‘At home’ with alcohol: new insights into young people’s domestic practices in China

ABSTRACT This article focuses on three types of domestic alcohol practices: drinking at home, accommodating alcohol products, and crafting alcohol drinks. It explores how Chinese young people associate their emotional, creative, and embodied experiences with domestic alcohol consumption and how the social and material space of home shapes their alcohol-related practices, drawing on a qualitative analysis. We argue that domestic alcohol practices shaped by diverse dwelling patterns can (re)produce the socio-cultural structures and multiplex spatiotemporalities of home. This article can contribute to geographies of alcohol in the domestic sphere by a deep investigation of the relationship between people, the socio-material space of home, alcohol-related practices, and the plural meanings of domestic lives from a non-Western perspective. It can also develop the relational geographies of domestic lives through a nuanced understanding of Chinese young people’s relational knowledge, imaginaries and practices that constitute the interplay between alcohol practices and the social, material and atmospheric aspects of home-making.