Crafting the Machinery of Municipal Rule: The Board of Police in Nineteenth Century Brockville, Upper Canada
Year: 2013
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis traces the coordination, configuration and operation of municipal government in Brockville, Upper Canada, between 1830 and 1836.By focusing on how governing occurred and what was involved in governmental projects, rather than who governed, it presents new insights into the processes that constituted a form of rule in a nineteenth century town.Contrary to presenting a narrative of rationalization, it argues that manner, etiquette and prestige were essential to the machinery of local government, as targets of regulation and as characteristics of the mode of operation.The problem of how the concept of democracy, and the idea of local government, are translated into political practices is explored through an investigation of the agents and arrangements that were fashioned to form the institution of municipal government.Scholarly attention has been directed to the modern incorporated municipality, which owes much of its framework to the Municipal Corporations Act of 1849.Instead, this thesis focuses on its Upper Canadian predecessor, the board of police.Boards of police significantly changed the ways in which the administration and regulation of local affairs occurred.This thesis argues that local government was only possible through the coordination of a political space, populated by agents who had to govern themselves and govern others.It explores how governing through boards of police required crafting the machinery of municipal rule.Nero, to tenth century London where 'bellmen' rung a 'curfew bell', warning townsfolk to 'take care' of their candles during the night.It became apparent that an important aspect of the regulation of fire involved the development of quasi-professional and professional 'fire engineers' who operated as agents of incorporated municipalities, a process that involved something resembling what Cynthia Cockburn (1977) has termed instances of 'the local state'.Cockburn's 'local state' concept is useful as a starting point inasmuch as it attempts to capture local specificity while paying attention to broader, state level, relations of power.Such a vision would view instances of preventive practices as occurring alongside and within sets of broader concerns, capital accumulation or
Author: Phillip Primeau
Institution: Carleton University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4242238733