The Uncommon Ground: Drink-drivers' Self-presentations and Accounting of Drinking and Driving

• In Event: 477 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 14. Substance Use

Abstract

The paper considers the methodological conditions of the data generation process by analysing self-presentations and accounting of DUI among three socially diverse DUI-offenders; two women and one man. The interviewees’ accounts of drinking and driving are conceived of as “accounting”, i.e., symbolic interpretations of their former actions constructed in interaction with the interviewer in a specific interview setting. One 28-year-old interviewee uses the interview to close-in on his long-term problem with alcohol consumption. Another interviewee presents herself as a very responsible woman and struggles with admitting that she has been drinking and driving frequently over many years. The third interviewee refuses to conceive herself as a drink-driver and rather than taking responsibility for the fact that she has been convicted of DUI she tries to “free” herself in the interview by blaming her social surroundings.

Author

• Lars Fynbo, Danish National Centre for Social Research