The Moral Origins of Political Surveillance
The Preventive Society in New York City, 1867-1918
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2732233 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Timothy J Gilfoyle (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1986 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 637 |
| Publication date | 1986-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0678 • E-ISSN: 1080-6490 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2712698 |
| OpenAlex | W2318605996 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
Charles Parkhurst were the most publicized in American history. Coinstockery, coined by a captious George Bernard Shaw, quickly became synonymous with the Victorian predilection for sexual suppression and regulation. ' Historians, however, have devoted scant attention to a simultaneous urban movement in which Comstock and Parkhurst played critical roles. Reacting to pervasive municipal corruption and increasing visibility of gambling dens, brothels, panel houses and unlicensed saloons, many New Yorkers were convinced that a more effective and reliable alternative to police action was a necessity. As a result, reformers organized a new institution, the preventive society, in hopes of alleviating the increasing immorality and erotic temptations in the city. This essay investigates the sexual politics of Victorian New York by considering how some reformers built new institutions of power expressly to control or destroy new forms of sexual and leisure behavior. Specifically I examine the evolution of preventive societies in New York City, their evolution, organizational behavior, ideology and impact upon urban life. Because these reformers occasionally usurped police power and adopted extralegal measures in regulating private and leisure-time behavior in the city, they had enduring effects on public police power. Preventive societies undermined the authority of municipal government, privatized moral law enforcement in regulating sexual and leisure activity in the city, and set the stage for their successors to move from to political surveillance of the citizenry. In effect, preventive societies were major vehicles of power by which purity-minded New Yorkers redefined appropriate sexual behavior, and, most importantly, transformed sexual politics in New York
Criminology · Government (linguistics · Human sexuality · Ideology · Immorality · Institution · Language change · Law enforcement · Morality · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sexual revolution · Sociology · American History and Culture · American Sports and Literature · Law · Race, History, and American Society
Plainclothes Policewomen on the Trail
Street-Rats and Gutter-Snipes
I did It for The Uplift of Humanity and The Navy”
Towards a history of listening and surveillance
Obscenity Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth-Century United States
The Surveillance State and the Surveillance Private Sector
Organized Evil and the Atlantic Alliance
Bigfoot Swims in the Garden of Eden
| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2002 - 2024 (23) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 8 |