Regulating Lives ─ Historical Essays on the State, Society, the Individual, and the Law

Regulating Lives looks at the roles of the state, society, the individual, and the law in the regulation of public and private life. In nine original essays, the authors apply the concepts of social control, moral regulation, and governmentality, as developed by influential social theorists such as Stanley Cohen, Michel Foucault, and Philip Corrigan, to the specific conditions that prevailed in early British Columbia. Along a span of nearly a century and a half – and across a diversity of topics including intermarriage, mental disorder, prohibition, incest, children’s aid, venereal disease, prostitution, and compulsory education – the essays collectively affirm the power of these ideas to clarify the intricate relations that developed, and continue to exist, between British Columbians and the political, social, and cultural order that surrounds them. In the process, they reveal the boundless potential of the west coast province as a site for such historical expeditions into the terrain of the state, society, the individual, and the law.

This collection will interest scholars, researchers, practitioners, and students across a wide range of contexts, including law, history, sociology, criminology, women’s studies, Native studies, social work, and political science.

John McLaren is Lansdowne Professor of Law, University of Victoria. Robert Menzies and Dorothy Chunn are both professors of criminology, Simon Fraser University.