Alcohol and Drugs History Society

Thinking about drinking (essay)

Lowell Edmunds, "Thinking about Drinking," Sewanee Review 116/ 2 (Spring 2008): 331-335.

CASQ: Culture, Alcohol and Society Quarterly

CASQ: Culture, Alcohol and Society Quarterly: Newsletter of Kirk/CAAS Collection at Brown [University], vol. 4, no. 2 (Jan., Feb., March 2009) has been published.  It includes a preview of a session at the May 20-23, 2010 inaugural meeting of the Conference of 19th cent. Americanists, "Washingtonian Transformation in Antebellum Literature, the Arts, and Culture: Imagination, Rhetoric and Semiotics." Papers will be presented by Richard Bell, Ric Caric, Peter Molin, W.R. Sutton, and Graham Wander. It also includes (pp. 7-19) an article about problems in writing the history in or of Alcoholics Anonymous (by CASQ editor Jared Lobdell).  There is much else in this issue (such as a sketch of Irish-Americans and drink and drugs).

Ritual intoxicants among Yucatec Maya, 1550-1780 (article)

John F. Chuchiak (Missouri State University), "‘It is their Drinking that Hinders Them’: Balché and the Use of Ritual Intoxicants among the Colonial Yucatec Maya, 1550-1780” in Estudios de Cultura Maya, vol. 24 [Centro de Estudios Mayas, México: Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas] (Fall 2004): 1-43.

Does Uganda drink twice as much per capita as the USA?

According to Wikipedia (drawing on World Health Organization statistics), Uganda's per capita consumption of pure alcohol in the highest in the world, while the USA ranks 43rd (and consumes only half as much pure alcohol per capita than does the East African country).

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.