Embodied geographies of alcohol and the weekend in the Bega Valley, New South Wales, Australia

This paper focuses on embodied geographies of alcohol to rethink the weekend. We explore the weekend as it is produced via the mutually constitutive relationships between time, space and bodies. Drawing on qualitative research undertaken in Bega, New South Wales, Australia with 23 young women, we offer a critical analysis of how alcohol shapes the bodily, social, spatial and temporal boundaries that interpose knowing the weekend. We illustrate how alcohol mediates the felt and performative dimension of the embodied geographies that configure the weekend. We argue that young women’s bodies and spaces may be understood as sites where the pleasures and pain of alcohol may rupture or make resilient bodily, spatial, social or temporal boundaries through which the weekend makes sense.