CfP: Fighting Drink, Drugs, and Venereal Diseases. Global Anti-Vice Activism, c. 1870-1940

From mid-19th century onwards a growing number of non-governmental organizations, intellectuals and policy-makers became concerned with ‘vices’ that appeared to pose a vital threat to national populations and even humanity at large, such as alcoholism, drug trade/abuse, prostitution and deviant sexual behaviors. Promoters of Eugenics and ‘social hygiene’ – intellectual and political currents that attracted influential supporter in all parts of the world, especially between the 1890s and the 1940s – understood intoxicants and sexually transmitted diseases as ‘racial poisons’ (Mariana Valverde), against which society had to be defended. Projects of social reform and national ‘regeneration’ in metropolitan, colonial, and post-colonial countries thus involved measures to fight, control and contain those poisons. The time period which is the focus of the conference was marked by a large increase in voluntary organizations, which were often well connected beyond national boundaries. Social and political movements such as socialism, feminism, and anti-colonial nationalism became also in many different ways engaged in debating and solving issues of ‘vice.’ The conference explores, firstly, how ‘vices’ became reframed in the context of international bio-political discourses. Did scientific, medical, and biological concepts become increasingly important over against moral and religious arguments against illicit behavior and consumption? Secondly, it seeks to understand why intoxicating substances and venereal diseases became addressed as global issues. The trade in intoxicants (such as the export of gin to West Africa) as well as the traffic in women, or the mobility of sex workers were not confined to any national or imperial boundaries, but constantly threatened and transcended them. Finally, the conference addresses the question of regulation. Anti-vice activism, we assume, was crucial in setting the agenda for both governmental interference and international regulation. The conference seeks to bring together research on organizations and initiatives which campaigned against vices – on the organizational repertoires they relied on, the languages they used, the contacts the established, the people they were able to mobilize – with papers analyzing the interaction of state, non-state, and supra-state actors in the making of regulatory regimes. We invite contributions which focus on local developments, as well as papers which analyze trans-local connections from different regional or cultural perspectives. In regional terms, we are especially interested in case studies on the Islamic world, Western Europe (particularly France), Eastern Europe, and East and South East Asia. In terms of anti-vice campaigners’ objectives, we particularly invite contributions on the regulation of drugs such as opium or cocaine, and on the regulation of deviant sexual behaviors. Paper proposals including short abstracts of about 200 words might be directed at Judith Grosse: judith.grosse@gmw.gess.ethz.ch. Please submit proposals until August 15, 2011.