Program for the ATHG meetings and panel, January 5, 2001

7:45 am
Boston Marriott Copley Place
Gather in the lobby (near the hotel check-in counter). We'll go to
breakfast together at a nearby restaurant.

9:30 to 11:30 am
Boston Marriott Copley Place, Wellesley Room
Session: "Drink and Temperance at the New Millenium: An International
and Historical Perspective."

Chair: David Kyvig, Northern Illinois University

Panel: "The Future of Prohibition"
David Kyvig

"Africa"
Charles H. Ambler, University of Texas at El Paso

The historical study of alcohol in Africa--as elsewhere--draws
together disparate scholarship into a body that seems sometimes to
make little claim on coherence. Two major strands emerge, each
inheriting a tradition of social scientific research. First, there is
the literature that sees the study of the history of alcohol use as
the means or mirror to gain an understanding of critical social,
economic, and cultural issues. This draws on a powerful tradition in
anthropology, exemplified perhaps in Mary Douglas's collection,
Constructive Drinking, in which drinking emerges as a metaphorical
tool to investigate relations of power and hierarchy in African
societies. Second, there is the scholarship--less prominent--that
sees alcohol production and use as an independent force driving
social and historical change. This likewise extends a social
science/social problems literature that focused on the "problems"
associated with drinking, a notable example being Elizabeth Colson
and Thayer Scudder's For Prayer and Profit. The introductory essay
that I wrote with Jon Crush for our edited volume on Liquor and Labor
in Southern Africa very explicitly exposed this dichotomy and
suggested approaches that would integrate elements of both, situating
the history of alcohol production, consumption, and control in the
broader terrain of economic, social, and cultural history while
recognizing alcohol's distinctive. To date, the only work that has
taken up this challenge systematically is Emmanuel Akyempong in his
rich and sophisticated study of the role of alcohol in Ghanaian
history, Drink, Power, and Cultural Change. There is, however,
considerable research in progress which has been published in article
form or presented as papers. Much of this deals with the role that
alcohol has played in relationship to the exercise of state power,
both in its fiscal role and as--as it is often characterized--an
instrument of "social control" (an approach that Crush and I
explicitly criticized in our essay). Justin Willis's work on eastern
Africa promises a fresh approach, extending Akyeampong's insights.
Although, again a danger, returning to my original point, is that
such works attempt to pull together and catalogue information on
drinking without addressing some fundamental questions. Does it make
sense, for example, from the intellectual perspective of African
communities and cultures to link studies of the consumption of
"traditional" drinks with the use of imported-types drinks. Are they
in fact seen as the same kinds of substances? or is this simply the
imposition of a western concept? and in fact one that has an
uncertain pedigree even in alcohol studies in Europe and America.
Similarly, are drinks that are chemically "the same" actually
socially constructed as the same if on the one hand they are used
ritually and on the other defined as commodities? My own work has
veered away from these questions toward the scholarship on
temperance--very limited for Africa--to explore the debates that
raged across Britain, West Africa and South Africa about the meaning
of alcohol in imperial contexts from the liquor traffic controversy
of the late nineteenth century to efforts to control alcohol problems
in late and post-colonial decades.

"Early Modern Europe"
B.Ann Tlusty, Bucknell University

Throughout most of the 20th century, the study of drink in early
modern Europe was focused on the attempts by moralists and religious
reformers, who often represented local authority, to stamp out
disorderly drinking habits amongst the populace. These attacks were
portrayed as part of an overall attempt by elite groups to "civilize"
or "discipline" the popular classes. Historians viewed drunkenness as
part of the traditional culture that was increasingly marginalized by
the process of industrialization and the triumph of bourgeois morals.
By focusing on drunkenness rather than drinking, however, these
studies ignored the social functions served by the process of
drinking itself. Beginning in the 1980's, informed by the valuable
cross-cultural work on alcohol being done by sociologists and
anthropologists, a new generation of historians began to explore the
social and cultural functions of taverns and drinking based on
manuscript sources (often court records). Drinking, and even
drunkenness, had cultural uses at many levels of society, and in some
cases emerges as part of a culture that was also shared by elite
lawmakers. Taverns also served the authorities in a variety of ways,
including as military quarters, centers of information, and theaters
for working out boundaries of gender, honor, status, and confession.
These findings are now being expanded by interdisciplinary approaches
that draw on high and low forms of art to reconstruct body imagery,
economic indicators that point to the importance of alcohol taxes and
transportation networks, legal and medical history, and various other
fields of research. Work currently being done on the history of drink
in early modern Europe is overwhelmingly concentrated on England and
the German-speaking lands.

"Modern Britain"
David Fahey, Miami University

Compared with the USA, Britain shows greater interest in the drink
trade. Publications range from antiquarian pamphlet-sized histories
of pubs to scholarly monographs by business historians on breweries
and distilleries. Despite a celebrated 1971 book by Brian Harrison,
Britain shows less interest in temperance history than does the USA.
For instance, no book has been published for Scotland where the
temperance movement was exceptionally strong. There are a few
recently completed and "in progress" temperance dissertations, but
probably the existing pattern will continue. Sooner or later there
probably will be more social history of "ordinary" drinking,
especially for the twentieth century. At least this is my hope.

"Alcohol and the American Literary Imagination"
Jon Miller, University of Akron

Never has there been such widespread agreement among scholars of
American literature that literary texts must be "historicized" at all
levels of study and teaching. The new emphasis on the analysis of the
historical and cultural issues embodied by literary texts looks to be
much more widespread and permanent than the assorted trends in
literary scholarship that characterized the 1980s and early 1990s.
The nineteenth-century temperance movement played a significant role
in the rise and democratization of creative literature in America. As
American literature classrooms more often feature the creative
literature of women, African Americans, and working-class authors,
literature instructors must engage the social history of alcohol and
temperance history to teach these texts effectively. ATHG members are
familiar with the recent growth of literary scholarship connecting
American authors to the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
recovery movement, but they may not be aware of the increasing
importance of the social history of alcohol and temperance in many of
the fastest-growing fields of American literary study. In the last
five years, the new emphasis on "historicizing" texts has encouraged
the publication of numerous articles, books, and scholarly editions
that bear on the study of alcohol and temperance history. Over the
next ten years, we can expect to see more of this literary
scholarship and we can expect the quality of this work to improve as
literary scholars catch up on fields of historical scholarship long
neglected by professors of English.

"Imperial, Soviet, and Contemporary Russia"
Patricia Herlihy, Brown University

 From at least the sixteenth century the Russian state has depended to
a greater or lesser degree on revenue from the manufacture and sale
of vodka, whether fr om excise taxes, the auctioning of licenses to
sell vodka, or creating a state monopoly. Over time the Russian state
has not found a satisfactory substitute for taxes derived from the
vodka trade. For about a decade between 1914 and 19 25, first the
tsarist regime and then the new Bolshevik leaders attempted to en
force a full or partial ban on the sale of vodka. My paper will
examine in his torical perspective various Russian and Soviet taxing
policies with their effec t on revenue dependency of the state and
alcohol dependency of the people. The contemporary government in
Russia faces the same challenges of attempting to b alance the needs
of the treasury, the health of the people, and control over il legal
trade and manufacture of vodka.

"Latin America"
John Kicza, Washington State University

The study of alcohol consumption and temperance in Latin America has
produced a limited historical literature, and it is generally
confined to several specialized issues. The most common topic
explored by scholars is patterns of consumption in Indian
communities. Most of these works consider contemporary societies or
those of the recent past. But two historians of the colonial
period--William B. Taylor and Sonia Corcuera de Mancera--have
composed the most analytical and fully rendered studies of this
topic. However, Gina Hames has recently composed a dissertation
examining female Indian chicha (maize beer) venders in the
marketplaces of Bolivia during the sixty-year period beginning in
1870. The different ethnic groups in Latin America have distinct
drinking patterns. Several studies look at the brewing and distilling
industries of specific countries. A few others concentrate on
prehispanic patterns of alcohol consumption in the Americas, but they
tend to view prescriptive writings as reliable descriptive sources

"Modern China"
Di Wang, Texas A&M University

China has a long drinking history. Since the earliest times, drinking
wine was a basic part of Chinese living, no matter in the ritual
ceremony or in the relaxation from work. Consequently, in Chinese
literature wine was always connected with poetry and the great poets.
The Chinese also developed public places for drinking, and at least
as early as Song dynasty (tenth to twelfth centuries), there were
"wine shops' and teahouses," and some combined both together. Wine,
however, gradually lost its dominated position in the late imperial
period and was replaced by tea. Since the nineteenth century
teahouses have become a main place for public drinking.

To examine the history of alcohol in China, we may say that there is
no a social trend of alcohol temperance because unlike in the West,
alcohol never became a social issue. Whereas in the West temperance
has been led by elites, in China drinking alcohol has been a
cherishing lifestyle for them, who had no intention to control and
even regulate it. In modern China, wine is warmed up and served with
the meal in small cups on festive occasions or when guests are
present. Also, although there are still many "wine shops" and "wine
balconies," they are more like regular restaurants rather than public
drinking places.

Since the 1970s drinking beer has become popular among ordinary
Chinese people, and the barrooms emerged in the 1980s and flourished
in the 1990s. Drinking in the bar has increasingly become a
fashionable lifestyle. As a result, more social issues emerged in
such places, and authorities try to regulate and control them.
However, the bar is mainly young people's place and instead the
teahouse is still the most affordable and cherishing place for
people's public drinking.

"Modern India"
Padma Manian, San Jose City College

Caste is the first factor that comes to mind when one considers
alcohol in India. Traditionally the Brahmana (priestly) and Vaisya
(merchant) castes completely abstain from alcohol while the kshatriya
(warrior) and shudra (laborer) castes drink. Next in importance is
religion. Muslims are a significant minority. Their religion requires
them to refrain from alcohol and most Indian Muslims strictly adhere
to this injunction. Urbanization and Westernization are the forces of
change regarding alcohol use in India. Many middle- and upper-class
urban Brahmana and Vaisya Indians have abandoned the rules of their
castes and taken to drinking which they perceive as modern and
sophisticated. They mostly drink wine, beer, and spirits made in
India called Indian Made Foreign Liquor. Traditional alcoholic drinks
are consumed by the lower classes and in the villages. Alcoholic
prohibition was advocated by Mahatma Gandhi and several states in
India have imposed, lifted, and re-imposed prohibition several times.
However prohibition has mostly been abandoned as impractical and as
costing too much in revenue from taxes on alcohol. One terribly
recurring tragedy both in states with and without prohibition is the
death and blindness of large numbers of poor people from consuming
cheap, illicitly brewed liquor contaminated with methyl alcohol. A
very interesting recent development is the campaign against alcohol
launched by lower-class women in rural Andhra Pradesh whose husbands
were squandering their meager earnings in drink.

"Modern France: The Changing image of the 'Social Scourge' of Alcoholism"
W. Scott Haine, Holy Names College and University of Maryland University Center

The questions of drink and temperance in the year 2001 are
conceptualized much differently than they were in 1901. Gone is the
great concern about drinking establishments and the working class,
vanished is the fear of hereditary alcoholism crippling future
generations of French people. Although alcoholism is still rated, now
along with tobacco, as one of the primary health problems of France,
it is not seen as potentially destroying the "race." Public health
has replaced concerns about the population, drunk driving receives
more attention than boisterous barrooms, and the youth, rather than
the working class is seen as the group most in danger of alcoholic
excess. A century ago the question of drink and temperance was
intimately tied to the "social question"--that is the effects of
urbanization and industrialization--today there is little overlap
between the question of whether to drink or not to drink and the
question of French identity and immigration, the burning issues
currently and in the future.

After the session
ATHG lunch at nearby restaurant.