Regulating Lives

Historical Essays on the State, Society, the Individual, and the Law

Edited by Robert Menzies & Dorothy E. Chunn
Categories: Regional & Cultural Studies, Canadian Studies, Law & Legal Studies, Legal History
Series: Law and Society
Publisher: UBC Press
Hardcover : 9780774808866, 320 pages, June 2002
Paperback : 9780774808873, 320 pages, January 2003
Ebook (PDF) : 9780774850261, 320 pages, October 2007
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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction / John McLaren, Robert Menzies, and Dorothy E.
Chunn

1. 'A Strange Revolution in the Manners of the Country':
Aboriginal-Settler Intermarriage in Nineteenth-Century British Columbia
/ Jay Nelson

2. Control of the Insane in British Columbia, 1849-78: Care, Cure,
or Confinement? / Gerry Ferguson

3. Racializing Prohibitions: Alcohol Laws and Racial/Ethnic
Minorities in British Columbia, 1871-1927 / Mimi
Ajzenstadt

4. Secrets and Lies: The Criminalization of Incest and the
(Re)Formation of the ‘Private’ in British Columbia,
1890-1940 / Dorothy E. Chunn

5. 'Charity is One Thing and the Administration of Justice is
Another': Law and the Politics of Familial Regulation in
Early-Twentieth-Century British Columbia / Robert Adamoski

6. Regulating the 'Respectable' Classes: Venereal Disease,
Gender, and Public Health Initiatives in Canada, 1914-35 / Renisa
Mawani

7. Race, Reason, and Regulation: British Columbia’s Mass Exile
of Chinese ‘Lunatics’ Aboard the Empress of Russia, 9
February 1935 / Robert Menzies

8. The Politics of Naming: Constructing Prostitutes and Regulating
Women in Vancouver, 1939-45 / Michaela Freund

9. The State, Child Snatching, and the Law: The Seizure and
Indoctrination of Sons of Freedom Children in British Columbia, 1950-60
/ John McLaren Postlude / John McLaren, Robert Menzies, and Dorothy
E. Chunn

Contributors

Index

Description

This book examines Canadian experiences of social control, moral
regulation, and governmentality during the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Informed by the wealth of theoretical and
historical writings that have recently emerged on these subjects, the
contributors explore diverse state, social, legal, and human encounters
with the regulation of lives in British Columbia and Canadian history.
Incest in the criminal courts, racial-ethnic dimensions of alcohol
regulation, public health initiatives around venereal disease, and the
seizure and indoctrination of Doukhobor children, among other issues,
are examined in these nine original essays.

Reviews

John McLaren’s study of the seizure and indoctrination of Sons of Freedom children 1950-60 ... is a masterpiece that examines the history of the Sons’ attempt to keep their children out of public schools and preserve their unique way of life. Having a firm foot on the ground and in local, provincial, and federal sources, McLaren’s work is a model of legal-historical research and writing. This collection could not be more complete ... This is a model study of how local history can inform our past and the making of public policy in the future.

- Louis A. Knafla

... ably illustrates how thoughtful questions and the willingness to pose such queries will, more often than not, steer engaged inquiries in wonderfully creative, unexpected, and intriguing directions ... And thus, if we can safely take Regulating Lives as an indication of the work to follow, the new Law and Society series from UBC Press will be invaluable.

- Jonathan Swainger

This book will be of great interest to those intrigued by legal history and, more specifically, the role the law has played in constructing people’s lives, perceptions and experiences.

- Lindsay Ferguson

I hope too that it will be widely read on both sides of the Atlantic, both as containing interesting and important history and as inviting debate on the relationship between the data of historical experience and the concepts around which those data are arranged. I am glad that I read it.

- Richard W. Ireland