is a fine and remarkable ethnography; it is well written and richly detailed. It covers the contrast between jolly drinking and problem drinking. Michele Ruth Gamburd addresses the gendered structure of consumption, from the political economy of illicit alcohol production to the balanced reciprocity and bonds of friendship in the exchanges of local drinkers, from the biomedical discourse on alcoholism as a disease to an ethnomedical ideology of alcohol dependence and community-based interventions. The people whose stories are told here range from tricksters who escape arrest in police raids and taverns and those unfortunate drunks whose decisions cost them their lives. I recommend this very interesting work highly, both as an addition to a research library and for its excellent potential as a text to be taught in the classroom.

Editorial Reviews

"Breaking the Ashes is a fine and remarkable ethnography; it is well written and richly detailed. It covers the contrast between jolly drinking and problem drinking. Michele Ruth Gamburd addresses the gendered structure of consumption, from the political economy of illicit alcohol production to the balanced reciprocity and bonds of friendship in the exchanges of local drinkers, from the biomedical discourse on alcoholism as a disease to an ethnomedical ideology of alcohol dependence and community-based interventions. The people whose stories are told here range from tricksters who escape arrest in police raids and taverns and those unfortunate drunks whose decisions cost them their lives. I recommend this very interesting work highly, both as an addition to a research library and for its excellent potential as a text to be taught in the classroom."--David Suggs, Kenyon College

"An incredible illustration of the many strengths of qualitative social research, this volume explores holistically a topic that, in theory, shouldn't exist--moonshine, its uses, meanings, and outcomes in a Buddhist village. And it does so in great descriptive detail, making real people and events come alive with humanistic sensitivity and even some salient cross-cultural comparisons. Breaking the Ashes is both outstanding ethnography and a novel and significant contribution to alcohol studies."--Dwight Heath, Brown University

"In her original and sometimes playful ethnography of drinking, Michele Ruth Gamburd analyzes male cameraderie, the shaping of social networks, and the specific social space created by the drunkard. Gamburd both reflects on the Euro-American notion of personhood and Sinhalese cultural values regarding the loss of control."--Carla Risseeuw, University of Leiden

From the Publisher