Spirit and being: interdisciplinary reflections on drugs across history and politics
Third World Quarterly February 1, 2018 DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2017.1409073 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Citations | 32 |
| Key points | Argues that drugs are spirit-like global commodities whose value rests on a fundamental ambiguity spanning individual, psychological, social, cultural, economic, and medical circumstances, and that they remain a political object controlled by states through policing, judicial and medical evaluation, and moral condemnation. Proposes that this tension between fluid social existence and a static legal dimension makes drugs inspiring hermeneutic objects of study. |
Abstract
Few commodities are as global as drugs. Cannabis, opium, heroin, amphetamines, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), khat, psychedelic cacti and mushrooms as well as an interminable list of other natural or synthesised substances travel and are consumed around the globe for all possible reasons. Human migration, trade, cultural trends, medical practice, political repression: together they constitute the drug phenomenon today – and indeed in much of human history. In this, drugs are spirit-like commodities, their value resting upon a fundamental ambiguity made up of individual, psychological, social, cultural, economic and medical circumstances. Defining a drug is an attempt at defining a spirit on the edge, which metamorphoses in time and space. At the same time, drugs remain a fundamentally political object. They are substances controlled by states, through mechanisms of policing, legitimated by judicial and medical evaluation, condemned often on moral grounds. Situated between a fluid social existence and a static legal dimension, drugs can become inspiring hermeneutic objects of study.