GOVERNING MORALS: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF MORAL REGULATION by Alan Hunt.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 273 pp. Cloth $64.95.. Paper $22.95.

Reviewed by Donald P. Haider-Markel, Department of Political Science, University of Kansas.

Alan Hunt, Professor of Sociology and Law at Carleton University, takes us on a 230-year journey through Great Britain and the United States in an effort to outline the history of moral regulation from the perspective of "governance of others" as well as "governance of the self" and the connections between these two types of governance. The book succeeds on several levels and is well organized in its almost definitive coverage of specific periods of moral regulation efforts in Great Britain and the United States. A number of topics and movements are covered including, the rise of the Religious Right in modern America, Society for the Reformation of Manners, proto-feminist and modern feminist movements, the Vice Society, anti-obscenity and pornography movements, and self-help movements. Hunt provides a clear rationale behind the selection of each of the social movement. Each is selected based on the cross-cultural nature of the study, simplicity versus complexity of the movements, and the long-term time frame. In the end, Hunt describes his research as historical sociology. If the reader can maneuver around some of the excessive post-modern language, there are a multitude of interesting ideas, and even some gems in this book.

Published as part of the Cambridge series, Cambridge Studies in Law and Society, the book is well positioned for use in law courses as well as political science and other social science courses. Hunt provides a clear thesis that he tackles with gusto, uses cases that span time and are comparative in nature, and largely employs methods that are appropriate for the questions at hand.

Hunt presents several main theses as well as a few more minor arguments. These include, (1) "that moral regulation is a discrete mode of regulation existing alongside and interacting with political and economic modes of regulation" (p. 17), (2) that moral regulation projects are most often produced by the middle classes rather than the upper classes, (3) that modern feminism is the great grand daughter of moral regulation projects in the 18th and 19th centuries, (4) that modern "self-help" movements are in fact moral regulation projects, and (5) that moral regulation projects stem from more than simply "status anxiety" as a number of authors have argued. Each chapter of the book examines these questions by outlining the specific moral regulation project, the agents of regulation, the targets of regulation, the tactics of regulation, the discourses of regulation, and the politics of regulation.

The book begins with a broad theory of moral regulation that draws on post-modern depictions of law and society, social

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movement theory, including resource mobilization theory, and a sprinkle of symbolic politics literature ala Gusfield (1963). However, Hunt is not lax in his interpretation of these literatures. He often chooses to draw only partially on, for example, Foucault and manages to challenge much of what Foucault (1978, 1985) argues. Hunt argues that Foucault's thesis was that sex and sexuality was only a political issue, and that Hunt can extend Foucault's work by arguing "that the governmentalization of sex does not only take place within the state" (p. 24). However, Hunt seems to be understating the scope of Foucault's work and he may have found much more to agree with in Foucault's (1979) DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH, which has a great deal to say concerning the governance of self as well as the governance of others outside of "state sponsored" projects. Nonetheless, Hunt is very specific about where his ideas conflict with those of other authors and he deals with all of these conflicts in a precise manner.

Consistent with Hunt's argument that moral regulation projects are more likely to come from and act on the middle and lower classes, only Chapter 1, which outlines the activities of the Society for the Reformation of Manners (SRM) in 17th-century Britain, provides an example of a regulation project driven by the upper classes without the support of the middle or lower classes. However, SRM regulation efforts did focus almost solely on regulating the activities of the middle and lower classes, especially those relating to Sunday trading offenses and lewd and disorderly practices (the activities of female prostitutes). Interestingly, nearly all of the efforts of SRM were focused on enforcement of existing laws. Even though SRM members were from the upper class, they made virtually no effort to have their goals realized through legislation -- a pattern not followed by many latter moral regulation movements.

In Chapter 2, Hunt examines the Society for the Suppression of Vice in England and begins to show how philanthropic movements became intertwined with moral regulation projects. Efforts at philanthropy for the poor by middle class women during "home visits" were often used as opportunities to transmit virtue to lower class housewives, but also provided middle class women with a basis for building a proto-feminist movement. Chapter 3 explores the late 19th and early 20th century moral regulation focus on sexual purity and its eventual intersection with social hygiene, a topic explored in greater detail for the American case in Chapter 4.

As Chapters 3 and 4 make clear, the social hygiene movement arose from concerns over class, immigration, urbanization and resulting health conditions, and the need for healthy soldiers in World War I. However, these concerns were not enough to create a movement by themselves. They had to intersect with existing discourses on the role of women as well as efforts to expand the scope and authority of medical science. For example, middle class women came to define prostitution as a moral wrong that should be corrected by "saving" women through conversion rather than prosecuting them for illegal behavior. At the same time efforts were made to redefine the appropriate sexual behavior of men as an attempt to reduce the demand for commercialized sex. The new philosophy also gave female suffrage leaders such as Susan B. Anthony the rationale for opposing local ordinances that would have regulated prostitutes, but allowed for legal commercial sex. In Chapter 5, Hunt completes his

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outline of the ties between "maternal" feminism and the ideology of the sexual purity movement, the specter of "white slavery," or white female being exported to other countries for prostitution, and the social hygiene movement.

Chapter 6 tackles moral regulation projects in the 20th century, with only cursory attention to the prohibition movement in the United States. In discussing modern moral regulation projects Hunt focuses on anti-pornography campaigns, the United States war on drugs, "self-help" movements, AIDS, and even welfare reform. Although modern projects share many similarities with previous moral regulation projects, perhaps the biggest significant difference is that modern projects have faced organized opposition from highly vocal groups. However, in his discussion of modern projects Hunt should have at least paid lip-service to important research on this topic, including Meier (1994), who examines both the regulation of alcohol and illegal drugs in the United States, and Soss (1999), who examines the transforming affect social welfare institutions can have on their clients. In fact, most of the work cited by Hunt is post-modern theory, and is only informed by a limited number of empirical studies, mostly those focused on social movements.

Hunt argues that moral regulation projects are a result of more than just "status anxiety" based on class. Instead the timing and targets of these projects suggest that they have more to do with middle and upper-class concerns over the threats to the morality of their own children and fears of "loss of empire status" in England, most of which are related to our need to impose some system of order when no natural one exists. For example, one target of moral regulation movements is often the family under the notion that the family is the first and foremost institution where the "mechanism of self-restraint/self-discipline should be generalized and disseminated" (p. 215).

Although it is not always clear to me what is moral regulation and what isn't moral regulation, especially when the impetus for regulation comes from non-religious figures or movements, such as the medical profession, Hunt argues that indeed this is what distinguishes moral regulation from political or economic regulation, that moral regulation projects may stem from any number of spheres, not just the political sphere. If correct, this contention may be the most important contribution of Hunt's book. However, while Hunt concedes that "all practices of governing involve some element of moral regulation" he does not seem to support David Easton's argument that politics is the authoritative allocation of values -- that politics is essentially a moral project of deciding what is good and what is bad.

The book is weakest when it overemphasizes the fact that some moral regulation movements chose to focus their attention solely on law enforcement and not the enactment of new laws. Hunt implies that such efforts were thus less political than efforts to pursue legislation. However, many authors, including Gusfield (1963) and Meier (1994), have shown that the politics of moral regulation are just as much about policy implementation and enforcement as they are about policy adoption.

Finally, from a normative perspective Hunt leaves little room for carving out modes of resistance to moral regulation projects and he problematizes

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efforts to protect minorities and women through the law. By implying that we always have something to fear from moral regulation, Hunt declines to identify how we can use self-governance or the governance of others towards a positive end. At the same time, his characterization of efforts to ban sexual discrimination and harassment as moral regulation projects problematizes these efforts without providing an alternative means of ensuring the civil rights and liberties of women and minorities from the tyranny of a majority.

REFERENCES:

Foucault, Michel. 1978. THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY: AN INTRODUCTION. Vol. 1.

Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books.

______. 1979. DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH: THE BIRTH OF THE PRISON. Trans. Alan

Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.

______. 1985. THE USE OF PLEASURE: THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY. Vol. 2. Trans.

Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books.

Gusfield, Joseph R. 1963. SYMBOLIC CRUSADE. Urbana: University of Illinois

Press.

Meier, Kenneth J. 1994. THE POLITICS OF SIN: DRUGS, ALCOHOL ANDPUBLIC POLICY.

Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.

Soss, Joe. 1999. "Lessons of Welfare: Policy Design, Political Learning, and

Political Action." AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW 93: 363-380.

Copyright 2000 by the author.