Cannabis Africana: Drugs and Development in Africa

大麻在撒哈拉以南非洲无处不在，其悠久的历史与许多群体的文化习俗交织在一起，日益成为一种宝贵的经济商品。尽管如此，人们对这些作用知之甚少，关于该物质及其各种用途的主要知识来源是来自警察和国家来源。因此，人们对大麻的使用和看法缺乏了解-除了大麻作为“非法药物”的地位之外-以及大麻在撒哈拉以南非洲人民的生活中发挥着什么作用。拟议的研究项目将对非洲的大麻有更深入、更细致的了解，不仅侧重于其“传统”用途，而且侧重于在毒品政策不断变化的全球背景下，大麻作为一种经济作物和生计来源的当代增长。为此，该项目重点关注四个相互关联的领域，所有这些领域都利用了在三个选定地点新收集的经验数据：尼日利亚西南部、肯尼亚西部;南非东开普省。首先，历史叙述是该项目的基础，探讨大麻在非洲历史上所发挥的作用，无论是在治理方面还是在非洲大陆许多人民的日常生计方面。该项目利用最新的档案研究和口述历史，旨在突出大麻的悠久历史，以及可以为目前关于该物质的辩论和看法吸取的教训。应当指出，这些辩论和看法今天在非洲许多国家正在发生变化，而这项提案的提出正值南非正式审议大麻在法庭上的法律的地位。从这一历史出发点出发，拟议项目的第二个重点旨在了解大麻的当代社会经济作用、其用途、与之相关的做法，以及它对农民、贸易商和消费者的意义。该项目的这一领域将利用通过访谈和小规模调查收集的证据，明确探讨大麻与农村和城市生计以及所谓的“发展”的联系，这些证据将在非洲大陆的3个案例研究地点收集。例如，这项研究将收集生活在南非偏远的特兰斯凯地区或尼日利亚的可可带的大麻农民的闻所未闻的声音。我们研究的第三个领域是围绕物质存在的各种消费文化。虽然现有的文献已经暗示了这些，但它们在很大程度上仍未被探索，尽管在非洲大陆的城市和农村背景之间存在很大差异。因此，这一部分不仅借鉴了上述两个数据，而且还探讨了更广泛的文化实践，话语和产品，如音乐和小说，以阐明大麻的含义，除了在三个研究地点随着时间的推移成为“非法药物”之外。最后，第四个领域突出了药物政策的作用，重点是监管环境对案例研究地点大麻生产、分销和使用的影响。它将揭示监管和禁令如何影响人们的生活及其制定经济和文化习俗的能力。该项目使人们更深入地了解大麻与大麻政策之间的关系，探讨大麻政策的历史，目的是了解和制定当今更有效、更公正的治理战略，该项目将重点关注大麻及其非法经济和消费文化，阐明对非洲大陆至关重要的一种物质，该项目填补了我们对非洲毒品知识的巨大空白，并将处理毒品与发展的关键案例研究，鉴于世界其他地方大麻政策的自由化，这一案例研究变得更加重要。

Cannabis is ubiquitous in sub-Saharan Africa, with a long history interwoven with numerous groups' cultural practices, and increasingly a valuable economic commodity. Despite this, little is known of these roles, the predominant source of knowledge about the substance and its various uses being drawn from police and state sources. As a result, there is a lack of understanding about how cannabis is used and perceived - beyond its status as an 'illegal drug' - and what roles it plays in the lives of people in sub-Saharan Africa. The proposed research project will develop a deeper, more nuanced understanding of cannabis in Africa, focusing not only on its 'traditional' uses, but on its contemporary growth as an economic cash crop and source of livelihoods, in a global context where drug policy is in flux. To do this, the project focuses attention on four interrelated areas, all of which draw on newly gathered empirical data in 3 chosen sites: South-Western Nigeria, Western Kenya; South Africa's Eastern Cape. First, an historical account serves as the foundation of the project, exploring the roles that cannabis has played in Africa's history, both in terms of governance and in the daily livelihoods of many of the continent's people. Drawing on fresh archival research and oral histories, the project aims to highlight the long history that cannabis has had and the lessons that can be drawn for current debates and perceptions of the substance. These debates and perceptions, it should be noted, are shifting in many countries in Africa today, with the submission of this proposal coming at a time at which South Africa is officially considering the legal status of cannabis in the courts. Following on from this historical point of departure, the second focus of the proposed project aims to understand the contemporary socioeconomic roles of cannabis, its uses, the practices associated with it, and indeed, the meaning it holds for farmers, traders and consumers. This area of the project will explicitly explore cannabis' links to rural and urban livelihoods and so-called 'development' by drawing on evidence gathered through interviews and small scale surveys, which will be collected in 3 case study sites across the continent. The study will, for instance, gather the unheard voices of cannabis farmers who live in the remote Transkei area of South Africa or Nigeria's Cocoa Belt. The third area that our research will focus on are the various cultures of consumption that exist around the substance. While the existing literature has hinted at these, they remain largely unexplored despite varying greatly between, for instance, the urban and rural contexts of the continent. As such, this part not only draws on the data of the above two, but also explores a wider corpus of cultural practices, discourses and products, such as music and fiction, in order to shed light on the meanings that cannabis has taken on, aside from being an 'illegal drug' over time in the 3 study sites. Finally, the fourth area highlights the role of drug policy, focusing on the impact that regulatory environments have on the production, distribution and use of cannabis in the case-study sites. It will reveal how regulation and prohibition has impacted on the lives of people and their ability to enact their economic and cultural practices. The project provides a deeper understanding of the relationship between cannabis and policy towards it, probing the history of cannabis policy, with the aim of understanding and developing more effective and more just governance strategies today.With its focus on cannabis and its illicit economies and cultures of consumption, the project will illuminate a substance of critical importance for the continent, filling a vast lacuna in our knowledge of drugs in Africa, and will tackle a key case-study of drugs and development, one made all the more important given the liberalisation of cannabis policies elsewhere in the world.