Bureaucracy, case geography and the governance of the inebriate in Scotland (1898–1918). (December 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Beckingham, David
• Is Part Of: Environment and planning. Volume 37:Number 8(2019)
• Page Start: 1434
• Page End: 1451
• Publication Date: 2019-12
• Subjects: Inebriety -- bureaucracy -- state -- Scotland -- case geography; Political geography -- Periodicals; Geopolitics -- Periodicals; Policy sciences -- Periodicals; Territory -- Periodicals; 320.1205
• DOI: 10.1177/2399654419833024
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2399-6544

Abstract

This article considers the late-Victorian and Edwardian legislative treatment of problem drunkenness in Scotland under the 1898 Inebriates Act. It examines the uneven enactment of the law, by geography and gender, and exposes how mundane questions of bureaucracy, of finance and jurisdiction, intersected with the institutional management of people convicted under it. I present an analytical framework of case geography to examine the ways in which bureaucratic and not simply medical interventions came together to shape people's unfolding futures. Their removal to – and oftentimes between – institutions produced and did not simply resolve bureaucratic challenges. In conclusion I call for a greater awareness of the ways in which such mobile lives shaped policy: they tested the geographical imagination of government and with it the viability of this inebriate system.