Dangerous Harvest Drug Plants and the Transformation of Indigenous Landscapes

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

• ISBN13: 9780195143195
• ISBN10: 0195143191
• Format: Hardcover
• 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.

Table of Contents

Contributors	vii
Introduction	3	(8)
Michael K. Steinberg
I Background Issues
Drugs, Moral Geographies, and Indigenous Peoples: Some Initial Mappings and Central Issues	11	(13)
Kent Mathewson
The Stimulus of Prohibition: A Critical History of the Global Narcotics Trade	24	(91)
Alfred W. McCoy
II Case Studies
Opium and the People of Laos	115	(18)
Joseph Westermeyer
Opium Production in Afghanistan and Pakistan	133	(20)
Nigel J. R. Allan
The State and the Ongoing Struggle Over Coca in Bolivia: Legitimacy, Hegemony, and the Exercise of Power	153	(14)
Harry Sanabria
The Marijuana Milpa: Agricultural Adaptations in a Postsubsistence Maya Landscape in Southern Belize	167	(15)
Michael K. Steinberg
Sacred and Profane Uses of the Cactus Lophophora Williamsii from the South Texas Peyote Gardens	182	(27)
Clarissa T. Kimber
Darrel McDonald
Desert Traffic: The Dynamics of the Drug Trade in Northwestern Mexico	209	(12)
Eric P. Perramond
III History and Drug Plants
Cannabis in Colonial India: Production, State Intervention, and Resistance in the Late Nineteenth-Century Bengali Landscape	221	(11)
James H. Mills
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
Environmental and Social Consequences of Coca/Cocaine in Peru: Policy Alternatives and a Research Agenda	249	(25)
Kenneth R. Young
Modern Use and Environmental Impact of the Kava Plant in Remote Oceania	274	(20)
Mark Merlin William Raynor
The Global Nexus of Drug Cultivation	294	(19)
Joseph J. Hobbs
Index	313