Governing Morals
A Social History of Moral Regulation

This book is a broad-ranging history of moral regulation focusing on Britain and the US.

Alan Hunt (Author)

9780521646895, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 August 1999

284 pages, 1 table
22.9 x 15.4 x 1.8 cm, 0.425 kg

"This 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. Hunt provides a clear rationale behind the selection of each of the social movement. If the reader can maneuver around some of the excessive post-modern language, there are multitude of interesting ideas, and even some gems in this book...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..." The Law and POlitics Book Review

This evocative and broad-ranging book traces the history of moral regulation in Britain and the US from the late seventeenth century to the present day. Specific coverage is given to movements such as the Society for the Reformation of Manners and the Vice Society, the sexual abuse and anti-pornography movements, and contemporary self-help movements. Hunt argues that the main impetus for moral regulations often stems from the middle classes, rather than those with institutional power, but most significantly they provide classic instances of the intimate link between the 'governance of others' and the 'governance of the self'. Using the work of Foucault, this book analyses how projects of self-regulation can manifest themselves into the regulation of others. Concurrent with this is the rise of health discourses, which play a central role in contemporary discussions of moral governance.

1. The theory and politics of moral regulation
2. Compulsion to virtue: societies for the reformation of manners and the prosecution of vice
3. Moral regulation from above: the vice society
4. From sexual purity to social hygiene, 1870–1918
5. Moral regulation in America
6. Sexual purity, maternal feminism and class in late-Victorian Britain
7. Traditionalizing moral regulation: making sense of contemporary moral politics.

Subject Areas: Ethical issues & debates [JFM]