Dangerous Harvest Drug Plants and the Transformation of Indigenous Landscapes

by Steinberg, Michael K.; Hobbs, Joseph J.; Mathewson, Kent

• ISBN13: 9780195143201
• ISBN10: 0195143205
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-04-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Throughout history almost all traditional indigenous societies have used psychoactive substances derived from plants in religious and healing rituals. Once such plants are adopted by outsiders for profane use, the often impoverished peasant farmers who grow them are faced with a life of extreme poverty or are lured by the prospect of a very lucrative cash crop with a steady market. Before long, their cultural and physical landscape is drastically altered. The purpose of this book is to explore this issue from a variety of perspectives, ranging from opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan to peyote gardens in south Texas.

Author Biography

Michael K. Steinberg is Adjunct Professor of Geography at Louisiana State University and Cultural Biogeographer with the U.S.D.A.'s National Plant Data Center. Dr. Steinberg specializes in cultural and political ecology of indigenous peoples in Central America. His research has appeared in journals such as Geographical Review, Economic Botany, and The Professional Geographer. He is also the editor of Cultural and Physical Expositions, Geographical Studies in the Southern United States and Latin America, published by Geoscience Publications, and Forests, Fields, and Fish: Politicized Indigenous Landscapes. He received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in geography in 1999.

Table of Contents

Contributors	vii
Introduction	3	(8)
Michael K. Steinberg
I Background Issues
1 Drugs, Moral Geographies, and Indigenous Peoples: Some Initial Mappings and Central Issues	11	(13)
Kent Mathewson
2 The Stimulus of Prohibition: A Critical History of the Global Narcotics Trade	24	(91)
Alfred W. McCoy
II Case Studies
3 Opium and the People of Laos	115	(18)
Joseph Westermeyer
4 Opium Production in Afghanistan and Pakistan	133	(20)
Nigel J.R. Allan
5 The State and the Ongoing Struggle Over Coca in Bolivia: Legitimacy, Hegemony, and the Exercise of Power	153	(14)
Harry Sanabria
6 The Marijuana Milpa: Agricultural Adaptations in a Postsubsistence Maya Landscape in Southern Belize	167	(15)
Michael K. Steinberg
7 Sacred and Profane Uses of the Cactus Lophophora Williamsii from the South Texas Peyote Gardens	182	(27)
Clarissa T. Kimber
Darrel McDonald
8 Desert Traffic: The Dynamics of the Drug Trade in Northwestern Mexico	209	(12)
Eric P. Perramond
III History and Drug Plants
9 Cannabis in Colonial India: Production, State Intervention, and Resistance in the Late Nineteenth-Century Bengali Landscape	221	(11)
James H. Mills
10 Suppressing Opium and "Reforming" Minorities: Antidrug Campaigns In Ethnic Communities in the Early People's Republic of China	232	(17)
Zhou Yongming
IV Environmental Issues
11 Environmental and Social Consequences of Coca/Cocaine in Peru: Policy Alternatives and a Research Agenda	249	(25)
Kenneth R. Young
12 Modern Use and Environmental Impact of the Kava Plant in Remote Oceania	274	(20)
Mark Merlin
William Raynor
13 The Global Nexus of Drug Cultivation	294	(19)
Joseph J. Hobbs
Index	313