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Business Against Drunk Driving: The Neoliberal State, Labatt Brewery, and the Creation of the “Responsible Drinker”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 January 2022
Abstract
This paper examines the motivations and consequences of Labatt’s anti–drinking and driving campaign. The paper considers the economic and political conditions that enabled Canada’s largest brewer to execute a cause-advertising campaign and to establish itself as a “responsible corporation”—even when its leadership cared less about the deleterious effects of Labatt products and more about the company’s earnings. It examines neoliberal governance and the relationship between the public and private sector in tackling a prominent social problem—impaired driving—and how a for-profit business used its influence to create a new subjectivity: the “responsible drinker,” who did not drive while under the influence. It seeks to situate Labatt’s campaign within an increasingly neoliberal, individualistic political economy. This paper argues that Labatt’s actions were part of the neoliberal agenda toward “responsibilization” that shifted the responsibility for drunk driving away from regime-based institutions and onto the individual, allowing the neoliberal state to govern from a distance. It demonstrates that contrary to neoliberal rhetoric the state did not shrink during the late twentieth century but rather took on new regulatory functions.
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- © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved
References
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Rose, Nikolas, and Miller, Peter. “Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government.” British Journal of Sociology 43 (1992): 173–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Bellamy, Matthew. Brewed in the North: A History of Labatt’s. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Blyth, Mark. Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Political Change in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Briggs, Laura.
Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transnational and Transracial Adoption
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Foucault, Michel. The Use of Pleasure, translated by Hurley, R.. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1985.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. Technologies of the Self—A Seminar with Michel Foucault, edited by Luther Martin,Google Scholar
Gusfield, Joseph. The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking-Driving and the Symbolic Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. The Taming of Chance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harcourt, Bernard. The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurst, W., Gregory, E., and Gussman, T., Alcoholic Beverage Taxation and Control Policies. Ottawa: Brewers’ Association of Canada, 1997.Google Scholar
Lerner, Barron. One for the Road: Drunk Driving Since 1900. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malleck, Dan. Try to Control Yourself: The Regulation of Public Drinking in Post-Prohibition Ontario, 1927–1944. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Mazzucato, Mariana. The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths. London: Anthem Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Mettler, Suzanne. The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milov, Sarah. The Cigarette: A Political History Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moreton, Bethany. To Serve God and Walmart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prasad, Monica. The Land of Too Much: American Abundance and the Paradox of Poverty. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rentschler, Carrie. Second Wounds: Victims’ Rights and the Media in the U.S. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Rodgers, Daniel. Age of Fracture. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scranton, Philip, and Fridenson, Patrick. Reimagining Business History. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seo, Sarah. Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Shermer, Elizabeth. Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soss, Joe, Fording, Richard, and Schram, Sanford. Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stacey, Judith. In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age. Boston: Beacon, 1996.Google Scholar
Stedman Jones, Daniel. Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Beauregard, Robert. “Public-Private Partnerships as Historical Chameleons: The Case of the United States.” In Partnerships in Urban Governance: European and American Experiences, edited by Pierre, Jon, 50–72. New York: Palgrave, 1998.Google Scholar
Bellamy, Matthew. “‘To Ensure the Continued Life of the Industry’: The Public Relations Campaign of the Ontario Brewers During WWII.” Histoire sociale/Social History 48, no. 97 (2015): 403–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biebricher, Thomas. “(Ir-)Responsibilization, Genetics and Neuroscience.” European Journal of Social Theory 14, no. 4 (2011): 469–488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bliss, Michael. “Rich by Nature, Poor by Policy: The State and Economic Life in Canada.” In Entering the Eighties: Canada in Crisis, edited by Carty, Kenneth and Ward, Peter, 78–90. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Brant, Allan. “From Nicotine to Nicotrol: Addiction, Cigarettes, and American Culture.” In
Altering American Consciousness: The History of Alcohol and Drug Use in the United States, 1800–2000, edited by Tracy, Sarah and Acker, Caroline, 383–402. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Brenner, Neil, Peck, Jamie, and Theodore, Nik. “Variegated Neoliberalization: Geographies, Modalities, Pathways.” Global Networks 10, no. 2 (2010): 182–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burchell, Graham. “Liberal Government and Techniques of the Self.” Economy and Society 22, no. 3 (1993): 267–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fell, James, and Voas, Robert. “Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD): The First 25 Years.” Traffic Injury Prevention (2008), 195–212.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. “Risk and Responsibility.” Modern Law Review 62, no. 1 (1999): 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gioffre, Saverio. “Growth Opportunities That Exist for Canada’s Brewing Industry: A Market Study.” Master’s thesis, Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, Toronto, 1984.Google Scholar
Giroux, Henry. “Nymphet Fantasies: Child Beauty Pageants and the Politics of Innocence.” Social Text 57 (1998): 31–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houghton, Elizabeth. “Becoming a Neoliberal Subject.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization 19 (2019): 615–626.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Lisa. “Navigating the Boundaries of Respectability and Desire: Seagram’s Advertising and the Meanings of Moderation after Repeal.” History of Alcohol and Drugs 26, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 122–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jessop, Bob. “Constituting Another Foucault Effect: Foucault on States and Statecraft.” In
Governmentality: Current Issues and Future Challenges edited by Ulrich Bröckling, Susanne Krasmann, and Thomas Lemke, 56–73. London: Routledge, 2010.Google Scholar
Kohler-Hausmann, Julilly. “Guns and Butter: The Welfare State, the Carceral State, and the Politics of Exclusion in the Postwar United States.” Journal of American History 102, no. 1 (June 2015): 87–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Konings, Martijn. “Neoliberalism and the American State.” Critical Sociology 36, no. 5 (2010): 741–765.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lemke, Thomas. “The Birth of ‘Bio-politics’: Michel Foucault’s Lecture at the College de France on Neo-liberal Governmentality.” Economy and Society 30, no. 2 (2001): 190–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell-Weaver, Clyde, and Manning, Brenda. “Public-Private Partnerships in Third World Development: A Conceptual Over-view.”
Studies in Comparative International Development 26, no. 4 (1991): 45–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Malley, Pat. “Risk and Responsibility.” In Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-liberalism and Rationalities of Government, edited by Barry, Andrew, Osborne, Thomas, and Rose, Nikolas, 189–207. London: UCL Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Pyysiäinen, Jarkko, Halpin, Darren, and Guilfoyle, Andrew. “Neoliberal Governance and ‘Responsibilization’ of Agents: Reassessing the Mechanisms of Responsibility-Shift in Neoliberal Discursive Environments.” Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 18, no. 2 (2017): 215–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pyysiäinen, Jarkko, and Vesala, K. M.. “Activating Farmers: Uses of Entrepreneurship Discourse in the Rhetoric of Policy Implementers.” Discourse & Communication 7 (2013): 55–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renarman, Craig. “The Case of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Social Control in the 1980s.” Theory and Society 19 (1988): 91–120.Google Scholar
Renfro, Paul. “Keeping Children Safe Is Good Business: The Enterprise of Child Safety in the Age of Reagan.” Enterprise and Society 17, no. 1 (March 2016): 151–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, Nikolas, and Miller, Peter. “Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government.” British Journal of Sociology 43 (1992): 173–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rothschild, Michael. “Carrots, Sticks and Promises: A Conceptual Framework for the Management of Public Health and Social Issue Behaviors.” Journal of Marketing 63 (1999): 24–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shamir, Ronen. “Corporate Social Responsibility: Towards a New Market-Embedded Morality?”
Theoretical Inquiries in Law 9, no. 2 (2008): 372–394.Google Scholar
Shamir, Ronen. “The Age of Responsibilization: On Market-Embedded Morality.” Economy and Society, 37, no. 1 (2008): 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Squires, Gregory. “Partnership and the Pursuit of the Private City.” In Urban Life in Transition, edited by Gottdiener, Mark and Pickavance, Chris, 196–221. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1991.Google Scholar
Labatt Collection, Western University Archives (London, Ontario).Google Scholar