Codes of the pub: the public room between order and chaos in Antwerp (1910-1950)

Since the elite stopped visiting the pub in the early modern era, they started considering pubs and drinking to be a source of 'chaos' in all kinds of ways. The moralistic look of the elites towards pub visits does no right to its functionality for the lower classes according to 20(th) century police sources in Antwerp. They went to the pub to maintain informal social bonds and renew reciprocate relationships. Pub visits may have regularly resulted in drunkenness but the central goal was sociability. That pubs were a more tolerant place doesn't mean that the elite view of a 'lack of morality' was true. The festive atmosphere in the pub, which was regarded as a condition to cultivate sociability, may not be compared to anarchism. On the contrary, life in the pub was permeated with norms, conventions and opinions that structured the interaction among pub goers and between pub goers and innkeepers. No more than pub life in general, may we interpret the violence in especially pubs as a consequence of the chaos created by excessive alcohol use. The brawls in and around pubs fitted into the strongly formalised conflict regulation in informal social networks. The pub was chosen for this anything but "senseless" violence just because its function as a focal point of the informal sociability allowed for conflicts to be resolved under the eyes and control of the public