A book about the battle over the bottle in the Twin Cities.
We Are What We Drink: The Temperance Battle in Minnesota
by Sabine N. Meyer
University of Illinois Press, 2015
Focusing on the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, Sabine Meyer's We Are What We Drink intertwines national, regional, and urban history during the Progressive era, along with the political motivations and legislative actions at the city and state level in Minnesota, to unravel the temperance movement’s relationship to and effect on identity constructions as well as social, ethnic, racial, religious and political elements. Covering a 100-year period (1819-1919), the project shows the ways that we are what we drink by examining the formation of civic identities of the cities themselves, Irish and German immigrants, and women in the public sphere and how the groups' involvement in the temperance movement helped to shape their categories of identity and establish a civic role: German immigrants continued to support public drinking to uphold their heritage; Irish immigrants joined religious forces to condemn drinking and to embed themselves in their new homeland; and women sought to protect the domestic sphere by moving their fight into the public sphere. Meanwhile, each Twin City had opposite stances on temperance with St. Paul being liquor friendly and Minneapolis being a hotbed for the liquor reform movement.
Meyer draws on a vast range of primary source materials including newspaper and court archival records and situates her own work within relevant scholarship on temperance, civic identity, Minnesota history, Irish and German American ethnic identity, and construction of female identity in the public sphere. In doing so, Meyer provides a thorough overview about how the role of drink and the attempt to regulate drink in connection with a social movement influenced local, ethnic, and gender identity construction.
This is one of the first books I acquired, and so I am especially pleased to see it out. If you think the cover is awesome, wait until you read what's on the inside!
We Are What We Drink: The Temperance Battle in Minnesota
by Sabine N. Meyer
University of Illinois Press, 2015
Focusing on the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, Sabine Meyer's We Are What We Drink intertwines national, regional, and urban history during the Progressive era, along with the political motivations and legislative actions at the city and state level in Minnesota, to unravel the temperance movement’s relationship to and effect on identity constructions as well as social, ethnic, racial, religious and political elements. Covering a 100-year period (1819-1919), the project shows the ways that we are what we drink by examining the formation of civic identities of the cities themselves, Irish and German immigrants, and women in the public sphere and how the groups' involvement in the temperance movement helped to shape their categories of identity and establish a civic role: German immigrants continued to support public drinking to uphold their heritage; Irish immigrants joined religious forces to condemn drinking and to embed themselves in their new homeland; and women sought to protect the domestic sphere by moving their fight into the public sphere. Meanwhile, each Twin City had opposite stances on temperance with St. Paul being liquor friendly and Minneapolis being a hotbed for the liquor reform movement. Meyer draws on a vast range of primary source materials including newspaper and court archival records and situates her own work within relevant scholarship on temperance, civic identity, Minnesota history, Irish and German American ethnic identity, and construction of female identity in the public sphere. In doing so, Meyer provides a thorough overview about how the role of drink and the attempt to regulate drink in connection with a social movement influenced local, ethnic, and gender identity construction.
This is one of the first books I acquired, and so I am especially pleased to see it out. If you think the cover is awesome, wait until you read what's on the inside!
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