Historique
Périodique
Talking about the flow: drugs, borders, and the discourse of drug control
Auteur(s) :
P. GOOTENBERG
Article en page(s) :
13-46
Sous-type de document :
Revue de la littérature / Literature review
Domaine :
Plusieurs produits / Several products
Langue(s) :
Anglais
Thésaurus mots-clés
TRAFIC INTERNATIONAL
;
DIFFUSION DES PRODUITS
;
CONTROLE DES STUPEFIANTS
;
MARCHE DE LA DROGUE
;
HISTOIRE
;
PRODUIT ILLICITE
;
POLITIQUE
Thésaurus géographique
INTERNATIONAL
Note générale :
Cultural Critique, 2009, (71), 13-46
Résumé :
ENGLISH :
This essay explores the relationships between illicit drug flows (my current area of historical research) and state borders. The larger theme, for objects-in-motion, is how statist languages of "control" underlie their construction and maintenance as illicit and criminalized flows. Students of drug trafficking can make public discourses about drugs a usefully explicit object of study. But in doing so they should also beware of the possible intellectual and political pitfalls of "talking like a state"- that is, of adopting the categories or characterizations of the illicit deployed by policing and regulatory agencies - for thinking well about such flows. Among other problems, it is hard for territorial states to supersede their stationary view of shifting, furtive, borderless activities, a dilemma of note in the recent war on terrorism as well. The essay winds its way to these ideas by addressing three topics: first, the relation of drugs to commodity studies writ large (how drugs were differentiated from other goods during the historic rise of commercial and industrial capitalism); second, the relation of drugs to the building of borders and states; and third, the role of bureaucratic-control language in marking and naturalizing the thin line between controlled substances and freer commodities. (Extract of the publication)
This essay explores the relationships between illicit drug flows (my current area of historical research) and state borders. The larger theme, for objects-in-motion, is how statist languages of "control" underlie their construction and maintenance as illicit and criminalized flows. Students of drug trafficking can make public discourses about drugs a usefully explicit object of study. But in doing so they should also beware of the possible intellectual and political pitfalls of "talking like a state"- that is, of adopting the categories or characterizations of the illicit deployed by policing and regulatory agencies - for thinking well about such flows. Among other problems, it is hard for territorial states to supersede their stationary view of shifting, furtive, borderless activities, a dilemma of note in the recent war on terrorism as well. The essay winds its way to these ideas by addressing three topics: first, the relation of drugs to commodity studies writ large (how drugs were differentiated from other goods during the historic rise of commercial and industrial capitalism); second, the relation of drugs to the building of borders and states; and third, the role of bureaucratic-control language in marking and naturalizing the thin line between controlled substances and freer commodities. (Extract of the publication)
Affiliation :
Etats-Unis. United States.
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