'Clean Spirit': Distilling, Modernity, and the Ugandan State, 1950-86

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Periodical article

Title:	'Clean Spirit': Distilling, Modernity, and the Ugandan State, 1950-86
Author:	Willis, Justin
Year:	2007
Periodical:	Journal of Eastern African Studies
Volume:	1
Issue:	1
Pages:	79-92
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Uganda
Subjects:	alcoholic beverages alcohol policy History and Exploration Politics and Government Law, Human Rights and Violence colonialism
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1080/17531050701218866
Abstract:	This article explores official attitudes to illicit distillation in Uganda in the mid-twentieth century. Tracing continuities in rhetoric which are strikingly revealed by two reports on the problem of illicit distillation, the article offers a discussion of the development of illicit distillation and argues that for officials in the late colonial and independent State, this became a symbol of the potential dangers of modernity. Governmental schemes for the production of a 'clean' distilled drink, on the other hand, asserted the ability of the State to provide a safe route to modernity. The State was challenged in this field - with such challenges made possible by the patrimonial nature of authority, which has constantly subverted the pretensions of the State - yet policy on the production of spirits has remained an important area for the discursive creation of legitimacy. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]