Alcohol and other substance use in a cross‐cultural perspective

In 1969, MacAndrew and Edgerton published their book Drunken Comportment [1] and with it made a substantial contribution to cultural studies on alcohol. Their argument was that the behavioural effects of alcohol differ greatly from society to society, and they thereby put forth the argument that the effects of alcohol (and one could extend it to use of other substances) are culturally as well as pharmacologically determined. Since the publication of this seminal work, there has been a growing interest among researchers in understanding cultural diversity and how it relates to alcohol and other substance use, which in turn has generated a demand for cross-cultural comparative research studies. While it is well-established nowadays that alcohol and other substance use is shaped by the interplay of psychosocial factors and cultural characteristics, empirical evidence is still rare. This is regrettable since cultural exchange has increased tremendously over the last decades due to globalisation and proliferation of worldwide use of social media. Scholars recently argued [2] that ‘further empirical work in diverse contexts is needed to better understand drinking cultures, their interactions and their entanglement with other factors’ (p. 280). The authors further emphasise that there is a particular need for research outside European and Anglophone countries that explore the microand macro-level characteristics of drinking cultures. The current Special Issue features a series of cross-cultural studies that deal with personspecific factors, but place them within the wider cultural contexts in which use usually takes place.