Commodification and commercialisation in California's emerging licit cannabis sector

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Commodification and commercialisation in California's emerging licitcannabis sector: how can "late legalisers" balance a thriving market withother social goods?The project speaks clearly to CDD's grand challenge of understanding"how communities navigate different structures of power through theirsystems of governance and processes of development". Adam proposes toresearch California's licit cannabis sector: the state is simultaneously thelargest producer globally and a 'late legaliser' in the US context. It thereforefaces the tension between facilitating commercial interests and theircommodificatory instincts with protecting other goods such as social justiceand public health to a greater degree than elsewhere while also being ableto learn from pioneers. For the artisanal producers who built California'sillicit cannabis industry under prohibition, legalisation threatens toundermine their citizenship and development. Alongside elite interviews,Adam will work with activist cultivators such as Humboldt Farmers who arenavigating these livelihood pressures in real time. The project therefore fitswith all three CDD themes: civil society, by highlighting the experiences of asocial group who are potentially marginalised by an ostensibly liberatingprocess of legal change; development, by situating California's pastoralpolitical economy of cannabis within wider debates about the evolution ofglobal prohibition; and, by examining how this affects their democraticrights as civil actors, it will have much to say about democracy too.