Book Review

Alan Hunt, a historical sociologist, has imaginatively applied the sociology of governance to Anglo-American case studies that extend from the seventeenth century through the twentieth. Relying markedly upon existing research, he explains the antivice movements. I will primarily limit myself to the American aspects of his extended study. Hunt stimulates our thinking on the changing nature of governance as effected by social movements. Not alone in this enterprise, he acknowledges John Burnham's contribution to antivice studies but rejects Burnham's "conservative" interpretation.

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Relying on Michael Foucault's definition of governance, loosely seen as a governance not only from the top down but originating from "above," "below," and the "middle," Hunt studies a middle-class movement that, to his mind, narrows the concept of social purity to sexual purity. He ignores the pervasiveness of puritanical thought and belief in American history. The purifying impulse gave multiple directions to the various social purity movements. The imposition of a definition upon historical actors reduces purity movements to one-dimensionality. Warmly contested, purity definitions and subsequently hygiene definitions had profound implications for social development.

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