Cocaine: From Coca Fields to the Streets
ISBN: 9781478092322
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Duke University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Anthropology ; Sociology ; History ; Latin American Studies;

The contributors to Cocaine analyze the contemporary production, transit, and consumption of cocaine throughout the Americas and the illicit economy's entanglement with local communities. Based on in-depth interviews and archival research, these essays examine how government agents, acting both within and outside the law, and criminal actors seek to manage the flow of illicit drugs to both maintain order and earn profits. Whether discussing the moral economy of coca cultivation in Bolivia, criminal organizations and drug traffickers in Mexico, or the routes cocaine takes as it travels into and through Guatemala, the contributors demonstrate how entire ways of life are built around cocaine commodification. They consider how the authority of state actors is coupled with the self-regulating practices of drug producers, traffickers, and dealers, complicating notions of governance and of the relationships between economic and moral economies. The collection also outlines a more progressive drug policy that acknowledges the important role drugs play in the lives of those at the urban and rural margins.

Contributors. Enrique Desmond Arias, Lilian Bobea, Philippe Bourgois, Anthony W. Fontes, Robert Gay, Paul Gootenberg, Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, Thomas Grisaffi, Laurie Kain Hart, Annette Idler, George Karandinos, Fernando Montero, Dennis Rodgers, Taniele Rui, Cyrus Veeser, Autumn Zellers-León


Enrique Desmond Arias is Marxe Chair of Western Hemisphere Affairs and Professor, Baruch College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the author of Criminal Enterprises and Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean .

Thomas Grisaffi is Associate Professor of Human Geography at the University of Reading and author of Coca Yes, Cocaine No: How Bolivia's Coca Growers Reshaped Democracy , also published by Duke University Press.
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