Alcohol and Drugs History Society

Drink in Victorian Norwich, Part II (article)

Rob Donovan, "Drink in Victorian Norwich, Part II," Brewery History 132 (2009): 67-133.  Part I appeared in issue number 130.

Reprints for history of drink problem and temperance movement (books)

BiblioLife offers a large number of cheap reprints of books helpful for the history of the Anglo-American drink problem and the temperance movement.  They are available directly and from booksellers such as Amazon.  Many titles were released in 2009.

Man dressed for Halloween as a breathalyzer is arrested for drunk driving

Cincinnati man, dressed for Halloween as a breathalyzer, is arrested for drunk driving after traveling the wrong way on a one-way street.  For more, see here.

Alcohol surveillance and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (book)

Gary Genosko and Scott Thompson, Punched Drunk: Alcohol, Surveillance and the LCBO 1927–1975 (Fernwood Publishing, 2009).

 

From the publisher:

In this critical study of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Scott Thompson and Gary Genosko expose the stakes and consequences of the enormous bureaucracy behind the administrative surveillance of alcohol consumption in Ontario. Since its inception in 1927, the LCBO subjected alcohol consumption to its disciplinary gaze and generated knowledge about the drinking population. This book details how the LCBO tracked all alcohol consumption and capitalized on technological advances in order to generate categories and profiles of individuals so they could “control” drinking in the province. While this is a historical project, it also investigates how categorical treatment of populations like First Nations helped to develop and foster stereo-types around addiction that persist to this day.

CONTENTS

Introduction • Temperance, Business and Surveillance at the Birth of the LCBO • Self-Control and the Panoptic LCBO • Accountability: Reconstructing the Fragmented Present • A Kind of Prohibition, Part I: Social Sorting in Ontario • A Kind of Prohibition, Part II: The Application of the LCBO’s Interdiction List • Regulation of Gender Performances and the Interdiction List • From Indigenous to Indigent: Legal and Prototypical Classifications of First Nations • The Politics of Alcohol Surveillance

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Gary Genosko is Canada Research Chair in technoculture in the Department of Sociology at Lakehead University. He is the author of Félix Guattari (2009), editor of The Semiotic Review of Books and co-editor of Deleuze Studies.

Scott Thompson is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Victoria. In addition to his publications regarding liquor control, he has published material on National Registration in Canada and the UK.

 

 

Drunkenness and temperance in Scotland, then and now

For a sketch of drunkenness and temperance in Scotland, see here. Googling "drunken Scot" produces 8.6 million results as compared with 78,000 for "drunken Irishman."

Garrett Peck (Prohibition Hangover author) interview

For an interview with Garrett Peck, author of Prohibition Hangover, see here,  His grandmother was a strong believer in temperance.

History of Drink (book)

Jared McDaniel Brown and others, Spiritous Journey: A History of Drink, Book One, From the Birth of Spirits to the Birth of the Cocktail (Jared Brown, 2009).

Privacy Dwindles with SCRAM Sentencing

Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor (SCRAM) sentencing is saving the Justice System lots of money, but Big Brother issues remain. Here is a link to the Washington Post article.

Alcohol, violence and disorder in Europe, 1300-1700 (book)

A.Lynn Martin, Alcohol, Violence and Disorder in Traditional Europe (Truman State University Press, 2009).

Traditional Europe had high levels of violence and of alcohol consumption, both higher than they are in modern Western societies, where studies demonstrate a link between violence and alcohol. A. Lynn Martin attempts to determine if this link can also explain the violence and disorder of traditional Europe, from about 1300 to 1700, by using an anthropological approach to examine drinking, drinking establishments, violence, and disorder, and comparing the wine-producing south with the beer-drinking north and Catholic France and Italy with Protestant England. Both Catholic and Protestant moralists believed in the link, and they condemned drunkenness and drinking establishments for causing violence and disorder. They did not advocate complete abstinence, however, for alcoholic beverages had an important role in most people's diets. Less appreciated by the moralists was alcohol's function as the ubiquitous social lubricant and the increasing importance of alehouses and taverns as centers of popular recreation. The study utilizes both quantitative and qualitative evidence from a wide variety of sources to question the beliefs of the moralists and the assumptions of modern scholars about the role of alcohol and drinking establishments in causing violence and disorder. It ends by analyzing the often-conflicting regulations of local, regional, and national governments that attempted to ensure that their citizens had a reliable supply of good drink at a reasonable cost but also to control who drank what, where, when, and how. No other comparable book examines the relationship of alcohol to violence and disorder during this period.

Prohibition hangover (book)

Rutgers University Press offers here pre-publication praise (and TOC) for Garrett Peck, The Prohibition Hangover: Alcohol in America from Demon Rum to Cult Cabernet.  The book became available for purchase on September 1, 2009.  Peck is a Washington,DC-based freelance journalist who has published mostly in the alcohol industry press.