The Gender Politics of Criminal Insanity: "Order-in-Council" Women in British Columbia, 1888-1950

Between 1888 and 1950, 38 women were confined for indeterminate periods to British Columbia’s psychiatric system under executive “Orders-in-Council”. Enlisting clinical, organizational, and government records, the authors explore the psychiatric practices of control through which a male medico-legal establishment strove to comprehend and discipline these “criminally insane” women. The authoritative discourses and activities that shaped these women’s forensic careers reflected a gendered conception of social order that was hegemonic during this period. Such discourses helped to fashion the images of women, crime, and madness that continue to permeate public and official culture.De 1888 à 1950, 38 femmes ont été confinées par décret, pour une période indéterminée, dans les établissements psychiatriques de la Colombie-Britannique. À l’aide de documents cliniques, organisationnels et gouvernementaux, les auteurs étudient les pratiques de contrôle psychiatrique qu’utilisait le corps médico-légal masculin pour chercher à comprendre et à discipliner ces « aliénées criminelles ». Les discours et les mesures qui faisaient alors autorité et qui ont façonné le vécu de ces femmes témoignaient de la conception hégémonique de l’ordre social des hommes et des femmes de l’époque. De tels discours ont contribué à modeler l’image des femmes, de la criminalité et de la folie qui continuent d’imprégner la culture publique et officielle

Welfare Law, Welfare Fraud and the Moral Regulation of the \u27Never Deserving\u27 Poor

The dismantling and restructuring of Keynesian social security programmes have impacted disproportionately on women, especially lone parent mothers, and shifted public discourse and social images from welfare fraud to welfare as fraud, thereby linking poverty, welfare and crime. This article analyzes the current, inordinate focus on \u27welfare cheats\u27. The criminalization of poverty raises theoretical and empirical questions related to regulation, control, and the relationship between them at particular historical moments. Moral regulation scholars working within post-structuralist and post-modern frameworks have developed an influential approach to these issues,however, we situate ourselves in a different stream of critical socio-legal studies that takes as its point of departure the efficacy, contradictions and inherently social nature of law in a given social formation. With reference to the historical treatment of poor women on welfare, we develop three themes in our critical review of the moral regulation concept: the conceptualization of welfare and welfare law, as illustrated by welfare fraud, the relationship between social and moral with respect to the role of law, and changing forms of the relationship between state and non-state institutions and agencies. We conclude with comments on the utility of a \u27materialist\u27 concept of moral regulation for feminist theorizing

From Mothers\u27 Allowance to Mothers Need Not Apply: Canadian Welfare Law as Liberal and Neo-Liberal Reforms

In this paper we examine changes in the form and content of Canadian welfare law through a historical, feminist lens using the exemplar of mother-headed families. Our analysis of how the state dealt with sole support mothers in several provinces throughout the twentieth century reveals important continuities, as well as discontinuities, between the past and the present that have shaped and reshaped the lives and experiences of poor women and their children. In doing so, it helps to illuminate how they have been rendered undeserving or never deserving with the neo-liberal (re)formation of the Keynesian state in Canada

Social Control: Analytical Tool or Analytical Quagmire?

There is probably no concept which is used more widely and with less precision than that of \u27social control\u27. Given the lack of agreement about what \u27social control\u27 is, researchers usually employ the term in one of two ways. Either they assume that its meaning is obvious and requires no clarification, or, they begin with a perfunctory acknowledgment of the definitional problems associated with the concept and proceed to use it anyway. The eclecticism of the latter approach has stimulated attempts over the years to produce a universally applicable definition of \u27social control\u27 that could be empioyed both systematically and scientifically in research (Clark and Gibbs 1965, Gibbs 1977, Janowitz 1978, Mayer 1983). While these efforts are commendable and may ultimately prove fruitful, the ongoing elusiveness of such a formulation has led us in a different direction. We have concluded that the concept of \u27social control\u27 incorporates ambiguities which severely undermine its effectiveness as an analytical tool. The argument is developed in two stages: first, by tracing the historical evolution of the concept to illustrate the problematic nature of a \u27social control\u27 model, and second, by demonstrating, through an assessment of the \u27women, law and social control\u27 literature, its inadequacy as an analytical construct

Troubling the Tinkers’ Paradise: A Feminist Interrogation of PSY Knowledge Practices and Gendered Power Relations

Hosted by Green College as part of the Knowledge Brokers and Knowledge Formats symposium. Today, the study of knowledge production, knowledge formats and knowledge politics is being developed across a wide variety of research fields. Along with the work of scholars such as Ian Hacking, Mary Poovey, and Bruno Latour, the work of the late Green College Principal, Richard Ericson, have all on policing, risk, the news media, and the insurance industry made an important contribution not only to these substantive areas but also to the methodological tools that scholars use in their everyday study of knowledge‐power processes. Jointly sponsored by Green College, UBC, and the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto.Graduate and Postdoctoral StudiesOther UBCUnreviewedFacult

From Mothers\u27 Allowance to Mothers Need Not Apply: Canadian Welfare Law as Liberal and Neo-Liberal Reforms

In this paper we examine changes in the form and content of Canadian welfare law through a historical, feminist lens using the exemplar of mother-headed families. Our analysis of how the state dealt with sole support mothers in several provinces throughout the twentieth century reveals important continuities, as well as discontinuities, between the past and the present that have shaped and reshaped the lives and experiences of poor women and their children. In doing so, it helps to illuminate how they have been rendered undeserving or never deserving with the neo-liberal (re)formation of the Keynesian state in Canada