Emaj Uddin

Cross-cultural Alcohol and Arrack Drinking: Empirical Findings on Arrack Drinking Patterns Among Muslim, Hindu, Santal and Oraon Communities from Bangladesh Emaj Uddin

Alcohol drinking across the world and arrack drinking in Indian sub-continent, including Bangladesh are seriously debatable. Most of the books written on the issues are culture-specific. Based on demographic, social and psycho-cultural stress theories and its hypotheses this book focuses on cross- cultural alcohol and arrack drinking patterns across the ethnic communities. In order to provide empirical support primary data on arrack drinking were collected from Muslim, Hindu, Santal and Oraon communities' drinkers from Bangladesh. Cross-cultural analysis suggests that arrack drinking patterns, as were alcohol drinking patterns, were significantly different associated with socio-demographic, socio- cultural status and social stress among the communities' drinkers. The book would help students, researchers and scientists in social and behavioral sciences to understand cross-cultural alcohol and arrack drinking patterns across the world. The results would also help policy-makers and practitioners to design cross-cultural mental health policy and programs to solve the problem studied.