This link between drink and fellowship remains a powerful one today in cultures across the world. The anthropologist Gerald Mars, in a study of the social dynamics of a group of longshoremen in Newfoundland, notes, “When early in fieldwork I asked a group of longshoremen why someone who was married, young, fit and hardworking—all well regarded qualities in a workmate—was nonetheless an outside man, the answer given was that he was a ‘loner.’ When I queried what form this took I was told, ‘He doesn’t drink—that’s what I mean by a loner.’”90
