1. Foucault does not use the phrase “moral regulation”; it has been developed by others working loosely within his framework, most notably Corrigan, P. & Sayer, D., The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979)Google Scholar.

2. Foucault, M., Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage, 1979) at 138Google Scholar.

3. Foucault, M., History of Sexuality, vol. 2 The Use of Pleasure, (New York: Pantheon, 1985)Google Scholar. See also “The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom” interview in Bernauer, J. & Rasmussen, D., eds., The Final Foucault (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

4. A notable exception is Dean, M., The Constitution of Poverty: Toward a Genealogy of Liberal Governance (London: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar.

5. A good example of a former leftist now pursuing what I'm calling neo-Durkheimianism is Garland, D., in his recent work Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. For Canadian historical sociology showing, from a left Foucaultian perspective, how the education system contributed to generating the subjective resources necessary for the rise of industrial capitalism, see Curtis, B., Building the Educational State (Sussex: Althouse Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Dehli, K., “‘Health Scouts’ for the State: School and Public Health Nurses in Early Twentieth-Century Toronto” (1990) 2:2Historical Studies in Education 247Google Scholar.

7. Bourdieu, P., Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Nice, R. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

8. A similar aim moves Corrigan & Sayer, supra note 1, in that they ground the central process studied, moral regulation, in English/British liberal state formation. This, however, while helping to avoid a transhistorical concept of moral regulation, makes invisible agencies of moral regulation outside the state (charities, professional bodies, etc.) The account presented here owes a great deal to Corrigan and Sayer, but seeks to develop the theorization of moral regulation by using a “society-centred” rather than a “state-centric” approach.

9. For a parallel between fin-de-siècle fears about artists and moral degeneration and similar contemporary fears, see Showalter, E., Sexual Anarchy (New York: Viking, 1990)Google Scholar.

10. One of the finest literary explorations of this theme is found in Henry James' Portrait of a Lady, where we see the character, Gilbert Osmond, become increasingly empty morally as he pursues and achieves perfect “taste”. James appears to agree with Bourdieu, since Osmond's acquisition of cultural goods—from furniture to a wife—is only the tangible representation of the more fundamental process of achieving the perfectly “tasteful” personality.

11. Weber's, M. classic study, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner's, 1958, orig. 1904–1905)Google Scholar, highlights the ways in which the Reformation sanctified saving and investment, that is, the expanded reproduction of capital. What it also points out, however, though this is not generally stressed in Weber commentaries, is the way in which the older Christian suspicion of wealth was now focussed on static wealth (namely, money or commodities, as distinct from capital). Being a capitalist may have become morally praiseworthy, but being rich continued and continues to pose moral problems.

12. Keane, J., Democracy and Civil Society (London: Verso, 1988)Google Scholar. Keane does not argue that there can ever be an abolition of the distinction between civil society and the state; in fact, he is highly critical of orthodox Marxism for imagining that the distinction is merely a capitalist one. What he does argue is that civil society and the state are not antagonistic or even external to each other. A very different theorization sharing some common concerns is found in Rose, N., “Beyond the Public/Private Division: Law, Power and the Family” (1987) 14:1Journal of Law and Society 61Google Scholar.

13. The economic characteristics of capital, in Marx's view, lead to the pernicious social consequence that what is abstract (money, for instance) is perceived as more concrete than actual things. In times of crisis, he writes, money becomes the “summum bonum”; “compared with it all other commodities—just because they are use values–appear to be useless, mere baubles and toys, or as our Dr. Martin Luther says, mere ornament and gluttony.” See Marx, K., Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Moscow: Progress, 1970, orig. 1857) at 146Google Scholar. The same point is made in the discussion of “modern” credit systems: “The monetary system is essentially a Catholic institution, the credit system essentially Protestant, ‘The Scotch hate gold’ … It is Faith [not Catholic good works] that brings salvation. Faith in money-value and the immanent spirit of commodities, faith in the mode of production and its predestined order, faith in the individual agents of production…” Marx, K., Capital (New York: International, 1967) vol. 3 at 592Google Scholar.

14. The new capitalism, located nowhere and often producing nothing tangible, requires the work of bourgeois women to locate itself and create a culturally distinct class, a point often neglected in analyses of postmodern capitalism. See Smith, D., “Women, Class and Family” reprinted in Burstyn, V. & Smith, D., eds., Women, Class, Family and the State (Toronto: Garamond, 1985)Google Scholar.

15. The most influential theorization of the key distinction between subjective identity and objective behaviour in the moral/sexual realm is of course that of Foucault; see especially History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (New York: Pantheon, 1979)Google ScholarPubMed.

16. See, for example, Donzelot, J., The Policing of Families (New York: Pantheon, 1979)Google Scholar.

17. Weber, M., The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Parsons, T. (New York: Scribner's, 1958) at 17Google Scholar.

18. One of the few turn-of-the-century social reformers to question this idea of the poor's debt to philanthropists was Jane Addams, who argued that the purpose of social/moral reform was not moral regeneration as much as a healthier democracy. Addams, J., Democracy and Social Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1905)Google Scholar.

19. Andrew, D., Philanthropy and Police: Charity in 18th Century London (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989)Google Scholar. For similar developments during France's pronatalist panic, see Fuchs, R., Poor and Pregnant in Paris: Strategies for Survival in the Nineteenth Century (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

20. Andrew points out that while in the early 18th century, bequests were the most common form of donation, by the 19th century many philanthropists, even those very active in particular agencies, left them no money in their wills, preferring to exercise more control over their investment by means of annual subscriptions and involvement in the boards and committees (see Andrew, supra note 19 at c. 2). A century later, scientific philanthropists bemoaned the existence of endowed charities precisely because they lacked flexibility and gave the poor too much security; they preferred to be constantly evaluating and changing their investments.

21. See essays by Donzelot, J., Procacci, G., and Foucault, M. in Burchell, G., Gordon, C. & Miller, P., eds., The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

22. Blanc, L., Organisation du travail (Paris: Bureau du Nouveau Monde, 1850) at 4Google Scholar.

23. Vidal, F., De la répartition des richesses, pour de la justice distributive en économie sociale (Paris: Capelle, 1846) esp. at 25, 78 ff.Google Scholar

24. Dean, supra note 4.

25. L. Blanc, supra note 22 at 4.

26. Buret, E., De la misère des classes laborieuses en Angleterre et en France, vol. 1 (Paris: Paulin, 1840) at 113Google Scholar.

27. The classic study of middle-class fear of the “new barbarians” in the 1830s and 1840s is still Chevalier, L., Classes laborieuses et classes dangereuses à Paris pendant la première moitié du XIXe siècle (Paris: Plon, 1958)Google Scholar.

28. See F. Mort's analysis of early Victorian reformers, Chadwick, Edwin and Kay-Shuttleworth, James, in his Dangerous Sexualities: Medico-Moral Politics in England Since 1800 (London: Routledge, 1987)Google Scholar.

29. There are numerous sources on this. Prominent among left-wing analyses is Jones, G. Stedman, Outcast London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971)Google Scholar. A recent right-wing survey is Himmelfarb, G., Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians (New York: Knopf, 1991)Google Scholar.

30. Booth, C. et al. Life and Labour of the People of London, vol. 8 (London: Macmillan, 1896) at 395Google Scholar Appendix B.

31. Hill, O., Homes of the London Poor, rev. ed. (London: Frank Cass, 1970) at 74Google Scholar.

32. Ibid., at 75.

33. See Wohl, A., The Bitter Cry of Outcast London (New York: Humanities, 1970)Google Scholar, introduction to reprint and Wohl, A., “Sex and the Single Room” in Wohl, A., ed., The Victorian Family: Structure and Stress (London: Croom Helm, 1978)Google Scholar.

34. On the centrality of “character” as the product sought by the Charity Organization Society, in which Octavia Hill was a prominent leader, see Fido, J., “The COS and Social Casework in London 1869-1900” in Donajgrodzki, A. P., ed., Social Control in 19th-century Britain (London: Croom Helm, 1977) 207Google Scholar.

35. Supra note 31 at 74.

36. Ibid. at 52.

37. See Tarn, J. N., Five Percent Philanthropy: An Account of Housing in Urban Areas Between 1840 and 1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)Google Scholar.

38. Ibid. at 7.

39. Supra note 31 at 56.

40. Ibid. at 41.

41. The convolutions made by poor law guardians, especially masters of workhouses, in order to incorporate a “test” element into the administration of a poor law that also acknowledged a universal entitlement to not starve, are well described (though not analyzed) in the massive reports and studies of the 1909 Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, about which more below.

42. S., & Webb, B., The Prevention of Destitution (London: Longmans, 1912) at 1–2Google Scholar.

43. Ibid. at 239.

44. Ibid. at 39.

45. This is J. Donzelot's interpretation, in his influential work on philanthropy and social policy The Policing of Families, supra note 16. The late-19th-century shift in interest from old people to children is taken to be a rational economic measure, insofar as children represent future economic values and old people do not; while this is true it does not prove that separate moral considerations were not at work.

46. The Webb statement on pensions is from their jointly written “Minority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws”, on which Beatrice sat (alongside her rival Octavia Hill and other COS representatives), U.K. (H.C., Parliamentary Papers (1909) vol. 37, 941Google Scholar, henceforth “Minority Report”). The phrase “respectable lives in decent houses” is found throughout the Majority Report's very lengthy discussion of the conditions of outdoor relief.

47. See Webb, B., The Diary of Beatrice Webb, vol. 3 (London: Virago, 1984)Google Scholar and Webb, B., Our Partnership (New York: Longmans, 1948)Google Scholar. Some recent commentators have pointed out that the majority and the minority in the Royal Commission “had more in common than divided them”. See Thane, P., The Foundations of the Welfare State (London: Longmans, 1982) at 8Google Scholar; also Squires, P., Anti-Social Policy: Welfare, Ideology and the Disciplinary State (Brighton: Harvester, 1990)Google Scholar.

48. The Minority Report “became part of a Socialist charter … Nearly forty years after its first publication, the first Labour government with a clear majority in the House of Commons was to make it the basis for the ‘Welfare state’ legislation of the late 1940s.” See Jones, K., The Making of Social Policy in Britain (London: Athlone, 1991) at 94Google ScholarPubMed.

49. Supra note 46 at 816. Emphasis in original.

50. Ibid. at 815, 905. This is repeated at 846, in the section on social welfare for school-age children, which praises the “constant supervision of unfit parents” as a means not to undermine parenting but “to induce them “poor parents] to continuously fulfil their parental responsibilities”.

51. The Webbs' obliviousness to popular culture was more than just a personal prejudice; as Sally Alexander has pointed out, it was indicative of the Fabian Society's lack of popular base. See Alexander, S., ed., Women's Fabian Tracts (London: Routledge, 1988)Google Scholar introduction.

52. Beatrice Webb's personal life was dominated, from the tender age of 15, by a constant struggle against what she perceived as her “lower” passions. Sensual love, the pleasures of eating and drinking and even those of listening to religious music or reading anything not geared to social research, were enemies to be defeated in the service of a pure life of public service. Even her own moral capital seemed constantly imperilled. See The Diary of Beatrice Webb, supra note 47.