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This chapter uses the pandemic crisis to explore the social processes that structure happiness and shape fantasies of living a happy life. Considered herein are issues of human potential, gendered and classed possibility and people's differing chances in cultivating a sense of satisfaction in ‘being happy’, despite living through COVID-19. Interviews with 40 Australian women living during lockdown restrictions with varying levels of social, cultural and economic capital are utilised to make sense of women's happiness. Vastly different avenues for achieving a happiness fantasy outside of drinking alcohol were possible for more privileged women than for those in middle and working classes. The classed differences in women's gendered roles in managing emotions (their own and other people's) and their chances to be happy are exemplified in how the changes to the structure of the day that resulted from COVID-19 restrictions did not devastate or cause stress (as we heard from working-class women) or need to be filtered or blocked out using alcohol in order to retain balanced emotions (as we heard from middle-class women) but rather provided an opportunity to celebrate the achievement of their happiness fantasy. We deduce that for those with less agency available to control their chances of living a happy life, prevailing COVID-19 discourse that places happiness within individual responsibility and focuses on personal resilience rather than tending to the conditions for flourishing, is problematic.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, trust considerations have been amplified to levels not seen in most of our lifetimes. We have been asked to trust: epidemiologists, virologists and immunologists in terms of the nature of COVID-19 transmission and vaccinations; politicians, public health planners and policymakers in terms of the need for various responses such as lockdowns, school closures, border closures and economic recovery plans; media sources in terms of accurately reporting COVID-19 news; and members of our community in terms of doing their best to protect themselves and others from COVID-19 transmission, including mask wearing, hand washing, isolating and social/physical distancing. Within this chapter, we attempt to explore the emotional responses to this complex web of trust considerations from qualitative data in a study we conducted amidst the beginning of the pandemic. We then offer some interpretations about how trust considerations may have been altered as a result of living in and through the pandemic. We suggest that trust can be a primary emotion, or at least function that way during times of crises, and be (reflexively) deployed by citizens to manage emotional repertoires during crisis and to position themselves as responsible neoliberal citizens. We add understanding about the strains in horizontal/interpersonal trust relations during a pandemic – where the virus spreading between people necessitates social and relational distancing measures for containment – and inflames questions about whether or not we can trust each other.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the meso-level social forces that influence moderate drinking in young women’s friendship groups through the application of social capital theory.

A qualitative inquiry was undertaken utilising peer-paired and small focus groups to explore young women’s drinking choices within their existing friendship groups. Guided by emic and etic perspectives, friendship groups were analysed to inform archetypical representations that illustrate group-level social capital exchanges.

The approach led to identifying four social capital and drinking archetypes. These archetypes indicate social capital-led “influencers” and “followers” and highlight the displays of capital practised by young women in alcohol consumption contexts.

The social marketing insight drawn from this study of young women’s drinking behaviours will inform social marketers on future strategic directions about how they can use alternative methods to segment the social market of young female drinkers and develop value propositions that will motivate them towards adopting or maintaining moderate drinking practices.

This study contributes to social marketing theory by demonstrating the worth of social capital theory as an alternative lens for social marketers to apply in explorations of group influences that shape behaviour. The research findings in the paper demonstrate how deeper theorisation provides rich insight into the meso-level, complex behavioural influence which effect young women’s alcohol consumption.