| dc.description.abstract | This thesis describes in detail the development of a vast bureaucracy of
surveillance by provincial authorities around alcohol control, and concerns itself with
the categories employed in a vast social sorting operation of drinkers undertaken from
1927 into the 1970s when the system was finally discontinued. In short, at issue are the
contact points where categories are flush with material technologies. This is a history
lesson in surveillance, the theoretical relevance of which for today lies precisely in the
extraordinary transformations it made possible in terms of social identity construction
and control. The social sorts accomplished by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario
(LCBO), working in conjunction with three levels of government agencies and police
forces, could transform the most private interests into public matters, in the process
recategorizing individuals and redefining their material possessions and property.
Beyond technology is, then, the power that accrues to those and their cohorts who use
the categorization of such personal information for varied and politically motivated
purposes of social control. In short, the concern expressed here is with an all-too-contemporary
history - “list” making - and its social consequences. To use the ominous
words of Edwin Black (2001 ; 92) in his study of the informational equivalent of
blitzkrieg, that is, the speed-processing of data by Hollerith machines, when “lists were
everywhere” the politics of race became diabolical. | |
