Ground Level: Cannabis and the State w/ Adam Lloyd, Gulzat Botoeva and Matt Bishop

Drugs, alcohol, and other recreational substances are central to everyday social life and form a significant, contested and repressed sector of the global economy. Importantly, it is a market that states seek to disband or regulate through domestic and international political institutions. 

Through their encounter with state institutions, substances become a central political issue at all levels of policymaking: from youth policy to the fight against organised crime, from local neighbourhood councils to international security forums, from small artisanal production to global agricultural supply chains. 

In this episode, we focus specifically on the political economy of grassroots cannabis production and its interaction with the state to understand how morality, values, and (il)legality shape the political economy of recreational substances. 

Concepts discussed: state, legality, illegality, regulation, moral political economy, racial capitalism.

Host: Dr Frank Maracchione, SOAS University of London. 

Guests: 

Adam Lloyd is a postgraduate researcher in Politics at University of Sheffield, focusing on the political economy of cannabis legalisation in North America, exploring the broader socio-economic and policy implications of cannabis reform. 

Dr Gulzat Botoeva is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Swansea University. She investigates illegal economic activities ranging from drug trafficking in Central Asia to illegal gold mining and small-scale hashish harvesting in Kyrgyzstan.

Dr Matthew Bishop is Senior Lecturer in International Politics at University of Sheffield. His research focuses on the political economy of development, with particular attention to small states and peripheral economies, and the political economy of drug policy in the Americas.

References: 

Andreas, P. (2011). Illicit globalization: Myths, misconceptions, and historical lessons. Political Science Quarterly, 126(3), 403–425. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-165X.2011.tb00706.x 

Baird A, Bishop ML & Kerrigan D (2021) “Breaking bad”? Gangs, masculinities, and murder in Trinidad. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 24(4), 632-657. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2021.1931395 

Baird A, Bishop ML & Kerrigan D (2023) Differentiating the local impact of global drugs and weapons trafficking: How do gangs mediate ‘residual violence’ to sustain Trinidad’s homicide boom?. Political Geography, 106.

Bishop, M. L. (2016). Negotiating flexibility at UNGASS 2016: Solving the “world drug problem”? SPERI Global Political Economy Brief No. 5, Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI), University of Sheffield. https://sheffield.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2022-10/Global-Brief-5-Negotiating-Flexibility-at-UNGASS-2016-Solving-the-World-Drug-Problem.pdf

Botoeva, G. (2014). Hashish as cash in a post-Soviet Kyrgyz village. International Journal of Drug Policy, 25(6), 1227-1234.

Botoeva, G. (2015). The monetization of social celebrations in rural Kyrgyzstan: on the uses of hashish money. Central Asian Survey, 34(4), 531–548.

Botoeva, G. (2021). Multiple narratives of il/legality and im/morality: The case of small-scale hashish harvesting in Kyrgyzstan. Theoretical Criminology.

Chouvy, P. A. (2016). The myth of the narco-state. Space and Polity, 20(1), 26–38.

DeVillaer M. R. (2024). Buzz kill: The Corporatization of Cannabis. Black Rose Books.

Dillis, C., Biber, E., Bodwitch, H., Butsic, V., Carah, J., Parker-Shames, P., Polson, M. & Grantham, T. 2021. Shifting geographies of legal cannabis production in California. Land Use Policy, 105, 105369.

Seddon, T. (2016), Inventing Drugs: A Genealogy of a Regulatory Concept. Journal of Law and Society, 43: 393-415.

This episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Chris Saltmarsh, Josh White, Frank Maracchione, and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Frank Maracchione with support from Chris Saltmarsh. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.