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BACK IN PRINT WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION

The turn of the last century saw a great wave of moral fervour among Protestant social reformers in English Canada. Their targets for moral reform were various: sex hygiene, immigration policy, slum clearance, prostitution, and “white slavery.”

Mariana Valverde’s groundbreaking The Age of Light, Soap, and Water examines the work and the ideas of moralist clergy, social workers, politicians, and bureaucrats who sought to maintain – or create – a white Protestant Canada. The morality idealized by evangelical, feminist, and medical activists was not, as is often assumed, completely repressive and puritanical. On the contrary, the self-defined social purity movement at the centre of this book talked endlessly about sex in order to create a health sexuality among both native-born and immigrant Canadians. Sexual health was linked to racial purity, and both of these were in turn linked to efforts to abolish urban slums by means of symbolic as well as physical “light, soap, and water.” Back in print with a new introduction by the author, this classic work offers fascinating insights on the social history of Canada.

" learance, prostitution, and "white slavery."

Mariana Valverde's groundbreaking The Age of Light, Soap, and Waterexamines the work and the ideas of moralist clergy, social workers, politicians, and bureaucrats who sought to maintain - or create - a white Protestant Canada. The morality idealized by evangelical, feminist, and medical activists was not, as is often assumed, completely repressive and puritanical. On the contrary, the self-defined social purity movement at the centre of this book talked endlessly about sex in order to create a healthy sexuality among both native-born and immigrant Canadians. Sexual health was linked to racial purity, and both of these were in turn linked to efforts to abolish urban slums by means of symbolic as well as physical "light, soap, and water."

This study uncovers a little known dimension of Canadian social history and shows that moral reform was not the project of a marginal puritanical group but was central to the race, class, and gender organization of modern English Canada.

MARIANA VALVERDE is a Professor at University of Toronto Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, and a Fellow of the Royal society of Canada. Her fields of study are the legal regulation of sexuality, sociolegal theory, historical sociology, and urban governance and law. She has written eight books, co-edited four anthologies and over 45 articles. In 2016 she received the Kalven prize of the Law and Society Association, for her longstanding contribution to empirical socio-legal scholarship. In addition to scholarly publishing, Mariana also writes for magazines, newspapers, and online forums, mostly on public-private infrastructure partnerships but occasionally on other topics; she has been published in The Conversation and Spacing Magazine. She lives in Toronto.

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