Try to Control Yourself
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Dan Malleck
About this book
Countless authors, historians, journalists, and screenwriters have written about the prohibition era, an age of jazz and speakeasies, gangsters and bootleggers. But only a few have explored what happened when governments turned the taps back on.
Dan Malleck shifts the focus to Ontario following repeal of the Ontario Temperance Act, an age when the government struggled to please both the “wets” and the “drys,” the latter a powerful lobby that continued to believe that alcohol consumption posed a terrible social danger. Malleck’s investigation of regulation in six diverse communities reveals that rather than only pandering to temperance forces, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario sought to define and promote manageable drinking spaces in which citizens would learn to follow the rules of proper drinking and foster self-control.
The regulation of liquor consumption was a remarkable bureaucratic balancing act between temperance and its detractors but equally between governance and its ideal drinker.
Author / Editor information
Reviews
“This well-written history provides a rich and nuanced analysis of how the Liquor Control Board of Ontario responded to a divisive political problem in post-prohibition Ontario: to promote orderly but legal public drinking. It offers a sophisticated theoretical interplay between Foucault's concept of biopower and Weber's work on bureaucratization, revealing a variety of actors – the LCBO, inspectors, police, politicians, licence holders, patrons, pressure groups, and even bootleggers – all enveloped in a web of regulation whose strands, while created by the state, were not completely controlled by it.”
James Nicholls, author of The Politics of Alcohol: A History of the Drink Question in England:
“Try to Control Yourself is both an absorbing account of alcohol regulation in post-prohibition Ontario and a significant study of the relationship between bureaucracy, surveillance, and social order. Its meticulous research brings to life the work of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and demonstrates how understanding the intricate realities of administrative activity can enhance critical debates about power and control. This detailed work shows how cultural values are tied to practices of government and, in doing so, offers important lessons for alcohol policy today.”
Topics
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Front Matter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Tables and Figures
ix -
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Acknowledgments
xi -
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Preface: The Word on the Street
xv -
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Introduction: The Emergence of Liquor Control Bureaucracy in Ontario
3 -
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Liquor Control Bureaucracy and the Mechanisms of Governance
17 -
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The Public Life of Liquor, 1927–34
36 -
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Idealistic Form and Realistic Function: Restructuring Public Drinking Space
63 -
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Hearing the Voices: Community Input and the Reshaping of Public Drinking Behaviour
87 -
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“As a Result of Representations Made”: The (Dys)function of Patronage in the LCBO’s Regulatory Activities
110 -
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Restructuring Recreation in the Drinking Space
136 -
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Women, Children, and the Family in the Public Drinking Space
162 -
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“Their Medley of Tongues and Eternal Jangle”: Regulating the Racial and Ethnic Outsider
186 -
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Public Drinking and the Challenges of War
215 -
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Conclusion
240 -
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Appendix
245 -
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Notes
250 -
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Bibliography
278 -
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Index
285
