Administrative surveillance of alcohol consumption in Ontario, Canada: pre electronic technologies of control

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a vast bureaucracy of surveillance by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), Canada, and the categories employed in a vast social sorting operation of drinkers undertaken from 1927 into the 1960s. The paper deals fundamentally with list-making and its social consequences. These social sorts could transform the most private interests into public matters, recategorizing individuals and redefining their material possessions and property. However the Ontario "drunk list" was also known as the "Indian list" and the story of the LCBO is also the story of how the politics of race become diabolical. This paper thus exposes the georacial profiling of First Nations populations of the northern region and the bureaucratic reinscription of identity by means of then new technologies that enabled specific forms of social sorting: the folding together of lists, supported by inter-institutional cooperation through data provision across sectors, toward the pre-elimination of populations from the ranks enjoying legal access to alcoholic products.