Fous, prodigues et ivrognes: Familles et déviance à Montréal au XIX siècle (review)

During the nineteenth century in the province of Québec, a family of persons considered unable to manage their assets could request a court order (an interdiction) by which a guardian was nominated to take charge. Thierry Nootens studied 511 such requests made in Montreal for madness, drunkenness, or prodigality (dilapidation of patrimony), dating from 1820 to 1895. He examines the relationships among those involved in the resolution of the problems raised by the deviant behavior: the deviant, the deviant's family, the judicial system, doctors and alienists, and asylums. The focus is on interfaces where private individuals, professionals, and institutions interact while negotiating ways to cope with such troubles. In doing this, Nootens intends to go further than the usual opposition between the two trends that dominate the madness and deviancy field of research: emphasis on social control originating from the upper classes or on the agencies of those directly concerned. Nootens uses ideas from both trends to question institutional and individual interrelationships at work in the regulation of deviancy.

Deviancy is first viewed from inside the family. Nootens observes how it can endanger social reproduction processes, particularly when somebody having a key position in the family does not conform to the role he or she is supposed to play. Insane or mentally handicapped family members, alcoholics, and young men leading dissolute lives come to threaten wealth, social status, and respectability in various ways. The family, which is first concerned, is also first to act, searching to restore an acceptable way of life. But the solutions found are often incomplete, improvised rather than strategic, and devised in reaction to uncontrolled disturbances, and they can become insufficient. The interdiction could then be used. Examining how families requesting interdiction and the judicial system interacted, Nootens establishes that interdiction generally occurred against persons whose socio-juridical status enabled them to cause serious damage to the family's wealth and when the family, having tried to cope with the problems, encountered troubles that could not be managed in a satisfactory way. Often, resorting to interdiction originated from an issue that weakened the family's wealth. Therefore, the official acknowledgment of deviancy was determined by background as well as by the deviancy itself. Nootens also shows that the procedure of interdiction almost always followed the family's views as defined by a board of guardians. The deviant had little chance to escape interdiction. The rare rejected requests happened when the members of the family were divided. Otherwise, the court acted as a regulatory instrument used by families to alleviate problems, as long as the rules enacted by the legislator were respected. But even interdiction could become inadequate, and then the deviant person could be sent to a specialized institution, like an asylum. Nootens observes that if there was not much evolution of the interdiction's practice during the century, institutionalization was becoming more and more frequent. He considers internment less a social control device in the hands of the upper classes than a tool for families searching to regain control. He shows that doctors and alienists still had little influence over the deviant person's trajectory, and therefore rejects the idea of a marked medicalization process existing before the twentieth century.

Nootens gives a well-balanced study. Demonstration is constantly supported by cases. He builds on previous debates in the field and brings in new material. As a matter of fact, the main conclusions are on the side of agency, reinforcing the idea that the regulation of deviancy remains essentially a family affair: family is first concerned, first searching solutions and acting, requesting interdiction and placing individuals in institutions, while judges and doctors largely supported the family's efforts toward normalization.