The policing of alcoholics: Power and resistance in early welfare-state Sweden

ABSTRACT

What in this article is called ‘the policing of alcoholics’ was a process involving several agents and institutional bodies, including but not limited to, officials and at the alcoholics’ institutions, regional and local temperance boards, police authorities and local poor-law boards as well and several others. For the welfare state in the making, the recalcitrant and morally depraved alcoholic represented an anomaly, someone who did not really belong to society. Policing was in the last instance legitimated by the role it played in the process of creating a new social order. The early welfare state should not mainly be seen as a form of ‘liberal’ governance but as a state formation where a continuity with older forms of governance, i. e. policing, existed. The empirical material for this article is taken from the alcoholics’ institution at Svartsjö in the late 1930s and early 1940s. By being subjected to the workings of the power apparatuses in institutions like these, an undifferentiated mass of vagrants, beggars, drunkards, petty criminals, and unruly and socially troublesome people were transformed into a new welfare category, the alcohol abusers. Importantly, this was a process to which the alcohol abusers, through their resistance, also contributed.

KEYWORDS:

• Policing
• Sweden
• alcoholics

Introduction

Swedish political historiography dealing with the decades between the two world wars is predominantly a history written in the shadow of the gradual rise of Social Democrats to the position of a leading political force and subsequently to a hegemonic position by way of a new economic policy and the introduction of what alternately has been called the ‘people’s home’, the welfare state or the Swedish (or Scandinavian) model.¹

However, within the frame of such a ‘grand narrative’ lies several, partly competing and partly complementary histories. In hindsight, these decades, especially the 1930s have been seen as making up a period of preparation for Sweden’s golden era of the 1950s and 1960s. One area that during the last decades has been subjected to extensive scholarly interest and sometimes also controversies regards the social policies introduced as a central part of the expanding welfare state, i.e. old age pensions, paid vacations, free education, a system of far-going insurance schemes and/or social and economic benefits financed primarily by taxes and built, to a considerable degree, on the principle of universalism.² Some historians have pointed at other, less positive and benign, features associated with the welfare state, at least in its early phases, such as the ill-treatment of those labelled feeble-minded, the discrimination of Roma people and travellers and the neglect and sometimes confirmed abuse of foster children.³ Especially Swedish sterilization policy has attracted controversy, also in circles well beyond the academic world.⁴

This article deals with a problem connected to the early welfare state that has so far attracted relatively little interest from Swedish historians, namely the compulsory care of alcoholics.⁵ Through scrutinizing the primary sources from one of Sweden’s key alcoholic’s institutions, localized at Svartsjö⁶ about 20 kilometres outside Stockholm, I discuss the care of alcoholics in Sweden in late 1930s and early 1940s.⁷ More precisely, this is a study of a local power regime and its policing practises, from ‘micro’ influences to larger effects, including the forms of resistance that were put up by those subjected to this same regime.

In 1931 a new and more ‘modern’ alcoholic’s law had been introduced which became the administrative frame for the treatment of alcoholics in Sweden for a quarter of a century.⁸ During these years, a number of institutions for the care of alcoholics opened, run by the state, the Swedish church, voluntary organizations, or private interests. In the late 1920s there were 10 alcoholics institutions in Sweden with a total capacity of a little more than 300 inmates. In the late 1930s the number of institutions had risen to 15 and the number of inmates to around 1000. In the late of 1950s there were nearly 50 institutions with more than 2000 inmates. However, during the whole period, only a few were approved for compulsory treatment.⁹ One of these were Svartsjö with space for about 150 male alcoholics.¹⁰ Here many of the most difficult-to-handle alcoholic’s cases were taken in.¹¹

In this article I argue that the politics carried out as a result of the alcoholic’s law was an example of a governing practice where what could be defined as ‘policing’ played a central role. Thus, this article is a study of one of the ways that social order was produced in the early welfare state or, as I prefer to call it, the people’s home. The period chosen here was the starting point of the era of the people’s home period, characterized by, among other things, the introduction of a new communitarian understanding of a society that subsequently developed into a more fully-fledged welfare state. This also entails a strong contrast to the much more liberal form that the treatment of alcoholics began take from the 1960s and even more during 1970s.¹²

The ‘policing of alcoholics’ was a process involving several agents and institutional bodies, including but not limited to, officials and members of the board at Svartsjö, regional and local temperance boards, police authorities and local poor-law boards as well as several others. The discourses used and the measures taken in this process can be followed by investigating the documents in the archive from the institution. I have concentrated on materials such as protocols and their appendices, including the inmates’ applications for furlough sent to the board. The possibility of obtaining furlough was introduced in connection with the revision of the alcoholic’s law in 1931. Virtually all inmates came to submit such applications, some of them several times each year.¹³ In these archives can been seen not only the workings of institutional power, but also the strategies used by the alcoholics themselves to resist or elude police power.¹⁴

It is important to note that the concept ‘alcoholic’ during the period dealt with here, lacked clear medical and/or clinical connotations. Instead, it functioned as a multifaceted concept composed of elements taken from different discourses such as medicine, moral and social work. The ‘medicalization’ of Swedish alcoholic’s treatment took of first during the postwar decades.¹⁵

Methodologically, the article follows a Foucauldian trail by making use of some theoretical propositions when scrutinizing the source material instead of following a predefined methodological model. More than a number of rigid rules and conventions for how to gather data, this loose use of the concept methodology is about achieving a coherent connection between the text found in the source material and the presuppositions underlying the study.¹⁶

It should be underlined that I am not primarily interested in the intentions, ideas or ideologies underlying Swedish alcohol policy in these decades,¹⁷ but with the problem of how the treatment technologies associated with policing functioned, as well as which kind of subjects were thereby produced. Importantly, these questions cannot be dealt without including the different kinds of resistance that were put up by the inmates.

The theory of policing

Contemporary police studies most often work with a rather limited understanding of policing, often equating police with public security, order and the repressive and negative measures and activities mainly associated with public police institutions.¹⁸ Furthermore, today’s dominating liberal discourse often uses the concept ‘police state’ as a designation of a totalitarian state where police forces and security organs control and monitors its citizens.¹⁹

But to understand the full historical meaning of the concept of policing, it is necessary not to confine oneself to the area of police studies. In more general terms, policing stands for the legal and administrative regulation of the internal life of a community with the goal of obtaining general welfare and good order, i. e. to keep a community thriving so that its subjects may prosper.²⁰ As a consequence, policing should be understood as a technology or activity aimed at creating order and welfare in a broad sense, not as the name of an institution or a force of men.²¹ The concept ‘police’ goes back to the late medieval French-Burgundian language and have since then been spread across Europe.²² Policing meant a wide array of tasks and activities including actions taken upon criminals, vagrants, prostitutes, alcoholics, and the disorderly poor. It took on many forms: besides surveillance and discipline also administration and control of health, religion, food, poverty and commerce, the common denominator being to uphold good order, security, and public tranquillity.²³

Policing proliferated as a new technology for governing during the early modern period where the prototype was the ‘police science’ developed in the German states in the 17^th century.²⁴ Von Justi, one of the leading theorists of this period, expressed the aim of policing as to make everything ‘that composes the state serve to strengthen and increase its power, and likewise serve the public welfare’.²⁵ The important point, and where the key features in the people’s home connected to policing as a way of governing society are found, is in the understanding of how state power and public welfare reinforce and amplify each other.

At the same time, there is a clear difference between, on the one hand, the old type of policing carried out in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, focused on misdemeanours and carried out against beggars, vagrants, travellers, the Roma people and other mobile groups in a sparsely populated agrarian society with weak bureaucratic organizations and a low degree of professionalization and, on the other hand, the new type of policing associated with 20^th century industrial and urban society with a much more developed formal and bureaucratic state and municipal apparatuses.

Furthermore, as a case of implementing different power technologies, the policing of alcoholics is addressed towards subjects who, at least to some degree, are free to act in one way or another, including putting up some kind of resistance.²⁶ At the same time as it targets subjects, policing also articulates social spaces of discipline and normalization such as factories, schools, prisons or, as is the case here, institutions for alcoholics. This means that these spaces also became centres of ‘counter-power’, of cultural resistance and non-normalizing identity formation.²⁷ Modern policing assigns a pivotal role to administrative regulations, for example regarding health and childcare or the regulation of alcohol often carried out by local and regional bodies and administrators. Importantly, it is as an activity not limited to governance according to law but one that works with a much wider array of means of regulation and administration, something that also results in a considerable scope for discretion given to its agents.²⁸ In other words, policing is foremost a discretionary power that has more to do with administration than with law enforcement.²⁹ It is the judgment of police officers, probation functionaries, poor-law overseers, childcare assistants’, temperance officials, infectious disease physicians’ and others about how to intervene, or not intervene, that is central in most police activity. Moreover, there is a clear historical affinity between the concept of police and concepts such as welfare and social policy, in that both have more to do with the maintenance of social order, security and social policy in general. It was not the alcoholics’ breaches of the law that gave society the right to intern them for long periods but their idleness and unwillingness – or inability – to adapt to societal norms like the work-imperative.

The compulsory care of alcoholics in Sweden

The first alcoholic’s law in Sweden came into effect in 1916.³⁰ Its main target was not alcohol consumers in general but ‘non-responsible’ (male) alcoholics belonging to the working class.³¹ The law had the character of a ‘protective law’ which meant that interventions would primarily take place when there was a danger to public safety or to the abuser’s own life. The law contained a whole battery of measures, with help, encouragement and support for alcoholics and their families on the one end of the continuum, and at the other end, of formal warnings, surveillance and – as a last resort – compulsory care in closed institutions.³² The Alcoholics Law of 1931 introduced new elements of both ‘stick’ and ‘carrot’ character.³³ On the one hand, the new law opened the possibility for alcoholics sent to compulsory care to get ‘furlough on trial’, a sort of conditional release. On the other hand, the revised law extended the possible period of compulsory care to four years.³⁴ In 1938 a ‘dangerous clause’ was added to the law which further increased the authorities’ power to intervene against alcohol abusers. The changes during the 1930s represented a clear extension compared to the previous provisions – not least by increasing the opportunities to intervene – at the same time as a clear aim was to make the treatment more effective and flexible, hence more modern.³⁵

At its outset, compulsory treatment had been seen as an exceptional measure that affected only a few individuals, but from the 1930ʹs it increasingly became an institutionalized routine as the number of internees increased.³⁶ This increase should not primarily be attributed to an increase in alcohol consumption but more to a combination of institutional expansion and the increasing social intervention that took place during the people’s home era.

A key role in the administration of the new law was given to the local temperance boards that became mandatory in every city and municipality.³⁷ The temperance boards had a wide array of tasks. Besides control and treatment of alcohol abusers, they took part in the administration of the alcohol ration books,³⁸ while also having a general responsibility as overseers of the alcohol situation and drinking habits in their local municipality. The main motive behind this strongly de-centralized model was to give temperance work a popular and democratic anchoring as well as to ensure that the board was well-oriented about local conditions. When it came to compulsory care, it could be initiated in two ways: either by the local temperance board or – in the case of those labelled as dangerous alcoholics – the police authorities. The formal decision was taken by the county governments.³⁹

Together with the control system and the retail state monopoly, the alcoholics law was a cornerstone in a comparably strict alcohol control system that was introduced in Sweden during the first decades of the 20th century. The development was similar in several other countries as the state intervened by introducing alcohol-related controls or by rising taxes on alcohol, but also by increasing the control of the private lives of its citizens and by expanding the responsibilities in the realms of social order and individual discipline.⁴⁰ However, Sweden has been singled out as one of the countries where this process penetrated society the furthest.⁴¹ An important role was played by the temperance movements.⁴² In Sweden as well as in other countries where these movements gained political influence, alcohol policy was seen both as an instrument for moral and social progress and as an instrument for constructing citizens capable of self-control and competence to act as sovereign members of society.⁴³

The policing of alcoholics

On a general level, the policing of alcoholics came to include several ‘normalizing’ and disciplining elements where the chief goal first of all was to inculcate the value of work. But a more thorough look at the technologies used reveals a more multifaceted picture, where coercion existed side by side with other elements. While work was the central activity in institutions for compulsory care, it must, regarding Svartsjö, be pointed out that the composition of the clientele, consisting of a fairly homogeneous group of men characterized by recurrent terms in prison, compulsory work in forced labour institutions, internments in alcoholics home and sometimes also periods of treatment in mental hospitals, implicated a more pragmatic attitude regarding what could be expected from them. The common denominator was that they had showed their unwillingness and/or inability to adapt to society’s rules and hence contribute to the welfare of society. By re-offending in crime, alcohol abuse or vagrancy, they had, according to contemporary views, placed themselves outside society. In the welfare discourse that was gradually adopted from the 1930s onwards, work was embedded in an inclusive-exclusive logic that served as an instrument for determining who, in a deeper sense, belonged to society.

The willingness to submit to hard and regular work and supporting oneself and possibly wife and children, was a proof of loyalty to the working comrades and society as a whole. In the context of the welfare state-in-being, this meant that the alcoholic, criminal or vagrant had to change his status from a receiver of welfare services to the status of worker and thus a contributor of the same welfare.⁴⁴ The logic of intervention that came to characterize the people’s home resulted in that certain groups were labelled as in need of care, treatment, and re-adjustment. In exchange for the promise to build and maintain an inclusive society with economic and social security for everybody, the welfare state expected loyalty and conscientiousness from its subjects.⁴⁵

The alcoholic was created out of a politics of difference, i. e. a dynamic process where the production of meaning of the concept was created. These differences were grounded both in the legal institutions and in the dominating discourses of society. At the same time, the alcoholics made up a contested and unstable category, subjected to parliamentary investigations and debates, research reports and all kind of discourse production. From the point of police power, this plasticity made it a useful tool in the hands of different police agents. The central problem was where to draw the line of exclusion; not only alcohol abuse as such but also dangerousness, sickness, immorality, irresponsibility, work-shyness etcetera played a role in this differentiating process.

Schematically, policing involves a number of devices or technologies for controlling subjects where the most important are mapping, categorization, geographical distribution and normalization. Characteristic of these technologies is that they are local and intertwining tools that develop in terms of their role in relation to the overarching goal or ‘programme’, in this case controlling a certain group of subjects and preventing social disorder as a prerequisite for transforming society into a welfare community.

Mapping can be understood as a kind of constant ‘scanning’ of a territory – a neighbourhood, a district, a village, a municipality etcetera – by different police agents to discover social deviations such as alcohol abuse. Categorization is a central element in the process of creating knowledges of different kind of objects. It is a key element in policing as it creates the ground for different forms of segregation and differentiation. Geographical distribution is about structuring objects’ position in time-space and to secure and make sure that every individual is at the right place at the right time. Order is installed when every element of the population is kept in its place thanks to permanent observation and control.⁴⁶ Lastly, normalization is a process through which individual characteristics and qualities are recognized and measured against different kind of norms. This process is disciplinary in the sense that it implies assessments and corrections of individuals. Thus, normalization imposes homogeneity, but it also makes differences intelligible. In institutions like Svartsjö, normalization in the last instance was a process aimed at reforming and re-directing those placed under the responsibility of the institution. The process of normalization made use of different techniques and instruments such as work ability and intelligence testing, as well as continuous judgements and ‘fine-tuning’ of the subject’s behaviour.⁴⁷ The ultimate normalizing technique, however – in its nature resembling an exam – was the granting of furlough from the institution during which the inmate would have the opportunity to prove himself in freedom.

The policing of alcoholics included a constant cooperation between the closed institution and local municipality-based temperance boards, who had to be heard in cases related to furlough or continued compulsory treatment. All important decisions concerning the inmates were made at the institution’s board meetings, which were held once a month. Local temperance boards, especially those from the smaller municipalities, often opposed or tried to postpone furlough or early release.⁴⁸ Phrases like ‘from the point of view of the society, x should be detained for the longest possible time’⁴⁹ or ‘as long as the law allows’ were not unusual in protocols.⁵⁰

The alcoholic – ‘prove himself in freedom’

Established in the late 19^th century as an institution for vagrants and beggars, Svartsjö partly looked like the older unreformed prisons of the early part of the century characterized by a ‘power-sharing’ between the guards and the inmates. At the same time, these older characteristics was combined with the scientifically based methods that characterized the emerging people’s home, such as eugenics and intelligence testing. In other words, a more punitive and rule-bound form of discipline had been supplemented with a correctional, norm-based, and much more fine-graded form. Thus, Svartsjö was not a disciplinary institution of the penitentiary model described by Foucault and others.⁵¹ It was a place where several different institutional logics met: the penitentiary in the form of the closed cellblock; the agrarian penal colony with its large areas, open fields, and fresh air; the factory where training and disciplining of workers took place and the hospital where the inmates’ bodies could be cured.

To be given the opportunity to prove himself out of this institutional environment was for the alcoholics the real test of willpower. A phrase often used was that the alcoholic should be given the chance to ‘prove himself in the state of freedom’.⁵² Furloughs were also used by the authorities as a kind of ‘security valve’ for making life a little easier for the inmates and sometimes the board explained their decision to grant furlough just by the fact that the inmate had stayed in the institution for a long time.⁵³ But more importantly, furloughs were in some cases part of an institutional strategy aimed at forcing subjects to take on the project of being free.

One of the results of the policing process was that the alcoholic emerged as an ‘anti-social’ subject and thus as a menace to society. Being anti-social can be understood in terms of absolute individualism or egoism and hence as a radical negation of the dominating communal values and norms. The anti-social individual is someone who puts his own interests before those of the community and becomes a menace to society. Consequently, his selfishness undermines solidarity and could, at least to many of the Social democratic members of the local temperance boards – be seen as a betrayal to the subject’s class and to society as a whole.

At the same time, the alcoholic was characterized by a number of moral shortcomings. Where the underlying cause of the abuse is discussed, expressions like ‘weak will’, ‘weak character’ or ‘morally depraved’ were common. To possess a weak or undeveloped will could be interpreted both as a cause of, and a result of, long-lasting abuse. Thus, other frequent expressions were ‘lack of insight’, ‘frail’, ‘unable to take care of oneself’, as well as more disillusioned formulations like ‘complete wreck’, ‘no hope’ or ‘totally hopeless’.⁵⁴ More elaborated diagnostic descriptions were rare but labels such as labile, imbecile, depressed or abnormal picked up from the psychiatric discourse that became increasingly popular in the 1930s and 1940s can sometimes be found.⁵⁵ More common was the controversial concept ‘psychopath’.⁵⁶ However, the concept was multifaceted and used to characterize those who populated the borderland between psychiatric illness, crime, and antisocial behaviour in general. A weaker and less clinical concept was the plastic and unprecise ‘nervous’, a concept that, unlike the above-mentioned ones, also sometimes were used by the inmates themselves when they described their mental status.⁵⁷ Lastly, perhaps the strongest negative label was ‘recidivist’ or ‘typical recidivist’, a concept usually reserved for the most dangerous habitual offenders.⁵⁸ Originally alluding to a person who relapsed into illness, the concept during the first decades of the 20th century became central in the discourses associated with criminology, especially the social defence school.

To be labelled a dangerous alcoholic became an aggravating circumstance that could lead to longer periods of detention. Most often the protocol in more laconic terms read just ‘dangerous’, but in some cases more specific expressions like ‘aggressive rowdy’, ‘typical brawler’, ‘fierce and rowdy’ or ‘constant fighter’ were used.⁵⁹ These expressions had both an individual and social meaning as they signalled that those labelled in this way were a threat to themselves, their families, and neighbours as well as to society at large. Another group of inmates were classified as ‘asylum cases’ that belonged either to retirement homes, charitable institutions, hospitals, or sanatoriums.⁶⁰ It is, however, not difficult to find many other negative epithets in the material: such as ‘reluctant’, ‘grumpy’, ‘extremely unreliable’, ‘idle’ and ‘lack of ambition’,⁶¹ ‘lack of insight’,⁶² or ‘spineless and work-shy’.⁶³

The wives of alcoholics as well as other family members were, unsurprisingly, the most exposed to their threats and physical violence, something often commented upon by the functionaries. Several inmates were described as ‘wife abuser’ or ‘danger to his wife’.⁶⁴ Almost a standard phrase for this group of inmates was that they, under the influence of liquor becomes brutal and violent.⁶⁵ Hence, in such cases the board at Svartsjö not seldom sought to protect wives and family by prolonging the time in detention. This means that the internment of the male alcoholic often functioned as a saviour for his family.

During the 1930s and 1940s the family in general and natalism in particular became an area for societal intervention. Several reforms, focusing on the family and aiming to increase birth rates, were launched. This ‘reform eugenics’ developed side by side with a more negative variant where elements such as internment, sterilization and marriage prohibition was introduced.⁶⁶ In the eugenic discourse that emerged in first half the 20^th century, alcoholism was right from the outset regarded as a threat to both the individual’ and the national body. Already from the birth of the eugenics movement, there was an intimate connection with the international temperance movement. Several eugenicists advocated sterilization for alcoholics.⁶⁷ Although restrictive eugenic measures mostly targeted women, sterilization sometimes became a condition for furlough or early release from closed institutions, including male alcoholic’s institutions. Thus, the Swedish sterilization laws of 1934 and 1941 provided the authorities with new tools in their police work.⁶⁸ This was especially the case after the introduction of a new sterilization law in 1941 which, among other things, included a social indication pointing at those who lived an ‘anti-social’ life as possible candidates for sterilization. The sterilization law made it possible for the authorities to use consent to sterilization as a condition for granting furlough.⁶⁹ Thus, a new way to avoid compulsory care that opened up for some inmates, was to agree to sterilization. In some cases, the local temperance board stipulated that the alcoholic should subject himself to this procedure.⁷⁰ In other cases, it appears that the inmates had already undergone sterilization in order to, as one inmate wrote, ‘enjoy freedom more quickly’.⁷¹ For example, Svartsjö’s annual report for 1944 stated that 13 inmates ‘on their own application and after the permission of the National Medical Board underwent sterilizing surgery’.⁷² As such, it is an illustration of how coercion and freedom interacted in the policing of alcoholics.

Very few of the inmates were given positive judgements. In a couple of cases expressions such as ‘intelligent and well-read’⁷³ and ‘calm and polite’⁷⁴ were used. In the material investigated here, especially one inmate attracted exceptional attention and deep sympathy. In the biographical notes’ he is described as someone who earlier in life was one of the most prominent members of the young socialist movement in Sweden. However, ‘once a brilliant brain’ he was now ‘burned-out’ and like a human wreck ruined by many years of heavy drinking, the protocol tells us. The official responsible for the notes added: ‘still there are moments when his old talents come to the fore’. In his case, the institution used their discretional power to transfer him to another institution with a less strict regime.⁷⁵

In the emerging people’s home, work assumed a new and more central role. It was no longer merely a necessity for supporting oneself, one’s family or to honour God, but a way of becoming a member of a larger national community. Thus, the alcohol abusers – like everybody else – were supposed to work, not because they were forced to do it, but out of a sense of duty to society. To become a real citizen in the people’s home the prisoner, alcohol abuser, vagrant, prostitute etcetera had to change his or her status from a receiver of welfare support to the status of worker and thus a producer of this same welfare. In the communitarian thinking characterizing the people’s home, social values transcended individual preferences so that the highest form of well-being was found when individual needs where congruent with the harmony of society as a whole. Consequently, on a theoretical level there were no conflicts between the interest of society, the common good, and the interest of offenders or deviants. At the same time, certain groups were after all being looked upon as in need of treatment and re-adjustment. These were the groups that had broken the ‘contract’ between society and its subjects and therefore in a deeper sense, did not belong to the community. The source material from Svartsjö shows that the inmates were exposed to a continual examination, including judgements of their social, medical, and moral standard, willingness, or unwillingness to work, intellectual capacity and hygienic status and, of course, their insight into their own situation. But as is well-known, this examination could never be total or all encompassing. Every institution, no matter how ‘total’ or how ambitious its functionaries are, has loopholes, gaps, and deficiencies out of which resistance can grow.

Resistance

Given our understanding of policing as a form of power, the concept also implies a countermovement, an inherent reaction from the objects exposed to this power. Thus, resistance is not an outside power but something inherent. Following Foucault, we can differentiate between two modes of resistance: one ‘negative’, a matter of a struggle against domination, and one ‘positive’. Thus, resistance is not only about saying no and reacting to what is felt to be unpleasant or unjust, it can also be productive and affirmative and hence an element in a process of self-creation.⁷⁶ In the Foucauldian tradition it is often underlined that power is everywhere, and that no relation is absent from power. More seldom, however, the other side of the coin is emphasized, namely that freedom is never absent since control is never total. This means that despite the fact that power almost always is asymmetrical, all parties involved have some room for action.⁷⁷ Total power is a contradiction in terms: if someone is totally in the hands of someone else, it is not a matter of power, but pure domination or violence. Moreover, power is a relation between subjects, that is, ‘free’ individuals with capacities to act, not simply a description of effects on passive victims.⁷⁸

Seen in this way, the archival materials from Svartsjö and numerous other human-treating institutions also reveal acts of resistance.⁷⁹ In the case of Svartsjö, there is especially one class of documents where the inmates appear as subjects – not as objects for normalization and the diagnostic gaze of power – namely the applications they submitted to the institutional board regarding furlough or early release. The inmates’ applications vary in scope, from a few lines to several pages. Most of them cover less than a half page, but a few inmates formulated longer life stories. The tone of the applications is almost without exception polite and humble and the requests for furlough are formulated in a ‘reverent’ mode. Taking a different stance towards the board was hardly successful, as some rejected applications testify. However, the reverent and submissive attitude should not only be seen as an expression of strategy but can also be understood as a matter of social and cultural deference.

A scrutinization of these applications gives us some possibility to understand how the inmates viewed their situation. How did they view themselves, their situation and society at large? How did they react on the authorities’ measures in general and especially the treatment they received within the institution? And further: What do the answers to these questions say about which (male) subject forms that dominated during ‘the people’s home’ period?⁸⁰ Even though it is out of scope for this short article to discuss these questions at length, some tentative answers can be given.⁸¹

Before we turn to the question of how the inmates reacted to the police technologies they were submitted to, it is important to have in mind that the kinds of resistance that the alcoholics put up of course was anticipated by the institutional regimes. Thus, the process of policing also includes several tools and measures for dealing with the expected resistance to conform; tools and measures that also function as a justification for further disciplining.⁸² Resistance can take many forms: from riots, escapes and other kinds of open and violent protests to passive, covert, and casual actions. Needless to say, the source material used here, provides the best opportunity to examine the latter forms of resistance.

In addition to a promising behaviour in the eyes of the institution’s disciplinary agents, valid legitimate and effective arguments were required for the application to succeed. First of all – and in practise a conditio sine qua non – in order for the application to be approved, the inmate had to have managed to secure some kind of employment.⁸³ Given the central role assigned to ‘the work principle’ in the formative period of the people’s home, the inmate had to present himself as a homo laborans, as a working subject. Unemployment was totally reprehensible and those who did not want to work were – with an expression often used during the interwar period also in public publications – ‘social parasites’ and as such a burden both for society at large as well as for relatives or others who had to support him. This emphasis on work expressed a moral order with roots that can be traced back at least to the Reformation period but which also gained a new meaning in the emerging welfare state, when this old work ethos found a secular-rational motivation. Thus, most applications contain formulations about the applicant’s work ability and that he ‘immediately’ could get a job after release. Sometimes inmates tried to put pressure on the board by adding that the employment they had in mind would probably not be available for long and that they were more useful to society as employed on the open labour market than in the institution and therefore immediately should be granted furlough.⁸⁴ Thus, the inmates ‘played the game’ and tried to turn the alcoholics law and its intentions in his favour.

In their applications the inmates often emphasized how they realized that they now had to become caring and loyal citizens, responsible men providing for themselves and their families – a loyal citizen that accepted his allotted place in the production apparatus and thus contributed to the survival and development of society. Some inmates combined the promise of becoming a capable and trustworthy citizen with an acknowledgement that they had previously been on the wrong path, but that they in the future, to the best of their ability, would make amends and show that they can become honest human beings again.⁸⁵ Other inmates declared that they from now on would behave ‘as befits a Swedish citizen’⁸⁶ or that they would show in action that they had become an orderly person again”.⁸⁷ Examples of even more subservient phrases are ‘become a useful tool for society’⁸⁸ or ‘has recently realized that a sober and in all aspects honest way of life is the best guarantee for a happy social life and the happiness of the individual’.⁸⁹ Not surprisingly, many inmates emphasized their deep regret of their historical record and that they had realized the need to change the way the lived. To present oneself as repentant and conscience-stricken was an old strategy associated with Christian penitence, a process that had been central to 19^th century penitentiaries.⁹⁰ To give an example:

I solemnly assure you that I will not abuse the confidence in my ability to take care of myself […]. During this last internship I have undergone a radical change in my heart becoming a better human being, which is why I emphasize without exaggeration that my incarceration has had the intended effect, namely taught me [unreadable] the danger of continuing my previous way of life […]. I now consider my detention unnecessary.⁹¹

Several other strategies can be observed, including referring to the fact that one was needed at home for the support of the wife or elderly parents. In the last case, an ‘old mother’ was often mentioned. Without questioning that the inmates could have deep ties to their mothers, the reference to the deep affection felt for her must in the first place be understood as a strategic move. A similar strategy was to emphasize oneself as a good responsible husband who took care of wife and children, thereby showing an acceptance of what was viewed as one of the cornerstones of society. A common image in the temperance discourse during the interwar decades was that the man who lived in a good home was the opposite of the irresponsible vagrant and drinker who wandered around without fixed ties to any special place.⁹² On the other hand, referring to the fact that you wanted to get home to your dear wife or that you were needed at home, was also an uncertain strategy given the fact that the husband’s alcohol abuse and bad behaviour towards his wife and children often were one of the main reasons for his detention. Nevertheless, in some cases an inmate was able to muster support for his application from his wife.⁹³ But more often both the wife and the local temperance board were strongly against approving his application.

When no other strategies were available, the inmates referred to bodily sickness, ‘weak nerves’ or simply that they had been in detention for a long time and were ‘worthy of another chance’. Some of the inmates were really in bad shape and suffered from bodily diseases, most common tuberculosis. When it comes to mental problems, it is difficult to determine from the inmates’ own information whether their talk about their poor mental condition was supported by a form of formal diagnosis or whether it was an expression of a more diffuse feeling of discomfort. It is, however, unlikely that complaints about deteriorating health, especially if the blame was put on the institution, had any effect in the absence of medical support.

Of course, there were inmates who considered their admission unfair, unjustified, and caused either by persecution from the authorities or false accusations from malicious relatives or neighbours. But to criticize the authorities or to express self-pity was, after all, relatively unusual, perhaps because it was not perceived as a particularly viable strategy or not in line with perceptions of masculinity. As has been underlined, policing aimed at normalizing the alcoholic into an order wherein responsibility and self-control were the ideals. But the inmate also ought to accept that a certain amount of societal loyalty was required of them. Furthermore, a strategy that denied the need of care and detention was dangerous because it was a direct attack on the whole ideology of interventions in the social area.

I think, however, that the resistance to the power of policing can be given another, deeper, interpretation where the resistance produced by the alcoholics was a part of subjectivating processes.⁹⁴ Although the application for furlough was part of the effort to get out of the institution, it was also an opportunity to make one’s voice heard, to ‘write oneself’ as a moral subject and to formulate another kind of opposition to the disciplinary order and the institutional regime. At the same time, the inmates’ actions took place within the confines of a culturally shaped discourse that governed which tools they could use as well as which subject positions that were more valid than others – although the subject always has a certain space for resistance and self-creation, he/she is also someone placed in a certain social, cultural, and discursive order.

The arguments used should not be seen primarily as reflecting the inmates’ actual situation but as the result of strategic choices where the various alternatives available were taken from the discursive repertoire that shaped the thinking of the era. Thus, the discursive strategies that can be discerned in the applications must be understood in relation to contemporary thought structures. Moreover, the applications for furlough were but the first step in an escape from the effects of policing; the real struggle started after the application had been approved.

Whether resistance gave rise to less repressive and ‘more tolerable’ conditions for those labelled alcoholics and hence changed the ways power worked on a societal level is of course extremely difficult to judge. Never-the-less, the history of the policing of alcoholics becomes incomplete if we neglect the role played by resistance. Moreover, it is important to note that the police agents studied in this paper should not, in any simple way, be seen as agents of repression. Repressive techniques formed only part of the measures the board and other police agents used to mould the subjects under their care. This also means that the power exercised should not be seen as an arbitrary power but as a technology for shaping human conduct, grounded in a model for constructing a better society. As such, the police activities studied in this article were part of a larger strategy, the objective being to isolate and control the most difficult-to-control elements and thus preventing them from contaminating the social body with their bad examples and, in some cases, also quite literally with what was seen as their defect genes.

Conclusion

Especially in the neo-Foucauldian approach developed by a group of Anglophone social scientists, the ‘police state’ is contrasted with the 20^th century liberalism as a new type of governmental rationality.⁹⁵ This thinking also includes a strictly liberal understanding of the 20^th century welfare states, a form of governance supposed to have succeeded the form associated with police.⁹⁶ This tendency can also be seen in some Swedish research projects.⁹⁷In contrast, my argument here is that the people’s home should not mainly be seen as a case of ‘liberal’ governance but as a state formation where a continuity with older forms of governance, i.e. policing, existed. Hence, the concept of policing is understood in the older, foremost continental, sense associated with Foucault’s elaborations of the concept.⁹⁸ The inherent theoretical ‘anti-liberalism’ in policing is succinctly expressed by Pasquale Pasquino: ‘either happiness will be social, or it will not exist’.⁹⁹ Thus, my use of the term also differs from how it is most often used in the scholarly field ‘police studies’ or in the media.

I have argued that the people’s home can be understood as a police state in the original meaning of the word, characterized by its aim towards a well-ordered administration and the protection of the population, i. e. the creating of a welfare state and the improvement of society. The construction of a police state, characterized by the use of certain power technologies, was a strategy to achieve this goal. Of course, Svartsjö was but one of the Islands in the Swedish institutional archipelago that was created during the first half the 20^th century.¹⁰⁰ These institutions were formed by a practice comprised of discursive elements, material changes and social actions. As such, Svartsjö was an instrument in the process of social ordering that permeated the people’s home. In the context of the people’s home, what has been described here as the policing of alcoholics was an integrated part in the efforts to protect society from the damages on the social body that social illnesses like alcohol abuse could result in. Thus, policing was in the last instance legitimated by the role it played for the benefit of society.

The placement of the responsibility for measures against alcoholics in administrative law, as was the case in the people’s home, was clearly in line with the older tradition of policing. This included a large amount of discretion given to temperance boards and institutional authorities. Besides institutional care and control, the power technologies used by the alcoholics’ bureaucracy included support and surveillance by the local temperance boards, contact with employers, and sometimes also the re-distribution of the alcoholics from the cities to the countryside.

In the same way as the modern prison regime inaugurated in the 18^th and 19^th centuries came to have other effects than its explicit goal – i. e. rehabilitating the individual offender – in creating a group of ‘useful’ recidivists, institutions like Svartsjö created a group of alcoholics out of an undifferentiated mass of vagrants, beggars, drunkards, petty criminals, and unruly and socially troublesome human beings. This process resulted in a widening gap between this group and the much larger class of respectable workers.¹⁰¹ No doubt, using a Marxian thermology, most of the inmates belonged to the Lumpenproletariat, i. e. the lowest stratum of the working class characterized by a lack of revolutionary consciousness.¹⁰² As such, the non-working alcoholic was the negation of what the Swedish historian of ideas Ronny Ambjörnsson famously coined ‘the diligent worker’, a kind of (male) role model for the emerging welfare state: a loyal, disciplined, and responsible citizen.¹⁰³ In this context, the alcoholics’ lifestyle was a concrete threat to the physical wellbeing of the citizens as well as a moral threat to the values of thrift and responsibility.

Theoretically, the alcoholics at Svartsjö were agents in the endless game of producing subjectivity, a game where there is no simple and pre-given hierarchy of power holders. As I have underlined, those labelled marginalized or ‘without power’ can develop resistance and counterstrategies, strike back, and put spokes in the wheel of power, if only by stubbornly refusing to take part in the game. Thus, despite the differences in power resources, the inmates struggle can be seen as a struggle for freedom, or more precisely a struggle to extend the space for freedom and creating another form of subjectivity. This could be done in several ways: first, of course, in a concrete way through escapes, refusal to work or in other ways absconding from taking part in their own subjugation; second, on a discursive level, as can be seen in the applications, attempts to use the legislation to their own advantage, for example through protests against being labelled ‘alcoholic’, ‘alcohol abuser’, ‘indolent’, ‘antisocial’, ‘dangerous’ etcetera.; and, third, and on a bodily level, through a striving to heal and ‘renovate’ the own body from the hardships of abuse and, most importantly, to free themselves from the dependence of, and desire for, alcohol.

The alcoholic’s quest for freedom from the institution’s fences and surveillance was only one side in a process, where the other side was his inner struggle to free himself from the desire for alcohol. The ethics that emerge from this understanding of freedom is a call to become a subject that could constitute itself, for example, as a sober, proud, and responsible man in contrast to his former status as a ‘social parasite’ and alcoholic. Hence, in an existential sense, the limits of freedom existed, not primarily in the physical confinement of the institution, but in the lack of freedom that his desire for alcohol constituted. It was therefore important for the alcoholic to overcome his deleterious passions and weak will. Of course, in practice, the inmates’ path to change was in most cases very long, but there was, nevertheless, always a certain, albeit small, space for freedom.

The creation of the alcoholic as subject is intimately associated with the creation of an increasing number of alcoholic institutions from the 1920s and onwards. By being subjected to the workings of the police power connected to these institutions, alcoholics were made visible as a specific category. At the top of this article, I raised the question regarding which kind of subject that could be discerned during the early decades of the welfare state. The answer is, of course, that there were several different subjects depending on class, gender, age, and other categorizations. This means that we must limit our aim to discuss what we can discern about the type of subject that was produced by the alcoholic’s care. Through its activities, the board at Svartsjö was part of a process that, on the one hand, drew up the limits for what could be seen as socially and culturally accepted drinking habits and on the other, created the alcoholic as a subject who fell outside these limits. Like all other types of subject construction, it started from the fiction of what a ‘normal’ subject is, or at least ought to be. Seen in this way, the power technologies and discourse production inherent in what I have called the ‘policing of alcoholics’ played a key role in producing the alcoholic as subject in the new social landscape that emerged in the people’s home.

In this context, the recalcitrant and morally depraved alcoholic represented an anomaly, someone who did not really belong to society. Thus, it was legitimate to subject him to control to a higher degree than other citizens, to prevent this kind of deviant and disloyal behaviour from spreading to the whole of society. In a society where equality was held in high esteem as a social and political value there was also a pressure to conform. Thus, for those unable or, for some reason, unwilling to adapt to the dominating social norms, there was a price to be paid. The willingness to conform and be part of what was seen as the essence of being a Swedish citizen became an important yardstick when it came to dealing with ‘strangers’ of different kinds, were they criminals, Roma people, travellers, or vagrants.¹⁰⁴

The Swedish model for treating alcoholics, mentally ill, vagrants, troublesome youths, and similar categories, during the people’s home period built on close interaction between the local municipalities and the institutions given the task to treat and reform these groups. This arrangement was not so much a matter of social engineering as a practice where administrative authorities such as institutional boards and locally elected municipality boards were the key actors.¹⁰⁵ As such, policing technologies were deeply ‘embedded’ in the social fabric of the interwar years where institutions like Svartsjö operated as intermediaries between the coercive trust of compulsory alcoholic’s treatment and the integrating mechanisms of the people’s home.¹⁰⁶

References

Unpublished primary sources

Stockholms stadsarkiv (Stockholm City Archive)

Statens vårdanstalt i Svartsjö arkiv

A Ia Protocols vol. 30–36 (1940–1942)

B II a: 3 Concept for annual reports 1944

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. E. g. Sejersted, The Age of Social Democracy; Schön, Sweden’s Road to Modernity. On the concept ‘people’s home’, see Björk, Folkhemsbyggare. Cf. Berman, The Primacy of Politics, who argues that social democracy differentiates from both orthodox Marxism and from liberalism. She especially rejects the idea that social democracy is a ‘softer’ or ‘embedded’ version of liberalism.

2. Christiansen et al., The Nordic Model of Welfare. See also Transformations of the Welfare State, edited by Bengt Larsson, Martin Letell, and Håkan Thörn.

3. Runcis, Makten över barnen; Apologies, edited by Johanna Sköld and Shurlee Swain; Ohlsson Al Fakir, Nya rum.

4. Broberg and Tydén, “Eugenics”; Runcis, Steriliseringar i folkhemmet; Zaremba, De rena och de andra; Tydén, Från politik.

5. See, however, Edman, Torken.

6. Svartsjö had opened in 1891 as an institution for vagrants. It had been under the responsibility of the Swedish Prison Administration until 1921, when it was taken over by The National Board of Health and Welfare and started to be used as an institution for those sentenced to compulsory alcoholic’s care. See, Nilsson, “Parasiter,” 295.

7. The source material are protocols from the institutional board at Svartsjö during 1940, 1941 and 1942. However, this material also contains information about the inmates and their treatment during the preceding years.

8. SFS 1931:233 Lag om behandling av alkoholister was a revision of the first Swedish alcoholics law from 1913. Regarding these laws, see, Edman, Torken, 55–58.

9. Stenius, Privat, 63, 77; Edman, Torken, 102.

10. Technically, the number of inmates fluctuated constantly as a significant number were on furlough. Besides the alcoholics, some 100 men sentenced according to the Vagrancy Law were kept at Svartsjö.

11. Nilsson, “Parasiter,” 298–300.

12. Björkman, Vård; Edman, Torken.

13. I most cases, the inmates themselves wrote their applications, something that make these an unusual source material. The applications are found as appendices to the institutional board’s protocols where they are collected according to the date they were received. Each year at least 200 applications were sent in. All of them have been analysed. References to the applications are done in the following way: A Ia Protocols (Applications), the inmate’s initials (e. g. N J) and date (e. g. 18/4 1942).

14. Nilsson, “Jag ska aldrig”; Nilsson, ‘’Att ni måtte.”

15. See Edman, “A Medical Challenge,” 224–46. Regarding the ‘social’ character of the alcohol question in Sweden, see Stenius, Privat, 28 and further references.

16. See, e. g. Nicholls, “Putting Foucault to work,” 30–31.

17. See, e. g., Den svenska supen edited by Kettil Bruun and Per Frånberg; Edman, Torken.

18. See, e. g. Rawlings, Policing, Furuhagen, 715 Ordning på stan.

19. E. g. Neocleous, “Theoretical,” 35.

20. Neocleous, The Fabrication, 17; Neocleous, “Theoretical,” 22.

21. Neocleous, The Fabrication, ixf; Neocleous, “Theoretical,” 17.

22. Neocleous, “Theoretical,” 3.

23. Gordon, “Governmental,” 10.

24. Gordon, “Governmental,” 10.

25. Johann von Justi, Éléments généraux de police (1760), quoted in Donzelot, The Policing of Families, 7.

26. Cf. Gordon, “Governmental,” 5.

27. Cf. Hetherington, The Badlands of Modernity.

28. Gordon, “Governmental,” 10.

29. Neocleous, “Theoretical,” 35–36.

30. SFS 1913:109 Lag om behandling av alkoholister.

31. The law had a clear class- as well as gender bias. See e. g. Knobblock, Systemets långa arm; Björkman, Vård; Edman, Torken; Johansson, Staten, Supen och Systemet.

32. Stenius, Privat, 48–50; Edman, Torken, 18–24.

33. SFS 1931:233 Lag om behandling av alkoholister.

34. SFS 1931:233 Lag om behandling av alkoholister, §§ 37 and 41.

35. See, Petrén, Innebörden av den nya alkoholistlagen.

36. Edman, Torken.

37. Rosenqvist, “Nykterhetsnämnderna.”

38. In 1917, a special ration book (Sw. motbok) for alcohol had been introduced in Sweden which restricted the amount of alcohol each individual was allowed to purchase. Local temperance boards were, among other things, empowered to deprive alcoholics of their ration book.

39. Edman, Torken, 102.

40. See e. g. Eisenbach-Stangl, “From temperance movements to state action” 63.

41. See, Eisenbach-Stangl, 63 where the author argues that Swedish alcohol policy, through the Bratt System, partially seems to have been transformed into a ‘total institution’, as defined by Goffman. See, Goffman, Totala institutioner.

42. Rosenqvist, “Nykterhetsnämnderna”; Nycander, Svenskarna och spriten; Sulkunen and Warpenius, “Reforming,” 424–25.

43. Sulkanen and Warpenius, “Reforming,” 430.

44. Nilsson, “First we build,” 52.

45. Nilsson, “First we build,” 53.

46. Downing, The Cambridge Introduction to Michel Foucault.

47. Regarding intelligence testing, see Axelsson, Rätt elev i rätt klass.

48. See e. g. A Ia Protocols, vol. 35 26/8 1942 V J and K O H and vol. 36 30/101,942 G A H J-B.

49. A Ia Protocols vol. 30 28/6 1940 F G A-H and vol. 31 29/8 1940 B E G S.

50. A Ia Protocol vol. 36 30/101,942 E G J.

51. Foucault, Discipline and Punish.

52. Ambjörnsson, Den skötsamme. See, e. g. A Ia Protocols vol. 34 30/3 1942 K E S K-B, vol. 34 30/3 1942 E G B and vol. 34 27/2 1942 A E H W.

53. A Ia Protocol vol. 34 30/3 1942 E G W.

54. E. g. A Ia Protocols vol. 34 30/3 1942 K O N and vol. 30 29/2 1940 K H S.

55. A Ia Protocols vol. 34 30/3 1942 G K O B, vol. 36 30/9 1942 O V G T K, vol. 34 30/3 1942 E G E, vol. 30 29/1 1940 A E Ö and vol. 34 27/2 1942 K H.

56. About the concept ‘psychopathy’ in the Swedish context, see Berg, De samhällsbesvärliga.

57. E. g. A Ia Protocol vol. 34 30/3 1942 E G E.

58. A Ia Protocols vol. 36 27/111,942 G F F and vol. 35 30/6 1942 J N.

59. A Ia Protocols vol. 36 30/9 1942 C I L, vol. 36 30/9 1942 K T S, vol. 36 30/9 1942 K A J, vol. 35 5/8 1942 F H R S, vol. 35 30/6 1942 B A B E and vol. 30 29/1 1940 P G O.

60. A Ia Protocols vol. 36 30/101,942 E G J-L, vol. 35 29/5 1942 F V F S, vol. 34 28/1 1942 F E L, vol. 35 29/5 1942 J O and vol. 35 29/5 1942 L A B.

61. A Ia Protocol vol. 34 27/2 1942 B AR K-H.

62. A Ia Protocols 36 30/101,942 P G B, vol. 31 30/9 1940 H R G and vol. 35 30/6 1942 B R H E.

63. A Ia Protocols 35 5/8 1942 J W R and vol. 30 29/1 1940 K E A.

64. A Ia Protocols 36 29/121,942 A J, vol. 30 29/4 1940 O J P, vol. 33 28/121,941 A I E, vol. 33 28/121,941 V R R and vol. 20 29/1 1940 E G O.

65. A Ia Protocol vol. 30 29/3 1940 B A R U.

66. See, e. g. Broberg & Tydén, “Eugenics,” 104–8. For an international comparison, see Quine, Population Politics in Twentieth Century Europe.

67. Weindling, “International Eugenics: Swedish Sterilization in Context.”

68. See Tydén, Från politik.

69. A Ia Protocols vol. 36 27/111,942 K I N. More general, see, e. g. Broberg & Tydén, “Eugenics,” 117.

70. A Ia Protocols 36 27/111,942 K I N, vol. 36 30/101,942 G A H J-B and vol. 36 30/101,942 H G K-G.

71. A Ia Protocols 36 3/101,942 G J B 3/101,942. See also vol. 36 1/111,942 G A.

72. See B II a: 3 Concept for annual reports 1944. I have no exact information about how often sterilization of inmates took place in alcoholic institutions. However, I have come across several cases.

73. A Ia Protocol 34 29/4 1942 J J.

74. A Ia Protocol 34 30/3 1942 N G T.

75. A Ia Protocols 30 29/1 1940 and vol. 31 2/8 1940 J E H. It should be noticed that he, a couple of years later, published a collection of poems.

76. Pickett, “Foucault and the Politics of Resistance.”

77. See, e. g. Kelly, The Political, 107.

78. Kelly, The Political, 73.

79. See, e. g. Englund, Fångsamhället.

80. However, one note of caution: the applications must first of all be seen as documents where different discursive strategies came into use. This means a focus on what the texts actually say, not on whether what is put forward are ‘true’ descriptions of reality or expresses the inmate’s ‘real’ perceptions on various issues.

81. For a more comprehensive discussion on this subject, see Nilsson, “Jag ska aldrig.”

82. Kelly, The Political, 110, 122.

83. Although there were clear reasons to be pessimistic about the possibilities for the alcoholics to hold on to a regular job, there was a slight hope in a labour-market still heavily dependent on a low-qualified workforce, e. g. employments in forestry work or as sailor were common. In fact, during the Second World War the work opportunities for alcoholics improved when a considerable proportion of the ordinary workforce were drafted into the Swedish armed forces.

84. See e. g. A Ia Protocols (Applications) vol. 301,940 3/1 H D, vol. 30 4/3 1940 A H, vol. 351,940 H J, vol. 31 3/9 1940 G I P 3/9, vol. 32 7/2 1941 O H 7/2, vol. 33 20/7 1941 W, vol. 34 2/3 1942 E W.

85. A Ia Protocols (Applications) vol. 32 12/5 1941 E A, vol. 34 3/2 1942 O H.

86. A Ia Protocol (Applications) vol. 32 16/6 1941 K O K.

87. A Ia Protocol (Applications) vol. 34 3/2 1942 O H.

88. A Ia Protocol (Applications) vol. 32,194,127/2 B A.

89. A Ia Protocol (Applications) vol. 34 2/4 1942 E Ö.

90. Nilsson, En välbyggd maskin.

91. A Ia Protocol (Applications) vol. 35 14/7 1942 E A L.

92. Nilsson, “Att ni måtte.”

93. A Ia Protocols (Applications) vol. 31 9/101,940 A H H; vol. 33 14/7 1941 E O; vol. 34 w d 1942 A M K.

94. This does not, of course, rule out the possibilities of more collective forms of resistance and the forming of counter-hegemonic subject-positions, from the alcoholics either inside the alcoholics’ institution or, for example, in the proletarian milieus in the larger cities.

95. Barry, Osborne & Rose eds. Foucault and Political Reason.

96. See e. g. Hunt, “Governing the City,” 167.

97. See, for example, the contributions to Viljan att styra, edited by Sofia Lövgren and Kerstin Johansson (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2007). At the same time, it must be underlined that Foucault’s conceptualization of liberalism is rather idiosyncratic as he sees it not as an economic doctrine or political ideology, but as a style of thinking concerned with the art of governing.

98. Cf. Gordon, “Governmental,” 14. This is also more in line with Foucault’s own introductory lecture to the subject. See, Foucault, “Governmentality.”

99. Pasquino, “Theatrum politicum,” 114.

100. See, for instance, Åman, Om den offentliga vården.

101. Edman has shown how maintaining this distinction was a cornerstone of Minister of Social Affairs Gustav Möller’s Programme during the interwar period. It was, according to Möller, important ‘not to confuse the Swedish working class with antisocial types’. See, Edman, “Lösdrivarlagen,” 139–40.

102. In the English translation of The Communist Manifesto, the German concept Lumpenproletariat is translated to ‘the dangerous classes’. See, Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 18.

103. Ambjörnsson, Den skötsamme.

104. Cf. Ohlsson Al Fakir, Nya rum.

105. Nilsson, “First we build,” 51–54.

106. Cf. Nilsson, “Creating the Juvenile Delinquent,” 366–67.