Armidale’s Skeptics In The Pub usually encourages having “a drink and a think” but the April 16 meeting at the Welder’s Dog Brewery will be “a think about drink …… and drugs”.
The way alcohol is imagined and governed has shaped the nation’s history – from the 1808 Rum Rebellion, to the fifty years of the Six O’Clock Swill after the First World War.
The UNE’s Dr Matthew Allen will show how important alcohol, as a drug, has been in Australia from the very beginning of the colony to the present day.
Using alcohol as an example, he will examine our skewed and illogical thinking on drugs in general.
Dr Allen is a Senior Lecturer in Historical Criminology at the University of New England.
His research concentrates on early New South Wales and the role of alcohol in Australia’s unique transition from a penal colony to a settler colonial democracy.
His monograph, Drink and Democracy: Alcohol and the Political Imaginary in Colonial Australia, will be published later this year by Canada’s McGill- Queens University Press.
“At Skeptics In The Pub, I will analyse alcohol as our most important drug to show why we should be more sceptical about the way we stigmatise, medicalise and criminalise drug use in our society,” Dr Allen said.
“Using the history of alcohol as an illustration, I will call for an essential scepticism about drugs and will examine the simplistic boundaries we have created between legal and illegal, normal and deviant.
“For example, forms of opiate that are chemically identical can be either a a life-saving medicine or the symbol of vicious criminality.
“Alcohol was and remains a vital and powerful substance, a taxable commodity, an industrial product, subject to strict control of its sale and consumption.
“Yet it is a drug fundamental to many forms of social interaction. It symbolises bonds of allegiance and solidarity and it marks the transition between work and play.
“Drinking is good for thinking – about or society and its rules.”
Skeptics In The Pub is open to everyone and is free, although a gold coin donation is appreciated.
There is no need to book. Arrive at 6pm and order drinks, a Welder’s Dog gourmet pizza or bar snacks, and settle back for the presentation.
WEDNESDAY APRIL 16
Welder’s Dog Brewery
103 Beardy St, Armidale
Free and open to everyone
(*gold coin donation appreciated)
Drink, Drugs and Democracy
- 5.30pm: Order and pay for a gourmet Welder’s Dog pizza or tasty bar snack and buy some drinks from the well-stocked bar.
- 7pm: Presentation by UNE’s Senior Lecturer in Historical Criminology Dr Matthew Allen.
- Topic: Drink, Drugs and Democracy. A thought-provoking and comical look at alcohol, as a drug, in Australia’s history. An incisive and witty critique of our society’s skewed and illogical thinking. A clear-eyed look at the fuzzy boundaries marking the legal, the illegal, the normal and the deviant.