Anna Petran

I was born in 1981 in Göttingen (Germany) and studied social science in Kiel, Hanover and Bologna. In 2009 I graduated with a thesis about ‘Gender Construction and Bodily Experiences in Show Jumping’. Since 2010 I am a fellow at the Gender Initiativkolleg (GIK) ‘Gender, Violence and Agency in the Era of Globalization’ (University of Vienna). The working title of my PhD-project is ‘Young binge drinkers between self-destruction and self-empowerment’. My areas of interest are: body sociology, gender studies, social constructionism, and qualitative research. Guest Researcher at the Center of Research on Addiction, Control and Governance (CEACG) at the University of Helsinki in 2012.

Current publications:

Gewalt und Widerstand: Gesellschaftliche Strukturen, diskursive Normen und körperliches Handeln, in: Gender Initiativkolleg (Hg.): Gewalt und Handlungsmacht. Queer_Feministische Perspektiven, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., 2012; und mit Johanna Louise Thiel:  Weiterentwicklungen und (neue) Widersprüche – eine Einleitung zu queer_feministischen Gewaltdebatten, in: ebd.

(Violence and Resistance: Societal structures, discursive norms and bodily action. In: Gender Initiativkolleg (GIK) (eds.), Violence and Agency. Queer_Feminist Perspectives. Frankfurt/M/New York: Campus, 69-83 and together with Johanna Louise Thiel: Development and (new) contradictions: an introduction in feminist debates on violence. In: ibid., 9-27.)

PhD-Project
"Binge-drinking" as an adolescent practice of self-creation

In my thesis, I would like to examine the phenomenon of binge drinking as a practice of construction and experience of the adolescent self at the turn of the twentieth century. In 2003, the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) points out an increase in binge drinking practice among European youth. As a new, highly risky practice of intoxication, binge drinking differs in crucial points from drug consumption patterns previously studied. The actors in the national health care systems force and use the public's excitement about binge drinking to enforce the notion of risk awareness and individual responsibility in the population. The adolescent's refusal sheds light on a central problem of neo-liberal power techniques: the paradox of  voluntary compulsion. The new trend towards risky practices among teenagers raises the question of how the society's compulsion to individually responsible invention of the self effects practices of individualization at adolescence. Following the examination of contemporary ways of subjectivization and the body-sociological elaborations about the performance of bodily practices, I will consider adolescent practices of body, self and consumption. The central question of my thesis is: How does the practice of binge drinking act on and stylize social norms? Through a group discussion, and, if applicable, subsequent individual interviews I hope to arrive at a deeper understanding about the topics of fun, success, freedom/individual responsibility, and gender that have been brought up by previous studies. For sociology, the study of binge drinking promises enlightening views on present bodily practices of collectivization and individualization of young people.

Contact
Email: anna.petran [at] univie.ac.at